Russell Field  removing honey from  hive. 

Honey removal using the brushing method 1967 - 68 season. 

Field 's  Apiaries, Foxton

1967 - 68 season at Field 's Apiaries. Bee boxes repaired then soaked in used car engine oil. Then left outside for 6 months to weather. Unacceptable practice today using old car engine oil

Honey removal using the bee brushing method. 

Infuriated the bees and this is when we got most stings! 

The 1967 - 68 season. These bee hives were harvesting Manuka honey in the Wanganui Valley. At that time it was regarded as poor quality honey and only used to supplement feed bee hives in winter, sold to bakers or used to blend with clover honey

We had no truck mounted mechanical lifter and had to manually lift the full honey supers (boxes) onto the back of the Ford truck, Each box weighed about 25kg

"Brownie" showing a frame containing bee larvae (brood) and some honey.  Brownie took over as head beekeeper from Norman Keane who had left to work as his own beekeeper business.

Most of Field's apiaries were scattered through the Manawatu area and were usually around 20 hives in each apiary. When I worked there in the 1967-68 season they had about 1300 hives in total. They were all standard 10 frame Langstroth hives. We didn't use queen exluders in any of them and neither did we have a mechanical loader. All hives and full honey boxes were manually lifted onto the flat tray Ford truck seen here.

Employee "Brownie" using a steam heated honey uncapping knife in the new honey shed of Field's Apiaries, Norbiton Road, Foxton.

This was very hard work on the wrist. We didn't have an automatic uncapping machine.