Brother Guido was feeling guilty. Kneeling to pray at Lauds, he had let his mind wander, and he knew that his lack of attention at the morning prayer was a sin. However, he could not help himself. The more he tried to turn his attention toward God, the more to the fore came the thoughts about the challenge he had set himself. He wanted to change forever the way that honey was separated from the wax comb. He imagined himself in front of a wildly clapping audience at the Brno Beekeeping Conference after unveiling his new method.
It seemed impossible that morning to bring his mind to the meaning of the psalms being read out. Instead the face of Franz Hruschka, an ex-Austrian Army Officer, came to mind. Brother Guido pictured his imposing frame, handsome face with its impressive moustache and beard. There was nothing to disapprove of in his appearance, but Brother Guido had taken an instant dislike to his arrogant, know it all, attitude. He recalled the talk given by him on the crushing methods used to extract honey. It had not provided anything that he did not know already, yet Hruschka had provided the material with such swagger that the audience seemed to truly appreciate the talk. Brother Guido put this down to the fact that the average beekeeper knew very little.
As Lauds was coming to an end and the working day was about to begin, Brother Guido smiled. Not only would his name live on in beekeeping history, but he would have put one over on Franz Hruschka.
Walking away from the chapel, Brother Guido had changed his perspective on his sense of guilt. He now took the challenge he had set himself as doing God’s work. Bees were God’s special insects and helping them produce more wax for church candles and mead for the monastery were obviously good works. He felt better as he headed off to his apiary as the Head Beekeeper of the monastery.
The day before had been long and involved his least favourite activity in the beekeeping calendar; separating the honey from the beeswax. This was always difficult and messy, extremely messy. The smock that he had worn had only partially saved his habit from being coated in a sticky, irremovable residue.
The process he followed was the one taught to him by his predecessor and he knew that this had hardly changed since the founding of the monastery. To Brother Guido, it was odd that despite the advance in hives and frames in recent years the process of extracting honey remained the same. He really thought that there must be a better way of extracting the honey from the wax than having to cut the comb out of the frames and place them into cloth bags that were pressed. The honey seeped slowly into collecting vessels but left behind a sludge that was difficult to process.
Brother Guido regarded himself as a modern beekeeper. He was using the latest moveable frame hives which had allowed him to pension off the old skeps and honey production had tripled with the same number of colonies. However, the old extraction process remained unchanged. The end result was a waste of honey and just as importantly it resulted in a waste of wax. For some time, Brother Guido had thought that there simply must be a better alternative.
The same day, the Assistant Head Beekeeper must have been reading Brother Guido’s thoughts as he mentioned to his superior that he had heard that the ex-Army Officer, Franz Hruschka, was working on new extraction techniques. Brother Guido asked The Assistant Head Beekeeper for more details of Hruschka’s developments but all he could provide was, ‘The process apparently involves spinning’.
Brother Guido felt somehow threatened by this news but settled himself somewhat by thinking that such a smug, opinionated and pompous man like Hruschka would never come up with something that would improve the process.
As he put on his veil, Brother Guido once again thought about spinning honey. Initially, in his mind’s eye, he saw the spinning machine used by the monks to spin wool, but he could make no connection between that and the process of spinning honey.
The word ‘spinning’ turned over in Brother Guido’s mind. Then he had what he considered to be an inspirational moment. With an idea taking hold, he thought to himself, ‘Maybe I really am God’s chosen vessel to bring about the modernisation of honey extraction’.
Brother Guido went over to the store where there were frames that were still full of capped honey awaiting crushing. With a big knife, he scraped off the wax cappings, held the panel with both hands, then span himself around three times. When the room had stopped revolving, he focused on the panel. A few droplets of honey had formed as if ready to be flung off with more rotation. He realised that he was on to something but knew that spinning the frame like this at arm’s length was not going to produce the results required.
With the annual Brno Beekeeping Conference in mind, Brother Guido set to work in earnest to developing his honey spinning technology.
It was deep winter when Brother Guido felt he was ready for his first demonstration of the ‘Rauter Spinning Method’ to his assistant beekeepers. He made them all attend in the snowy cloisters that at least kept at bay the biting winter wind.
The first thing Brother Guido did was insert a frame of honey filled wax comb into a rectangular wooden bucket, which had a long rope attached to it. He had spent months perfecting the fit of the frame and the shape of the bucket.
He explained to the onlookers that the spinning motion he would induce would fling the honey out of the panel into the collecting vessel. He then took the bucket and threw it away at the same time as jerking the rope and turning himself. The bucket dipped and then raised up as Brother Guido span around once, twice, three times. On the fourth turn Bother Guido stumbled and stepped back, skidded on the icy ground and then lurched forward. The flying bucket hurtled into one of the columns around the cloister and a gloopy mess exploded out of the shattered wooden bucket.
Once the world has stopped its own spinning, Brother Guido realised that his methods would need considerable improvement and that he would have to postpone the talk he was hoping to give at the next conference in Brno. Despite the setback, Brother Guido kept on with his developments and drew out diagrams of a bucket that rotated on a spigot. When he had perfected this he intended to again demonstrate his ideas but he realised that he could not afford anymore disasters without losing respect from his assistants.
The Brno Beekeeping Conference was always in late spring, and it was something that Brother Guido looked forward to. He liked the ordered life in the monastery but going to Brno was a lovely change and now that he had God’s work to do, it felt even more important to go. When he received the agenda for the conference, he was disappointed to see that again Franz Hruschka was a key speaker. He thought he would skip this talk but looked forward to going to listen to other eminent beekeepers who were making huge strides in beekeeping since the invention of the moveable frame.
At the conference itself, Brother Guido found out that Hruschka’s presentation had the title. ‘New Methods in Honey Extraction’. As such, he felt compelled to attend. ‘Maybe’, he thought, ‘there is something I could use to further my own ideas?
Hruschka seemed to Brother Guido to be even more full of himself than the year before as he trolled through the existing extraction methods and enumerated their problems. Brother Guido began to nod off just before Hruschka unveiled his new spinning system. As he wheeled on his ‘extractor’ Brother Guido felt something hard and metallic drop into the pit of his stomach.
The extractor was a round metallic cylinder and within this was a cage. Hruschka, as if a magician on stage, dramatically lifted and placed four frames of honeycomb into the cage within the cylinder and turned a handle. There was a strange rattle and audience members looked at each other in bemusement. Hruschka stopped turning the handle and opened a small valve at the base of the cylinder. Golden honey flowed out and the audience erupted as if they had just seen the best magic trick ever.
Brother Guido was speechless. He realised that this was a spinning machine and what he had been working on was a like a children’s game. He felt like a fool and whilst the audience stood to their feet and applauded the brilliance of Hruschka’s invention, Brother Guido said a little prayer and asked to be forgiven for the sins of pride and envy.
Russell Connor
Beekeeper – Fiction Writer – Part-Time Store Manager at the Windsor branch.
