Over four decades hanging with the hive for Capalaba local

Capalaba local Norman (Norm) has been amongst the queen bees for most of his life as an early pioneer in Australia’s beekeeping history.

The Bolton Clarke CapellaBay resident’s keen interest in bees began at an early age from his country upbringing and has spanned across four decades.

“I went to Goomboorian State School and there were 15 kids in the whole school and four of them were us Rice children,” Norm said.

“The local beekeeper came into the school one day and he had a great big swarm of bees hanging from his arm – his farm was only 100 yards from the school.

“He told us about the bees, that they only sting you if you upset them and if they have plenty of food, they won’t sting then either.

“Weeks later I caught a little swarm out of his hive on our horse track home in my leather school bag – I shook the bees into that and toddled off home. “

Today is World Bee Day (20 May) and is a day, recognising the important role bees and other pollinators play in our ecosystem.

For Norm, this importance wasn’t lost on him from that very first encounter with the local beekeeper. It become a lifelong passion he flew back to after returning from his service in the Navy during World War I.

“When I got back, I wanted to get back into bees and while my wife was a bit worried that our children would get stung, we never had any problems.

“It all grew from that one hive, and I ended up going to Germany and learnt to do artificial inseminated queens and established a lot of overseas markets including with Iran.

“There was a time that we were selling 3000 queen bees a week to Iran, we sent them to Canada and I also helped set up beekeeping in Burma.”

Bees were a part of the Rice family’s everyday lives, from a constant stream of visitors to their house learning Norm’s tricks of the trade, to his children and wife, Heather, helping catch and ship queen bees off around the world – it was all a part of the learning process says Norm.  

“There were a few disasters where they would offload the bees in Singapore and leave them on the tarmac or they would fumigate the plane with bees still on it – that was all part and parcel of learning.

“I still get emails from some of the people who came out to Australia and worked with me to learn – I’ve always been happy to share my knowledge.”

Now 103 years old, Norman has lived a full life and says it’s all thanks to following his passions in beekeeping.

“I think people should do what they want to do, and you should travel the rough roads because that’s what I did and I’m sure my experiences went far further.”