Quentin ‘Beeman’ Henderson
Apiarist who helped to resurrect Nevis’s beekeeping industry and stayed for the rest of his life
QUENTIN “BEEMAN” HENDERSON, who has died aged 67, was an expert on bees, and for much of his life an integral part of the community on the island of Nevis in the Caribbean; the idyllic island is famous as the birthplace of Alexander Hamilton, one of the founding fathers of the United States of America and the place where in 1787 Admiral Nelson married Fanny Nisbet.
Nevis was once the world’s biggest exporter of sugar. Bees were introduced from South America during the sugar plantation era and thrived because of the prolific Coralita or “bee bush” blossoms. A beekeeping industry became an important part of the fragile economy, but this went into decline, and in 1987 Henderson was sent to Nevis on a Voluntary Service Overseas scheme to help to resurrect it.
At the end of his posting, in September 1989 Hurricane Hugo devastated much of the island and destroyed the infrastructure which he had helped establish, along with much of the economy. The Premier, Simeon Daniel, asked him to stay and gave him a job as adviser to the Department of Agriculture; he stayed in the post until his retirement.
Henderson helped to modernise the industry and placed honey on every supermarket shelf in Nevis and the surrounding islands. He also helped neighbours such as St Kitts, Montserrat, Anguilla and Antigua to set up their own industries.
He recruited women to collect the wax from hives and turn it into candles, which also helped the economy. He founded a beekeepers’ cooperative which has its headquarters in the Beehouse which he helped to construct in Gingerland.
It is common in the Caribbean for people to have a nickname and not surprisingly Henderson’s was Beeman; few people on the island knew his real name. His tall loping figure was easily recognisable and would often be seen either at Café des Arts in Charlestown drinking coffee, guiding tourists on walks in the tropical forest or taking them up the extinct volcano, Nevis Peak.
Henderson, who featured on a Nevis postage stamp, was a strong supporter of the Nevis Historical and Conservation Society and a patron of the ruined Cottle Church, built in 1822 and thought to be the first in the Caribbean to be built for both whites and slaves.
Quentin John Henderson was born on December 6 1952, the eldest of six, and brought up on a farm at Elmstone in Kent.
His father John was a fruit farmer, and
Quentin became aware of the importance of bees – essential for the pollination of the apples and pears – from an early age.
His mother Rachel (née Walton) was a children’s nurse turned social worker from Scotland, where the family returned regularly for holidays, but she died when he was 18.
He was sent to board at Royal School Cavan in Ireland, after which he attended Hadlow College in Kent to study agriculture. The family had long had connections to Iona, and Quentin spent regular periods on the island while still at school and college. Iona hugely influenced his life; he was an associate member of the community and often visited.
He joined the International Agricultural Exchange Association, which took him to Australia and Sweden, and to Alberta, Canada, where he first came across the bee industry. He was accepted by VSO for a project in Nevis and they sent him on a course in Cardiff which led to a diploma in beekeeping.
One of his interests was the numerology of car registrations. He had always been fascinated by the motor car, and on childhood holidays to Ballater in Scotland he would sit at a crossroads and spend weeks noting down the makes of cars and their number plates.
Later, one of his first acquisitions was “USA3”, “SA” being an Aberdeen designation. He was a founder member of Europlate, the European Registration Plate Association, for those with an interest in vehicle registration plates, and he liked to time his trips back home to coincide with their annual conventions. He amassed a huge collection of plates, which he stored in Nevis and in the houses of friends and relatives in the UK.
He loved the countryside and walking, travelling wherever possible by hitchhiking in his kilt – the easiest way to guarantee a lift, he said. He would camp in a small tent and had a penchant for graveyards, once arriving in Orkney from Aberdeen and taking up residence next to a gravestone with the Henderson name on it.
He walked the 2,200-mile Appalachian trail from Springer Mountain in Georgia to Mount Katahdin in Maine, and he was proud of his feat in 2015 of climbing Nevis Peak on his adopted island home and 48 hours later standing on the top of Ben Nevis in Scotland.
With his ginger hair and beard, Beeman was an authentic, greatly loved eccentric. . Softly spoken, with a faint Scottish accent, he could talk to anyone. He would also help anyone and was a frequent volunteer at charitable events.
His pick-up truck, which he bought new, was also instantly recognisable and was his pride and joy. Although he had a paid job, and latterly a pension, he lived his life on a barter system of doing jobs for favours, a system which was perfectly acceptable to both locals and expatriates on the Island. He was very money-conscious and loved a bargain.
He was thoughtful and generous in the postcards which he sent from his travels, and he always remembered the birthdays of his large family, giving gifts of honey. He is survived by two brothers and three sisters.
In 2019 he became unwell and initially returned to stay with his sister in York, but insisted on returning to Nevis. When his condition worsened he could not be persuaded to travel to Britain for treatment, saying: “Nevis is my home and this is where I will die.”