So, what do the old laws say about tax and bees?

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This may suggest that Tinker quickly built up a reputation for his bee supplies business, but that it tailored off almost as quickly, making his direct involvement in the beekeeping world relatively short. The article he wrote about sectional brood chambers was published in 1886, just five years later and he had retired by 1898.

The Long Winter

Tinker’s article takes the form of a short letter in which he advocates for a report on the various causes of bee deaths in the last year. “If bee-keepers are to profit in the future,” he argued, “by our late disasters, a classified and summarized report should be made”.

What was this disaster?

In short, it was the winter weather of 1880-81, nicknamed by Laura Ingalls Wilder as the ‘Long Winter’ in her historical novel with the same name (published in 1940), or, by others as the ‘hard winter’ or ‘starvation winter’. Wilder’s book described the Dakota Territory experiencing a six month series of ‘blizzards, bitter cold, and near starvation’ (Boustead, 2020, 798). Indeed, a combination of eye-witness sources, metrological data, and written reports show that the winter of 1880 began early with a blizzard in eastern South Dakota in mid-October. According to Barbara Boustead et al. (2020), this was a rare occurrence at that time of year in that region. After a brief respite, wintery weather returned mid-November with numerous snow and blizzard events leading into December. Snow was then replaced by storms in January and February 1881. March mostly remained below freezing only beginning to ease in mid-April.

While evidence may or may not suggest that this was the ‘hardest’ winter ever, it was certainly a punishing one and bad enough for it be recalled by the children who lived through it later in their life (as attested by Wilder’s novel).

For beekeepers such a harsh long-lasting winter was most certainly a disaster. It’s early start and late finish destroyed much of the last and early foraging opportunities and put to risk many of the colonies which desperately, by April, needing to rebuild their numbers.

Tinker’s suggestion that there should be a concerted effort to record the precise nature of the disaster from a beekeepers point of view, therefore, had much merit. In his article, Tinker argued that:

Not particularly hidden in Tinker’s appeal is a reflection of his and the journals general approach to beekeeping; being one of scientific revolution of methods, approaches, tools, and technologies. The message here, is that Tinker believes the more traditional methods of over-wintering and managing hives were more likely to have been affected, and that the bad winter offered a opportunity to stress-test various newer methods that had emerged since. Where is the best place to overwinter a hive? What is the best material? How should the colony be treated during these months and how much food (if any) provided?

A request for raw data

Tinker was not just making a suggestion but was willing to put in the effort of compiling the data and making the report. He argued against a proliferation of individual reports (seeing these as ultimately impracticable), favouring instead the collaborative method. More useful data and learnings could be made by compiling the evidence from various localities and from the use of different hive designs and strategies. To do that he made a request to the readers of the American Bee Journal. He asked that they write on a postal card a summary of their experience based on a set of questions. These questions were:

• What hives were used?

• Number wintered on summer stands unprotected?

• Number alive?

• Number protected

• Number alive?

• Number wintered in cellar, winter repository or bee house?

• Number alive?

From this data he hoped to compile his report, using scientific apicultural methods and knowledge. The editors of the journal were seemingly in favour. A page later they added a little addendum titled ‘Statistical Report’ stating:

This all appeared in the May 1881 issue of the journal, just a month after the bad weather had receded and relatively early into the foraging season. Tinker was not the only one to write about it, as indicated in the editorial remark. Presented below Tinker’s appeal, a letter by C.A. Hatch argued that long confinement during winter was not the key cause of losses, while A.D. Stocking argued that leaving more honey stock and ensuring that the colony is as full of young bees as possible near the end of the foraging season is crucial to over-wintering. The May issue began with a report from the Northwestern Wisconsin and Eastern Minnesota convention, which seemed to have concluded that overwintering in cellars is generally best.

Meanwhile, others highlighted their losses. H.S. Hackman bemoaned how he had started the winter with 165 strong colonies and ended it with just 3 ‘very weak colonies’. He blamed the long cold and confinement (arguing against Hatch’s claims) and noted how another beekeeper has lost 25 colonies, and another saved only 40 our of 200 colonies.

The long winter had obviously rattled the beekeeping community in North America. The question, though, is whether this statistical table ever came to fruition and what did it say that was useful to directing apicultural science and method in the future. Answers to that question next time!

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Sources

Boustead, Barbara M, Martha D. Shulski and Steven D. Hilberg, ‘The Long Winter of 1880/81’, Bulletin of the. American Meteorological Society, 101 (2020), pp. 797-813.

Tinker, G.L., ‘Shall we have a General Report?’, American Bee Journal, 17:21 (May 1881), p. 163.

Previous essays in this series:

Cattle, sheep, and pigs. These were the commodities that appear to have been considered the chief indicator of wealth for a household in early medieval Ireland. Certainly, this is how the Irish Brehon Laws situate wealth. Less obvious, but still considered important, was beekeeping. Bees might not have been as important as cattle, sheep, and pigs, but they were essential components of early medieval life and their products – honey and wax – highly prized and needed.

The laws, and their later commentaries, show that beekeepers were protected from theft and damage to their hives, but were also required to pay hefty taxes, often in honey or in bees themselves. As shown in Part 2 of this essay, they were further required to pay compensation whenever their bees were believed to have caused harm elsewhere, showing that bees are not entirely easy to keep under control.

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Honey origins in Ireland in the latest episode of The Hungry Historians

Earlier today I and Kelly Spring released the latest episode of The Hungry Historians podcast. The podcast focuses on food history, providing interviews with various writers and researchers in the world of food and drink history. In this episode we discussed Irish food history with Máirtín Mac Con Iomaire and Dorothy Cashman and the subject of honey came up; in particular, the mysterious origins of bees in Ireland. If you fancy a listen, you can catch the episode at The Hungry Historians on Podbean.

A look at honeybees in Dracula

The vampire that famously visited Whitby from Transylvania in Bram Stoker’s nineteenth century novel, Dracula, had nothing to do with honeybees, but Stoker does use them as metaphor in two parts of the novel. The first is when Jonathan Harknes first meets the sirens in Dracula’s home. At one point Stoker has Harkness describing the smells, making the scene even more evocative than it would have been based on a simple physical description of the sirens:

“I lay quiet, looking out from under my eyelashes in an agony of delightful anticipation. The fair girl advanced and bent over me till I could feel the movement of her breath upon me. Sweet it was in one sense, honey-sweet, and sent the same tingling through the nerves as her voice, but with a bitter underlying the sweet, a bitter offensiveness, as one smells in blood.”

Honey is often described as sweet in historical sources and often compared to bitterness. Indeed, Stoker uses a well-worn troupe in describing a sweet allure from the sirens which are underlaid by a more offensive bitter stink.

The second reference is made by Stoker’s fictional character Dr Seward as he observes the lunatic Renfield. The specific reference occurs on 19 August in the story, when Renfield is discovered to have escaped his cell during the night.

“On the far side of the house I found him pressed close against the old iron-bound oak door of the chapel. He was talking, apparently to someone, but I was afraid to go near enough to hear what he was saying, lest I might frighten him, and he should run off. Chasing an errant swarm of bees is nothing to following a naked lunatic, when the fit of escaping is upon him!”

The potential danger of chasing Renfield when in a crazed mood is suggested to be as dangerous as chasing a swarm of bees. Of course, bee swarms are largely unthreatening unless specifically attacked, as the bees are only interested in getting to their new home.

The use of beeswax in the Vietnam War

Some time ago I found an interesting fact about a use for beeswax that I hadn’t really thought about. This was in Michael Badger’s Heather Honey: A Comprehensive Guide (2016). Badger argued that beeswax became more in demand during the 1960s in the United States, as it was used in the manufacture of munitions for the Vietnam war. Beeswax, apparently, is the perfect medium to use as a water/damp inhibitor for high explosives and small arms ammunition. During 1955-1975, therefore, the price of beeswax rose to almost unbelievable levels as the US government purchased every tonne available around the world.

Round-up of the latest research

Smruti Pimpllikar et al., ‘Sucrose responsiveness is associated with foraging specialization in honeybees but not bumblebees’, Behavioural Ecology and Sociobiology, 80: 102 (July 2026). DOI: 10.1007/s00265-026-03775-9

This article is about scientific investigation into foraging practices by honeybees and bumblebees, demonstrating a difference in how each species have evolved. This helps us to understand the drivers for labour division in social insect colonies such as bees and therefore gives an insight into how we might interpret some observations in the past. Sucrose (one form of sugar obtained by foraging) appears to be more important to honeybees than bumblebees. The authors conclude that different factors are important for bumblebees.

Ngetheni Nkomo et al., ‘How life sciences teachers use discursive moves to support learner meaning-making: an analysis of opportunities and gaps’, Journal of Education, 105 (2026), pp. 126-148. DOI: 10.17159/2520-9868/i105a07

While not focused on honeybees or history, the article uses the example of honeybees as used in a teaching example on the concept of social organisation. This is interesting, as humans have often used honeybees on a lens into our world, and this is a nice additional (and current) example.

Beekeeping in Classical Greece and Rome

Kristine Kristensen has made available via Academia.edu two articles. The first is about beekeeping in Classical Greece (originally published in 2025) and the second on ‘Beekeeping in the Roman World’ (originally published in 2019). Both articles are extremely interesting and well worth a read.

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Hello, and welcome to a new issue of the Honeybee Histories e-magazine, the first of 2026. These are free to paid subscribers of the newsletter alongside other benefits such as additional essays and occasional bonus content.

This issue takes as its focus the question of how humans have historically tried to understand the natural tendencies of honeybees. That takes us to antiquity and the nineteenth century in looking at attempts to hunt down bee nests. It takes us to Thomas Hill, in the sixteenth century, with his examination of the work and roles that bees undertake. It also takes us to Karl von Frisch, who discovered how bees communicate foraging finds. There are also the usual extras such as bee facts and A-Z Buzz Files.

For free subscribers and anyone who has just come across this newsletter please do consider a paid subscription. Every penny received goes straight back into researching and writing this newsletter and helps me to negotiate the time to keep Honeybee Histories going. If you are particularly interested in the e-magazine, then issue 0 can still be viewed for free Honeybee Histories e-magazine issue 0 (pdf download).

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First, it was extremely difficult to make the identification. It was not easy to look inside a wild bee hive or a skep to observe the doings and activities of a Queen Bee. They are not always easy to find even in a modern movable-framed hive. Even where observation did take place no one observed the leader bee mating with a drone or worker. Bee reproduction was a mystery, mainly because it occurred in the air far out of sight of humans.

Second, writers about honeybees and beekeeping wished to be blind to the possibility because it did not suit their purposes. Almost without fail, those who wrote about honeybees saw themselves reflected. Since the times of Virgil, the colony was described as a type of microcosm of humanity. We, ourselves, are not immune from such thoughts, often using the image of bees to describe hard work, community, and morality.

In Part 8 and Part 9 of The Leader of the Hive, I explored how Charles Butler’s 1609 The Feminine Monarchie first popularised the possibility that the leader bee was a female Queen. He did not provide proof, however. Other writers in the seventeenth century followed his lead, but again were unable to prove that what they now believed was true. The claim that the leader bee was female, therefore, was not much of a furthering of actual knowledge than the previous claim that she was male. That all changed, however, with the invention of the microscope.

In this Honeybee Histories essay I am going to explore the key moment when the leader of the hive was identified, without doubt, as female. The man who made this discovery was Jan Swammerdam (1637-1680) of Amsterdam. This essay was written largely from reading Swammerdam’s publications which describe his anatomical examinations of honeybees under a microscope. This is his The Natural History of Insects, and his posthumously published Book of Nature, accessed in later versions dated to 1792 and 1758. It was further augmented by reading several articles about Swammerdam’s experiments, and Frederic Eggers de Villepin’s A History of the discoveries about the sexuality of the honey bee.

By dissecting a Queen bee under a microscope, the Dutch scientist, Jan Swammerdam concluded that ‘the king, as commonly called, was a female’ (Swammerdam, 1758, 159). His research also confirmed that the drone is male, although it seems that scientific examination even of this kind, still had its limits. Swammerdam decided that the worker bees were ‘eunuchs’, belonging to ‘neither sex’, although he did admit that they ‘approach nearer to the female than to the male sex’ (Swammerdam, 1758, 168). In this he was somewhat right and somewhat wrong. The worker bees do generally not reproduce, but they are female in all other ways.

In his first book, The Natural History of Insects, Swammerdam devoted only thirty pages to the honeybee. This would expand, massively in his posthumously published Book of Nature, in which the portion devoted to honeybees rose to some seventy-eight pages.

In the first of these publications, Swammerdam shows himself to be excellent at noting the anatomical elements of bees, but not so clear-headed in his wider analysis. For instance, he noted incorrectly that there can be five or six Queen Bees in a hive at any given time. Swammerdam is most likely working off the inaccurate claims of beekeepers here. He also states that they ‘are said to lay all the eggs from which the whole swarm is hatched in a season’ (Swammerdam, 1792, 89). The beekeepers are most likely observing the fact that there can, sometimes, be multiple virgin queens in a colony, ready to supplant the existing Queen. They, of course, have absolutely no role in laying eggs until they are fertilised on a mating flight, and even then, only after they have removed all other competition from the rival virgins.

At one point Swammerdam announces how surprising it is that the thousands of bees found in a colony all owe their lives to a ‘single parent’ (contradicting the previous statement), but that ‘upon opening her body, the wonder will cease; as the number of eggs appearing, at one time, amounts to five thousand’ (Swammerdam, 1792, 93). From observations, Swammerdam is able to give some indication of how the Queen is involved in swarming and on how the Queen lays eggs (although his belief is wrong that her fertilisation is caused by attending drones within the colony).

In his second book, more is said about the Queen Bee. Swammerdam argues that the queen ‘lives in the hive for no other purpose, but to deposit, as occasion offers, her eggs in the cells’ (Swammerdam, 1758, 169). These, he believed incorrectly, were infertile at first, as the drones would then move through the hive placing their sperm in the cell alongside the egg. He argues that up to 30 cells can contain ‘female’ bees (i.e. queen bees) at any one time and that:

A little later, Swammerdam adds that:

This is the case, and Swammerdam keenly understands one reason why such claims had been made in the past:

It would have been easy for Swammerdam to fall into that same trap, by what he saw regarding the emergence of new queens. Swammerdam notes that ‘the female bees do not, as the common Bees and the male, come forth with their wings folded up, but expanded and displayed’ (187). However, rather than claim some kind of kingly superiority in this fact, Swammerdam recounts for it in practical terms: ‘the all-wise Author of nature has provided for them a more spacious mansion, in which they may expand their wings conveniently and properly, so that after they have burst from their cells, they may be prepared for swarming immediately’ or ‘be in a condition to drive out even the mother Bee herself’ (187).

Where Swammerdam’s investigations with the microscope really come into play, however, is in how he describes the queen bees anatomy. First, he admits that the queen shares many similarities with the worker bees, but he also notes differences. Key of course is the discovery of the queens ovaries, which he found nestled next to the heart and ‘lodged in the uppermost region of the abdomen’ (202). Swammerdam describes what he saw:

Swammerdam goes on to note that the two parts are again sub-divided into two single parts which he calls the oviducts for convenience sake. We are then treated to a brief explanation of the differences between animals on how the oviduct works. Humans and larger mammals, for instance, have complete eggs fully protected in the ovary and are, from there, carried through the fallopian tube to the uterus, where the egg has the chance of being inseminated. In birds, Swammerdam explains, the egg is only half perfected in the ovary, with the white and shell added in the oviduct.

For bees:

Swammerdam celebrates this wonder of nature, viewing it as a perfection of God, in that God has managed, with the bee, to contract all the systems of egg production into one single organ. This perfection, however, comes with a cost, which appears to irritate him.

The complexity of the Queen bees oviducts was not something that Swammerdam had observed elsewhere. Butterflies, Rhinoceros Beetles, the Humble Bee, and the wasp all contained simplified oviducts, he noted. Indeed, the complexity meant that Swammerdam could not tell how many eggs might be in each oviduct. In the Humble Bee (commonly called the Bumblebee), Swammerdam could easily see ‘ten larger, and some smaller eggs’ and in the Silk-worm Butterfly he ‘sometimes counted sixty or seventy eggs in each oviduct’. But for the Queen Bee ‘I could by no means determine the number of the eggs’ (203).

Nonetheless, an attempt was made to calculate the total, as this was important for understanding how the Queen Bee reproduced. From managing (with great difficulty) to find 16 or 17 eggs in one oviduct, Swammerdam approximated that there were around 300 oviducts in total. Thus, Swammerdam calculated there is likely to be around 5,100 eggs in one female bee (203). This is not a bad estimate, based on the scientific equipment available to Swammerdam in the 1670s. It is, however, wholly inadequate. Scientists now recognise that the Queen bee can lay around 1500 to 2000 eggs in just one day. In a year the Queen lays around 730,000 eggs, and she might do this for up to 4 or 5 years before becoming too old (or dying/being killed). The real figure is nearer 1,000,000 eggs.

Some conclusions

The work of Jan Swammerdam really is a key moment in the development of our knowledge about the leader bee. It was his work that confirmed the truth of what many had long suspected while also overturning for good the claim that the leader is male, and thus a King. While this also meant that the allusion to bee colonies as a microcosm of a monarchy lead society, had to end, other forms of allusion rapidly took their place. While scientific fact caused a problem to previous beliefs, it was not quite the problem it once was. In England, the monarchy had been reduced in stature (and a king beheaded), and it would not be long until an even more gruesome example came into play in France.

Nonetheless, it would be wrong to claim that the idea that the leader bee was female and the primary egg layer became instantly recognised. It took time for these claims to filter into society, to beekeepers, and to other scholars and scientists. Yet, this was the moment when understanding of the leader bee began to alter and soon enough, other finds would cement this further, such as the discovery of how drones mate with the Queen and the precise relationship to the workers became apparent.

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Sources

• Maderspacher, Florian, ‘All the queen’s men’, Current Biology, 17:6 (2007), pp. 191-195. DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2007.02.017.

• Swammerdam, Jan, The Natural History of Insects complied from Swammerdam, Brookes, Goldsmith, etc. (Pearth, 1792).

• Swammerdam, Jan, The Book of Nature or, The History of Insects: Reduced to distinct Classes, confirmed by particular Instances, Displayed in the Anatomical Analysis of many Species, trans. Thomas Flloyd & ed. By John Hill (London, 1758).

• Villepin, Frédéric Eggers, A history of the discoveries about the sexuality of the honey bee: A detour into the past (Northern Bee Books, 2024).

• Woolfson, Johnathan, ‘The Renaissance of Bees’, Renaissance Studies, 24:2 (2009).

Just imagine for a moment that you live in Ireland, around the year 500 AD. You were walking home from a days hard labour in the fields, passing through the lands of several landowners. Suddenly you feel a sharp pain in your neck. A honeybee has stung you!

In 2026 you would simply be annoyed. You might find some ointment to calm the pain and if you are unlucky you might need to receive treatment (if you are allergic to bee stings). Even if you are close to an apiary you can’t be certain the bee came from there. Even if you felt that it did, what could you really do about it? It probably wouldn’t occur to you to seek recompense from the owner.

In 500 AD, your response might be different. You might go to the head of your local tribe and demand that the honeybee be put on trial!

So, can a honeybee be put on trial for stinging someone? The answer in Ireland, in 500 AD, is a resounding yes!

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Earlier this year, I examined the two-part article that Tinker had written in The American Apiculturist in 1886.

There, I declared my interest in exploring Tinker as a way into the late 19^th century innovations and debates on beekeeping in the United States. G.L. Tinker was a manufacturer and seller of high-grade beekeeping equipment who retired sometime near the end of the 1880s. He came from New Philadelphia, Ohio and was described in the journal as a trustworthy source of equipment but also of knowledge about new forms of beekeeping.

In part 1, I referred to the Bee Keepers’ Supplies catalogue from A.I. Root as the source of information about Tinker’s retirement. At that point, I hadn’t looked much further into the catalogue or what Tinker wrote for the Root company. In this essay, I thought I would follow up on that lead and examine what he says (and what they say in return) to see what further information that might provide.

To start, let’s see what Dr Tinker wrote that so enthused the people at A.I. Root that it lead to them replacing their usual growth report to start off their annual catalogue.

As Others See Us

A.I. Root Company introduced Dr Tinker’s letter by stating that they usually open their catalogue with a description of the company growth, but decided instead to carry out some self-promotion via an ‘unsolicited’ letter by the esteemed manufacturer of quality bee equipment, Dr G. L. Tinker. In his letter, Tinker also highlights that this is an unsolicited praise of the company, which begins to wear a bit thin when the editor admits at the end that Tinker’s visit to their factory was to sell and demonstrate his zinc-perforating machine, which they subsequently go on to promote as part of their new supplies for 1898.

The origin of this letter is also important. While it appears at the beginning of the 1898 catalogue by A.I. Root Co., it was originally submitted to Gleanings in Bee Culture, a popular beekeeping journal of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. It just so happens that the Gleanings was, at this time, produced by none other than A.I. Root Co. Most likely, there is an element of ‘I’ll scratch your back, if you scratch mine’, going on here, so the overwhelming praise that Tinker provides, might be overstating the reality somewhat. Nonetheless, the letter and the editors response to it, tells us some interesting things about Dr G. L. Tinker and his connection to A.I. Root.

In both versions the editor highlights the quality of Tinker’s equipment by suggesting that they ‘were acknowledged wherever seen to be the finest, in the line of bee-keepers’ supplies, of any thing ever turned out’, and that, as a result, ‘to have the maker of these goods pronounce so high an encomium on those of our own manufacture is most gratifying indeed’.

Now, on to the letter. Dr Tinker titles his piece as ‘the home of the honey-bees’, suggesting that this home is that of A.I Root Co. This is what he has to say:

The letter has the feel of collaboration even if it is unsolicited as repeatedly suggested. Tinker is, no doubt, honest in his praise of the company, but it is very over-the-top, and more likely an endorsement made to also promote his own wears one more time. Indeed, the editor of the catalogue goes on to explain that Tinker left out of his account the reason for his visit to the factory, a subject we shall now turn to.

The zinc-perforating machine

Dr Tinker had visited the factory to demonstrate and sell his zinc-perforating machine. From the editors comments it seems that they had a bit of trouble getting it to work smoothly at the beginning, but very quickly it worked silently and automatically. It also stops when it runs out of zinc to transform. The editor suggests that the Tinker zinc has ‘earned for itself a reputation that is world-wide’. Whether this is true or not is, perhaps, besides the point. It would appear to at least be superior to the in-house zinc-perforator that Root had used previously.

In the body of the catalogue this is made clear when advertising perforated zinc for making a queen or drone excluder. There, the writer exclaims that ‘the Tinker zinc is very much better and more accurate that the Root. It has over forty per cent more perforations to the square foot, and each hole is like every other’ (p. 18). This praise is also bourne out in the relative prices. The smallest version costs $1.20 in the Tinker zinc, but only 80c in the older Root zinc.

The next item offered for sale are bee-entrance Guards, which again promotes Tinker zinc as the superior article and new for the 1898 range. We are told that the ‘old-style guards of Root zinc’ can be supplied at 50 cents for 10, but that ‘we can not recommend them in comparison with the improved ones of Tinker zinc’. The advertisement goes on to state that:

A few other items in the catalogue also promote Tinker zinc, but these are the main examples where the superiority of Tinker zinc is claimed over the old in-house made versions. It appears that A.I. Root is keen to encourage their customers to buy their new version and to quietly retire their previous stock.

What is left unsaid

Earlier I mentioned that Tinker’s letter in the catalogue had been cut down, so that it’s last paragraph was no longer printed. This last paragraph is more interesting in the context of the Gleanings journal, than in the catalogue. It’s about Tinker worrying that the entire factory could go up in smoke if there was ever a fire. The editor of the Gleanings (i.e. hired by A.I. Root Co.), assures the readers that there is little threat of a fire and that they have many methods for dealing with one, if it ever occurred. Nonetheless, it seems worthwhile reprinting this last paragraph here for completions sake:

Some Concluding Thoughts

What do we learn in this letter from Dr Tinker. About him, not too much. It seems that he has closed down his manufacturing business, but is still able to sell his automatic zinc-perforating machine. The editor states that Tinker had sold it to them a few days earlier, and then visited the factory on 1^st December, to demonstrate how it should be used. Tinker, himself, states that he hasn’t written in beekeeping journals for a while, but felt it worthwhile to write his glowing praise of A.I. Root Co. This might be partly on the basis of promoting his own goods through the company, but is also likely to be at least mostly genuine praise on his part.

The letter suggests that Tinker’s zinc machine is superior to the method that Root Co. were previously using (although it is not clear what method or type of machine they had previously used).

What we get in the letter as well, is a glimpse inside the type of factory that beekeeping equipment was produced in the late 1880s. The description of men and women working together (seemingly happily) and A.I. Root overseeing the work personally is a useful glimpse, if somewhat (perhaps) romanticised. The efficiency of the machines and workers is noted, and the process of duplicating parts shows the type of manufacturing process active at the time. Even the rather odd description of a vegetable garden in a greenhouse is interesting, although its purpose at the factory is never explained.

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Sources

The entire catalogue can be viewed online: Bee Keepers’ Supplies (PDF). The corresponding article in the Gleanings in Bee Culture can be found in volume 26 which is also available online at the Hathitrust.

The laws of Ireland and Wales are the focus of today’s Honeybee Histories. In many ways, they are among the most important sources of evidence we possess for understanding early medieval beekeeping. They tell us about the significance of beekeeping within society and the practical challenges of managing bees. They also reveal something of governance, taxation, and the perceived value of honey, wax, and bees themselves. Perhaps most interestingly, they show how closely beekeeping practices had to accommodate the natural instincts and behaviour of the honeybee.

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Being a clear and fair morning, then do they fly forth and return again to their Hives, laden with the substance of the flowers on their legs.

The seventh chapter of Thomas Hill’s A Profitable instruction of the perfect ordering of Bees, brings us to the working life of a colony. Such a chapter is interesting. It tells us clearly and exactly what Thomas Hill, Georg Pictorius, and other sixteenth-century writers about honeybees actually knew from observation, or at least from the observation of past writers. We are told, for instance, about some of the different roles that the worker bees occupy:

• Wardens

• Foragers

• Carers of the Hive

We are told that bees of different ages do different jobs. We are told about swarming and the role of the ‘King’. We are also told about the sounds that bees make within the hive. We learn about some of the rudimentary practices suggested (and probably enacted) to manage swarms. And we are told more about the harshness of life within the colony.

Once again, this chapter is mostly a translation by Thomas Hill of Georg Pictorius’ Pantopolion, published in 1563. Hill does add a few elements of his own, which are new to his 1568 text.

The sound of Bees

When I began to write about this chapter, I thought I would remind myself of the sounds that bees make in the hive. The obvious place to do that was YouTube. In doing so, I discovered various videos suggesting bee sound meditation! I have no idea if it works – it sounds bizarre to me – but have a listen anyway and see what you think:

So, while you listen to those bee meditations, let’s look at what Thomas Hill say about the sounds that honeybees make. He describes the low hum sound and how it quietens as night arrives and how the bees are awoken by the bee on guard. Thus, in the first lines of the chapter, Hill states:

Nearer the end of the chapter, Hill adds:

The authoritarian undertones on show here are quite visible. It is one of them who stirs them to work, and there is one of them that orders them to sleep. It might be the same bee, or not, Hill isn’t too clear on that point, but he is clear that the one that stirs them to action is a guard bee. Indeed, Hill begins his chapter by describing the role of the guards as standing guard at the ‘mouths of the hives’, and that they are ‘like warders placed at the gates of a Castle, that they may so defend and safeguard whom they will within’.

How weather affects the honeybees

Georg Pictorius and Thomas Hill also seem aware of the variation in weather, and how this affects the activities of the hive. After describing the guards, Hill adds ‘for if they happen to keep themselves in the morning within the Hives, then do the same declare a tempest to ensue that day’. Or, in other words, the hive will make a lot of noise from within from all the restless bees. However, if the day is nice then ‘being a clear and fair morning, then do they fly forth and return again to their Hives, laden with the substance of the flowers on their legs’. Pictorius is clear here, that the foragers are young bees (which isn’t true), and that the older bees remain within cleaning, nursing, and protecting the hive (which is also not right).

In reality, it is usually the younger bees who stay within the hive nurturing the unborn and keeping the combs clean, whilst the older bees go out to forage until they tire themselves out completely. It is interesting, therefore, that Pictorius believed this to be the other way round. There is a certain sense to it. Younger people tend to be more active and fitter, and therefore more able to explore far and wide and do the harder labour, whilst the old are more likely to stay at home and carry out chores there. Again, we are viewing bees through the prism of human experience.

One thing, that does remain true, is the observation that if the bee appears ‘sluggish & not labouring’ then they are often punished ‘to death’. This is very much true, especially for the drones.

Stones between the legs

This chapter also touches on another observation. That is, that when:

Is it really little stones that they bees carry in their legs, and how does this work? No, it’s not. What Pictorius and Hill took for stones, is actually pollen. Essentially, worker bees have pollen baskets on their legs with various hairs surrounding them. When the bee lands on a flower, it covers its body with pollen and then grooms itself by brushing the pollen around its hind legs and, with the aid of the hairs, into the pockets. Nonetheless, the idea that bees carry stones to balance themselves is a long existing one, going all the way back to ancient Greece and Rome.

Swarming

Chapter 7 next turns to the question of swarms. It describes how honeybees manage to stay together in a formation, rather than scatter far and wide, almost at random. Hill states that ‘they call and gather them together into a swarm’, and that pans, basons, or cymbals can be used to clang together to make a ‘shrill sound’, which should help the beekeeper to gather the swarm into one place. In observing swarms, knowledge appears to exist about the leader bee (what we call a Queen, and they called a King), being in control of the swarm:

A new piece of information that Thomas Hill inserts between the words of Georg Pictorius, expands on the role of the king in swarms. Hill adds that removing the wings of the king will stop a swarm and that the colony will remain instead of taking flight. The description, by Hill, is leaden with political allusion, suggesting that the ‘Counsels Privy’ and rulers are amongst those who remain with the king.

Cleanliness

The chapter ends with a return to the words of Georg Pictorius. Here we are told that Aristotle declared ‘Bees to be the cleanest amongst all other beasts’. The reason given is that they avoid going to the toilet until they are out of the hive. The last sentence is another reminder that the drone bees are killed or driven away when honey supply is scarce.

Summary

All in all, this chapter is accurately translated by Thomas Hill, but he does add more details about the removal of the kings’ wings and adds pans and basons to the cymbals that Pictorius had mentioned. This rather suggests that in Tudor England pans and basons were more commonly used.

The original sources for this content are not mentioned, bar a brief reference to Aristotle regarding how the bees defecate outside of the hive (this is taken from Aristotle’s The History of Animals, bk. 9, ch. 27, section 19). Comparison to other sources, however, suggests that the content is yet again a combination of Aristotle and Pliny the Elder. Aristotle’s material is again bk. 9, ch. 27, but from the earlier section 12, whilst Pliny’s contribution is taken from The Natural History, Bk. 11, ch. 10 and 17, and possible 4 and 11.

In general, the chapter hold together well, but the ending is a bit fragmented, with several near-random facts being added about cleanliness, the supposed ruling councils of bees, and the killing of drones.

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Historians tend to highlight now that there were discoveries and improvements. However, the evidence for knowledge about the drone honeybee is less a development or evolution and more a Christian enhancement on what the ancients had already argued. That is the topic for today’s Honeybee Histories.

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Thus wrote Maurice Maeterlinck in 1901 when he started to describe the drone honeybee. He captures the eternal conception of drones clearly; offering echoes of Virgil, Isidore of Saville, and many others by claiming the drone as lazy, stealing off the labour of others, and full of undeserved pride. This, though, is mere scene setting by Maeterlink. He has darker designs on the tale that he has to tell. This is not about the life of the drone honeybee. It is about its destiny, and all beekeepers know – the destiny of the drone bee is, ultimately, to die.

Of course, all living things die, but death really does have a higher significance for the drone. He generally gets an easy life. He does no specific work for the hive – unlike his sisters – he gets free food and free shelter. His ultimate aim in life is to mate with a virgin queen bee. Only a few get to achieve that lofty aim. For some, their life really is easy (compared to other bees), but if they do achieve their aim of intercourse – they die. More than that, they are torn apart from the inside! If the drone is unfortunate enough to be born near the end of the summer season, their life is also cut ferociously short. The female workers turn them out en-masse. The drones die from starvation or the cold, some are eaten by other creatures, many die in their attempt to escape the warring mass of workers suddenly after their blood!

The drones life is an easy one, as the old stories argue, but it is also one where sudden death lurks surprisingly close. In this essay of Honeybee Histories, I’m going to explore the three chapters that Maeterlinck dedicated to ‘the massacre of the males’! To start though, a quick reminder about Maurice Maeterlinck and what, precisely he wrote about honeybees.

A few years ago I picked up a book about beekeeping from a local charity shop. I do that from time to time, to add to my collection. On this occasion I discovered a reprinting of Maurice Maeterlinck’s The Life of the Bee. This book contained similar content to many other beekeeping manuals, but was written with an additional literacy flare and not designed specifically as a manual for beekeeping, but more an interesting exploration of the craft. I had never heard of Maeterlinck before picking up this book. I wrote an essay about one part of it that same year and reposted it last December.

Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949) was an early twentieth century Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist. His book was originally written in French, but my edition had been translated into English by Alfred Sutro and published in 2020 by Alicia Editions (which publishes books in the public domain). The original French version was published in 1901.

Maeterlinck wrote his book on bees while he was dating actress Georgette Leblanc and most likely wrote much of it while they spent their summers in Normandy. Part of that book was dedicated to the death of the drone bee.

The unwanted Drone

Maeterlinck goes on to explain that he has no idea where this command comes from. It seems to simply ‘emanate from the cold’. As soon as the idea exists, though, the workers are obsessed with it. Foraging stops and all thoughts are one: remove the males!

Put like this, the annual removal of the drones sounds very similar to Order 66 from Star Wars. For those of you who have little interest in science fiction / fantasy, Order 66 formed part of the prequel trilogy released in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In those films the cloned army working for the Republic (which somewhat represent the worker bees), are suddenly issued a secret order that entirely alters their opinion of the Jedi. For years they worked under their command, doing everything that the Jedi asked of them. Then suddenly, all they could think about is killing the Jedi – and this is exactly what they did. The Jedi, metaphorically, were removed from the hive.

Maeterlinck’s description of how the drones react is somewhat presented in cheek and worthwhile quoting:

From there, things get grisly as Maeterlinck describes how the ‘virgins’ cut off the drones wings or slice them in two and how the guards refuse them re-entry or hold them hostage until their deaths arrive. The second chapter on the drones ends with the workers setting out the next morning, clearing their threshold of the ‘strewn’ corpses, their ‘recollection of the idle race disappear till the following spring’.

The final chapter of the section on the ‘massacre of males’ tells what happens next. The workers reduce their foraging as there are less flowers to be found. The beekeeper takes their share of the honey, then the bees cuddle up into a ball to help them survive the cold of autumn and winter. The third chapter is therefore not really about the drones at all but about the survival of the colony during the colder period.

Concluding thoughts

Thus ends Maeterlinck’s version of the story about the drones being removed from the hive. He uses the familiar troupes – describing the workers like an army and a civilisation in a city. He uses the oft refrain that the drones are lazy and idle, at times he even calls them parasites, rather than true bees. In this, he harks back to Aristotle, who considered the drone to be a sort of parasite on the colony; not quite a bee, but something else.

In telling that story, he gives it a new varnish. The first act tells of the drone at the fullness of his life. He eats what he wants, he goes out as he wishes, and thinks he is the most marvellous thing: ‘indelicate and wasteful, sleek and corpulent, fully content with their idle existence as honorary lovers, they feast and carouse, throng the allys, obstruct the passages, and hinder the work’, as Maeterlinck puts it (p. 181). He also notes that these pompous drones never suspect the scorn that the workers regard them. The second act, shows how wrong they are. The workers as one reject the drones by killing or maiming them, and forcing them to flee the safety of the hive. Act three, is the epilogue. The colony forgets the insurrection and focuses its energy on surviving the colder weather. They curl up into a ball sharing their honey supplies equally among them, little thinking that come Spring, the drones will once again return. The cycle will repeat.

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Sources

• Maurice Maeterlinck, The Life of the Bee, translated by Alfred Sutro (2020).

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Palladius differs from his predecessors in that he was writing near the end of the Western Empire and that much of what he wrote was based on the words of Columella. There is little that he offers that is original, at least in relation to honeybees. Nonetheless, his de re rustica or opus agiculturae, offered amendments and additions and reworked the whole into advice pertaining to each individual month. So, what did Palladius tell us about the drone?

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Thomas Hill mentioned profit in his dedication, stating ‘how profitable they are for commonwealth, and how necessary for mans use’, and in his preface, claiming that a book describing the right use and handling of honeybees has been rarely done, but that such a thing be ‘profitable for a commonwealth, and commonly used among the poor husbandman’. Chapter 6 explains these claims and is the topic for today’s Honeybee Histories essay.

The sixth chapter is called ‘Of the great utility and profit of the Bees unto mans use’ and begins by arguing that profit is made if the bees hive is placed in a ‘convenient and fit place’ and that they are well looked after (the words ‘wisely guided’ are used). The use of Pliny the Elder here, is to frame that argument by stating that honeybees are beasts that are ‘principally cherished’ by men because it is possible to ‘gather a most subtle and wholesome juice’, i.e honey, and ‘their cottages of wax’ which ‘no workman (be he never so ingenious) can do the like’.

There are two sides to the argument being made here. The first is that the beekeeper must work to provide for the bees, if they are to be profitable. Second, the profit is made from honey and beeswax. There is another element, however, which could make the beekeeper profit, and that was the bees themselves.

Swarms as profit

This entire chapter is copied by Thomas Hill more-or-less word-for-word from Georg Pictorius’ Pantopolion, as are most of these early chapters. However, he does add the word ‘profit’ to the title (which is not something that Pictorius emphasised) and he adds, in brackets a comment about a little story that ends the chapter.

The story is simple, and nothing more than a sentence. It goes like this: There were two Gentlemen in Spain who obtained a yearly amount of 10,000 pounds from their Bees alone. That’s it. Hill adds in brackets that he thinks this number too high, and that 5,000 pounds is more realistic. As stories go it’s not all that illuminating, but it does make a point that profit can be made by keeping bees.

The tale derives from Varro’s On Farming (Bk. 3, p. 328, section 10), however Varro himself does not count coin in pounds but in sesterce. This makes a big difference. This is the ancient Roman coin used during the Republic era and equates to about £80 (UK) or $106 (US Dollars) in modern money. This is what Varro states:

Varro goes on to explain that to achieve this level of profit the gentlemen in Spain ensured that the Bees were able to feed from the right kinds of plants. He goes into quite some detail about these. Of course, none of that appears in Thomas Hill’s work, nor Georg Pictorius’. Instead, the story is followed by a warning that after six years, colonies begin to increase much slower, although they are said to be better at providing higher yields of wax.

The story about yields of bees began in the middle of the chapter with a simple claim that swarms are worth money. Thomas Hill wrote:

In more straightforward words, if a hive is looked after properly and the weather proves good in a year, then there is a high chance that the bees will swarm multiple times, simply because they become overcrowded in the hive. If the beekeeper captures the new swarms, he can then use these to sell on, or to increase his stock for honey and wax production. The beekeeper begins the year with one hive and ends with two (and so on).

A quick note on sources

In this chapter, Hill refers directly to Pliny the Elder and Varro, but when I compared the text of this chapter to these two sources there were parts of it that didn’t fit. The first few lines are from Pliny’s The Natural History (Bk. 9, ch. 4). The focus on swarms could come from any number of sources, including Collumella and Palladius Rutilius. The story of the Spanish gentlemen, as already noted, derives from Varro’s On Farming (bk. 3, p. 328, section 10). The last line, though, on swarms slowing down their increases in their sixth year is from Collumella, De Rustica, bk. 9, ch. 3. This is used again by Thomas Hill in chapter 9.

Whilst some chapters are reliant on only a few sources, it seems that Pictorius drew from multiple texts when he put this chapter together, perhaps suggesting that the needs of his sixteenth-century audience had changed from the needs of the classical period in terms of focusing on profit and usage.

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Early medieval Britain was an island separated into various small and alterable kingdoms. Many of these eventually merged and aligned until the island was essentially broken down into the England, Scotland, and Wales that we know today (approximately). During that era, the skep bee hive became prominent in various forms and designs, and made of materials local to each region.

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Hello to all the subscribers of Honeybee Histories. I just wanted to wish you all a happy World Bee Day. This day (20th May), every year, the world celebrates all species of Bees with a day dedicated to them. This is a UN designated event to raise global awareness of the importance of bees and other pollinators.

Every year, I do something through Honeybee Histories to celebrate this day, but this year, time has not been kind, and I have not had the capacity to prepare anything substantial. I didn’t want the day to pass unaccounted for, however. Therefore, I thought I would reshare the first essay that I wrote to celebrate World Bee Day, back in 2022 for all subscribers. Paid subscribers will additionally receive an essay tomorrow at the usual time.

This essay focused on the beekeeper and tutor whose birthday influenced the choice of day for World Bee Day: Anton Janša. I also wanted to reshare with you a fun little ‘choose your own adventure’ that I built on another year exploring the life of a honeybee.

I hope you enjoy these and I’m hopeful that next year I’ll be able to do something more for World Bee Day!

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy these!

Matt

Choose your own Adventure: The Life of a Honeybee

A new honeybee has been born. Help make decisions for this bee so that she can best support her colony.

Go to the Game

Teaching Beekeeping in 18th century Slovenia and Austria

Anton Janša (1734-1773) is known as a pioneer in modern apiculture. He gave lectures demonstrating his knowledge of bees, wrote two books in German on the subject, and was appointed teacher of apiculture at the Habsburg court in Vienna. Born in Carniola (modern-day Slovenia), Janša originally trained as a painter, but soon his talents and interest in beekeeping took priority. It was Empress Maria Theresa (1717-1780) who appointed him as a teacher of apiculture at the new School of Beekeeping in Vienna. He made it his own. It, also, made him. He became renowned for his knowledge and teaching style and after his death, it was ordered that his methods and his books continue to be used at the school.

The legacy of Anton Janša was important for a culture of beekeeping to arise in Slovenia which is still effective today. As such, his legacy was firmly established in 2018, when the day of his baptism – 20 May – was chosen for the annual World Bee Day by the United Nations. It is for this reason that Anton Janša is so associated with World Bee Day, but also because it was the Slovenian Beekeeper’s Association that first put forward the proposal to the UN. They were its champions. They made it happen.

So, beyond this brief biographical description of Janša, who was he, and what exactly did he contribute? To answer those questions, we must first look at a proposal by the Lower Austrian Economic Society and visit another beekeeper in Carniola in the eighteenth century and consider how and why a School of Beekeeping was established in the first place.

A School of Beekeeping

In 1768 beekeeper (and Roman Catholic priest), Peter Pavel Glavar (1721-1784), produced a detailed survey of beekeeping in Carniola, making notes of obstacles that were preventing further development. Glavar argued that ‘killing of bees…should be considered completely detrimental’ (an argument also made by Janša) and that the practice of loading up hives on carts to the interior or hills of the country and then returning them home to take the nectar from buckwheat fields, left most of the bees dead, and should, therefore be avoided (at least in its current form). He gave numerous other pieces of advice, noting that there was a near-mythical belief that people knew from birth how to keep bees as if it were not a skill that needed to be learned and practiced.

Glavar’s ‘Response’ was a result of another document, prepared by the Lower Austrian Economic Society earlier in the year. The Proposals for the Improvement of Beekeeping in the Crown Hereditary Lands argued that beekeeping is neglected but could easily expand. Glavar’s response was a call for better education and better training. In doing so, he argued for the establishment of beekeeping schools, new legislation, and literature in the Slovene language (as to that date, there were none).

Glavar’s interest was two-fold. First, he was a great promoter of the Slovene language and its literature. Glavar believed that it had been neglected, and as such, knowledge and education were weaker than they might otherwise be. Second, as a dedicated beekeeper, including becoming a leading figure in the Carniolan Agricultural Society, he pushed through changes which meant that farmers were presented with information and training in their language. He wanted to train Carniola’s farmers in such a way as to make beekeeping – and the products of honey and wax – key to his country’s future prosperity.

In terms of the literature, Glavar paved the way by writing the first book on beekeeping in the Slovene language. This was the 1776 A Conversation on Bee Swarms, which was part translation and part his own work. In 1771, Anton Janša had published his own work in German called Abhandlung vom Schwärmen der Bienen (Treatise on the Swarming of Bees). It was this work that Glavar used as his foundation.

This was a basis, a starting point, for more literature directed towards beekeepers in Carniola, and where possible in their language. Stane Miheliÿ published Glavar’s book in 1976 and argued that:

Thus, teaching as a means of provoking improvement and expansion, was at the heart of Glavar’s approach, even though he was not necessarily as good at doing this in writing.

At the same time, work began to establish centres for training beekeepers. Glavar repeated his call for training centres in a 1781 report to the Agricultural Society in Ljublijana. Here he outlined rules for a proposed school at Lanšprež. These included a suggestion that the landlord should be the teacher and should work for free. The students would also receive this education for free (which would also include writing and reading skills). The course would run from early March to the end of October and last two years. At the end, each student would receive one beehive, paid for by the state treasury as a means of building local capacity. Glavar never received a response to these suggestions, but he went ahead with his plans anyway. Glavar became the teacher. This was the first beekeeping school established in modern-day Slovenia.

He did so based on legislation enacted by Empress Maria Theresa six years before. That legislation had established the grounds for beekeeping schools to be established, for Anton Janša’s text to be used (which Glavar did in part-translated form), and that beekeeping was exempt from duties such as tolls for the transport of hives to and from pastures. However, Glavar’s school was a few years too late. In the same year, specifically 31 October 1781, a new court decree was issued abolishing all public teachers of beekeeping from the hereditary lands!

Anton Janša – first teacher in Vienna

Returning to the 1760s we find Anton Janša and his brothers Lovro and Valentin arriving in Vienna where they enrolled in the Academy of Fine Arts. They intended to become painters, but for Anton, at least, that was not to be his future.

In 1769 the Lower Austrian Economic Society based in Vienna, having previously written their Proposals for the Improvement of Beekeeping in the Crown Hereditary Lands, was looking to hire two master beekeepers. It just so happened that Anton Janša was working at this time as a beekeeper in the Society, alongside his painting studies. He had proven successful at the job, by introducing Carniolan hives and techniques, and, as a result, having obtained large yields of honey from the buckwheat grazing at Moravsko polje.

When Maria Theresa signed a letter to the society on 6 April 1770 to establish the school in Vienna, Janša was top of the list to become the teacher on behalf of the Society. It was decision time. Should Janša continue to paint, or should he take up the opportunity to become court master beekeeper for the Empress?

It seems that the decision was made quickly for Maria Theresa wrote a decree on 7 April appointing Janša as her beekeeper and as the teacher for the newly established beekeeping school in Vienna. This was reconfirmed on 8 June.

The School in Vienna opened in May 1770, just one month after Janša had accepted his post. As with Galvar’s school in Lanšprež, which would open a decade later, teaching was offered to students for free. Classes were held from May to mid-September, with a move to Moravsko polje in July and August to allow the students to put their learning into practice during the busy buckwheat harvest (and no doubt to use as extra, free, labour).

The school proved extremely successful. Janša’s lectures were based on his knowledge and expertise starting in Carniola and expanded upon in Vienna. The Empress herself, attended many of his lectures as did various members of the nobility, as well as the poorer sorts. His school resulted in other schools being founded based on the same principles and teachings. These spread far and wide, including one in the modern Czech Republic and another in Croatia, as well as Glavar’s Lanšprež school (although the latter was not given an official permit).

Sadly, Anton Janša, who had obtained such fame in just a few years, died in 1773. The school continued, as did his teachings, but the job of teaching fell to others.

Janša’s first book on bee swarms was reprinted many times and even translated into Polish, Hungarian, and Czech. Glavar’s 1776 translation into the Slovene language, with his own additions, brought Janša’s work back to his birthland. A second book, based on his teachings and written as a ‘full’ handbook on beekeeping was also posthumously published in German. In 1792 it too was translated into Slovene.

Of Peter Pavel Glavar, his translation and expansion written in 1776 were never published in his lifetime. W. Blomstedt has suggested that the printers might have been timid about the idea of publishing a book in Slovene when the official language of the Austrian Empire was German. They, therefore, conveniently ‘lost’ the manuscript. It was eventually found in the library at Ljubljana in the twentieth century, and finally published by Stane Miheliÿ; sadly, long after its original purpose had passed. Nonetheless, Glavar, like Janša, was successful at promoting beekeeping in the eighteenth century. As such, Slovenia has become a world centre for the craft and a large producer of honey and wax.

The Slovenian Beekeepers’ Association launched an initiative in 2014 to make 20 May, World Bee Day. Their reason for choosing this date was to mark the occasion of the birthday of Anton Janša, but also because:

The UN’s Economic and Financial Committee adopted the resolution on 17 November 2017, and this was unanimously backed by the General Assembly on 20 December 2017. Since then, every 20 May has been World Bee Day. I will leave the last words to Boštjan Noč, President of the Slovenian Beekeepers’ Association:

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Sources

Blomstedt, William, ‘Peter Pavel Glavar: A History of Humanity and Beekeeping’, Bee World, 94:4 (2017), pp. 111-118. DOI: 10.1080/0005772X.2017.1375258.

Šalehar, Andrej, Poučevanje čebelarstva na kranjskem od Petra Pavla Glavarja (1768) in Antona Janše (1770) do Emila Rothschütza (1874) (2014).

Sánchez-Bayoa, Francisco and Kris A.G. Wyckhuys, ‘Worldwide decline of the entomofauna: A review of its drivers’, Biological Conservation, 232 (April 2019), pp. 8-27. DOI: 10.1016/j.biocon.2019.01.020.

Born: 1793

Died: 1877

Location: Connecticut, US

Era: Nineteenth century

Bee link: First President of the North American Beekeeper’s Society

In 1860, naturalist, Jared Potter Kirtland was elected as the first President of the North American Bee-keepers’ Association. At the age of 67, this honour was doubly important in the annals of American beekeeping history because this was the very first Bee-keeper’s association set up in the US, many years before others and just before the American Civil War kicked off. It was a role that Kirtland would keep well into the 1870s and possibly until he died in 1877.

In this essay of Honeybee Histories, I have decided to explore Kirtland’s role as President and his interest in beekeeping in the mid-nineteenth century. It seems that his interest in the pastime waned in the last years of his life, despite his continued involvement with the Association. He was an early adopter of Langstroth’s movable frame hive (a fact that he was very proud of) but he also felt that he had lost touch with the various new techniques and designs just a year after he was re-elected President in 1870 (Anon, 1872, 48). By 1874, Kirtland admitted to having ceased ‘cultivating’ bees entirely (ABJ, 10:4, 1874).

Early life and Kirtland’s introduction to beekeeping

According to Patsy Gerstner, Kirtland was brought up by his grandfather who was a physician and naturalist. Kritland followed in his footsteps, studying medicine and botany at the University of Pennsylvania and medicine, geology, mineralogy, and botany at Yale.

Whilst he subsequently opened a medical practice in Wallingford (and served as the village postmaster and judge of the probate court), he kept up his interest in natural history. When his father was seriously ill he visited a variety of gardens in Ohio to study the local fora and flora, and then developed gardens and orchards of his own, experimenting with different plants and seeds.

Life was not easy for him, however. His youngest daughter died in 1822 and his wife a year later. Kirtland returned to Poland, Ohio with his surviving children, bringing with him a selection of his best fruit and ornamental trees. From there he developed an elaborate orchard at his new home. He married again, but tragedy was not far away. His only son died in 1829 and his new marriage remained childless.

In the same year as his sons death, Kirtland made his most significant discovery. He observed that fresh-water mollusks (naides) were bisexual. Until then, it was believed that these naides were hermaphroditic so Kirtland’s discovery not only changed the discussion, but also revealed that many of the species of naides described in the literature were actually nothing more than sexual variations.

The Ohio Geographical Survey

In 1837, Kirtland reduced his medical work to focus on the Ohio Geological Survey, having joined the faculty at the Ohio Geological Survey. In doing so, Kirtland helped to produce the most comprehensive catalogue of animals in Ohio that had yet been published (this was the Second Annual Report of the Geological Survey of the State of Ohio, published in 1838).

The report can be found online at the HathiTrust with Kirtland’s part dated to 1st November 1838. Unfortunately, despite Kirtland’s dedication and that of his colleagues, they ran out of time to organise the many insect and plant specimens that they had collected, leaving those parts of the report incomplete (Kirtland, 1838, 159).

Sadly, that work was never to be completed nor updated as this was to be the last Ohio Geological Survey, as the State failed to allocate money for the project after 1838.

While Kirtland returned his attention to medical work, he also became a leading member of the Ohio Agricultural Society and organised the Cleveland Academy of Natural Sciences (which became the Kirtland Society of Natural Sciences in 1869). This was also the time that he became President of the North American Beekeeper’s Society.

President of the first Bee-keepers’ Association in the United States

The first convention was held at Cleveland on 15 March 1860. J. P. Kirtland resided as President and they discussed (among other things) how best to over-winter bees. In the reports found in the American Bee Journal from the association meetings it would appear that Kirtland gently encouraged adaptation of new technologies and approaches, whilst leaving room for other members to highlight more traditional approaches. For example, on the Thursday 14th March 1861 convention in Cleveland, Ohio, Kirtland interjected into a debate about whether hives with or without movable frames are better, by siding with the more progressive side. He provided space for a Mr Smith to suggest that ‘division was unnatural’ while hearing voices such as S.C. Brown arguing that ‘leaving things to nature will not always be for our interest’. To that debate, Kirtland offered much needed clarity, suggesting that the Association’s role should be to learn about the culture of bees while also developing a better way to work with them. In this, he tried to mediate a middle way to allow all voices, whilst also offering his own opinion. In the latter he stated:

“We are living in an important epoch, so far as bee culture is concerned. Four years ago, after having tried almost everything, I contracted for a number of old box hives, an determined to go back to first principles; at that time, I was convinced the old-fashioned hive was the best. Four years’ experience with movable comb frames, however, has convinced me that we have since made important advancement.” (ABJ, 1861, vol. 1 no. 5).

Kirtland also demonstrated his wide-ranging knowledge in these conversations. At one point he reminded those in attendance that the moth had previously not been a problem but was now making traditional beekeeping trickier. Movable frames, he argued, appeared to make it more possible to control such risks.

Kirtland’s passing

In the February 1878 edition of The American Bee Journal, it is announced that Kirtland had died (ABJ, 1878, 14:2, p. 34). An N. Cameron offered a brief obituary citing the discussion had at the Farmers’ Club of the American Institute;

“We have heard, with profound regret, of the death of Dr. Jared P. Kirtland of Cleveland, O. Our eminent naturalist, especially distinguished for his investigations in the orchard, vineyard and garden, whose contributions to science have been recongized in both this country and Europe, and who was a noble man in all the relations of life.”

Cameron added to this obituary that:

“We will add to the above list - the apiary. Far more than a half century, Mr. Kirtland has taken a lively interest in bees, keeping them more for pleasure than profit: and while following his profession, he always found time to ‘doctor’ his bees, always quick to note improvements and adopt them. He quickly recognized the frame hive and its merits, and the Italian bee gave him great pleasure.” (ABJ, 1878, 14:2).

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Sources

• Gerstner, Patsy, ‘Kirtland, Jared Potter’, American National Biography (1999). DOI: 10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.1200494.

• The American Bee Journal:

  • 1861, 1:5

  • 1872, 48

  • 1874, 10:4

  • 1878, 14:2

• Second Annual Report of the Geological Survey of the State of Ohio, published in 1838.

Hello and welcome to an examination of the second article that G.L. Tinker published in The American Apiculturist in April 1886. Last month I started to look into the contribution of Dr G.L. Tinker into beekeeping techniques and technologies in the late nineteenth century through his 1886 article about sectional brood chambers. The article had been published in The American Apiculturist in two parts. The first, highlighted why Tinker believed that reversable brood frames were a bad idea, and touched on the work of Langstroth and Dzierzon to make the argument. In the second part, Tinker suggests that beekeepers should look more at the whole hive rather than fixating on one element – if they do that, he seems to suggest – there would be a better chance of success.

In part 2 of my investigation into Tinker I’m going to look at that second article in the April 1886 edition of The American Apiculturist. The article also appeared (with its previous part) in the American Bee Journal in March of that same year. What do we learn about Tinker in this second article and what do we find out about technological innovation during the late nineteenth century?

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In this essay, I’m going to explore in more detail precisely what Butler wrote in his The Feminine Monarchie, mostly based on the 1623 edition. The question here is to understand how Butler viewed the Queen Bee and how she fitted into his revised understanding of the colony with its egg-laying female workers and male drones.

While Charles Butler’s The Feminine Monarchie is generally hailed as the first ‘scientific’ handbook on beekeeping, there is still much in it that owes itself to the long traditions first set down by Aristotle and Pliny the Elder. There is, also a great deal of connection to myths and legends – to an allegorical understanding fixated on honeybees as an ideal commonwealth in miniature. It is therefore not all that surprising that Butler would compare the colony of honeybees to the popular Amazonian myths.

In chapter 4 of The Feminine Monarchie, Butler cites Marthesia (or Marpesia) who was believed to have borne several daughters: Antiope, Orithya, Menalippe and Hypolite. Only two of these daughters were destined to succeed her, the others considered ‘not fit for ruling’.

Butler uses this story to highlight a claim that he wanted to make that there can only be one Queen Bee in a hive. All others are ejected as quickly as possible. In the first chapter he had explained that:

Now, he explained that the Amazonian kingdom is a good comparison to how the Queen Bee actually functions in the colony:

This description of swarming places the process of the Queen producing multiple offspring (princesses or princes, as Butler terms them), into a context where the princesses are crucial instigators of a swarm. The old Queen remains with her colony while her daughters either die (or are killed) or conquer another realm.

These swarms, Butler adds, are made up of a Queen Bee as well as honeybees of all ages, and drones. In this, Butler adds to knowledge, overriding common perception that only the young bees join a swarm. Thus he describes:

The Prince sings for acceptance

While it may almost sound as if all this happens in the hive, without the queen necessarily being involved directly beyond her creation of the princes egg, nothing is further from the truth as far as Butler is concerned. The princes and the Queen communicate in what he considers to be akin to a song or series of songs. In a previous essay (Charles Butler Part 3: The Music of Honeybees), I discussed how Butler was so enthused about his bee discoveries that he combined his pleasure of them with his love of music, by creating a madrigal that mimicked the sounds made between the prince and the Queen bee.

In the 1609 edition, Butler makes the general case for understanding bee communication through music, but in 1623 he provides the full notation for his madrigal. In doing so, he also expanded on his explanation of precisely what purposes these sounds might have. Why was it necessary for the princes to communicate with the Queen?

Butler describes how the prince appears to make a ‘treble voice’ which is mournful and begging. He believes she is asking the Queen for permission to leave with a number of the servant bees. If the Queen replies she turns ‘her Base to the young Princes Treble’ to offer consent.

This communication continues when the prince is ready to swarm ‘the Queens voice is a grant, so her silence is a flat denial’, and then that:

This, then, is how Butler thinks of the Queen bee - not just as the leader of the hive, but the one that gives permission to younger princesses to leave in swarms. If that permission is not given, then the princess knows she will be killed.

Butler somewhat romanticises all of this, but not beyond his observations. Ultimately, he is not quite right in understanding the purpose of the bees songs. It is not the Queen granting permission or the princess asking for leave, but a warning to potential rivals - a deadly warning in which only one of the princesses will survive (at least in the hive itself). Nonetheless, Butler offers a reasoned explanation and helps to start a conversation about bee communications and the precise role of the princesses and Queen, which would become fruitful for further research as the seventeenth century progressed.

Sources

• Bee-ing Human website with Charles Butler translation

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Research Notes

This essay was mostly written by comparing the 1609 and 1623 editions of Charles Butler’s The Feminine Monarchie as it appears on the digital collection by Bee-ing Human. I worked through each chapter one after the other using two browser tabs (one displaying on the left of my screen and the other on the right). This allowed me to review the differences between editions, giving some precedence to the 1623 edition as this was the most likely to expand on the topic of the Queen Bee.

This allowed me to take notes about all references to the Queen Bee and to note where the 1623 edition differed or expanded on the 1609 edition. In the future I hope to conduct a more detailed comparison of the two editions that goes beyond the Queen Bee. This is what I did for Thomas Hill’s 1568 beekeeping manual, which has proved extremely useful for writing those essays.

Of course, this research also benefited from the work that I had already done on Charles Butler in other essays.