Series: Landing Board beekeeping history posts

Some thoughts and reflections on the North American Honey Bee Expo 2026

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This entry is post 2 of 24 in the ongoing series Landing Board beekeeping history posts

Below are my thoughts and reflections on NAHBE. Others who attended may have differing reflections and I’d love to hear those.

Several dozen Marylanders and a dozen or more MCBA members went this year to NAHBE in Louisville, Kentucky January 8-10. It was my third year attending.

The Maryland NAHBE group photo

The Expo was bigger than ever with about 4000 people and a huge vendor area, bigger this year than the prior two years.

For me, the best part of the Expo was talking to beekeepers and vendors about beekeeping; sharing experiences, tips, views, and agreeing and disagreeing on things. But I also heard excellent talks and came away with new insights.

The biggest thing I brought home, beyond a box of new gadgets, was new enthusiasm and energy for the coming season. I got my batteries recharged.

NAHBE is orchestrated by Kamon Reynolds, who formerly created and led Hive Life, an annual expo in Tennessee.

An attempt to show the size of the vendor show

It’s a nine or so hour drive from Montgomery County to Louisville, KY. Driving may be essential if you expect to, or fear, you will buy a lot of stuff. But also, some of those who went with a truck or trailer generously shared cargo space and passenger space for the ride.

A group of Maryland beeks hosted for the third year a Maryland (with some DC and their Kansas EAS Master Beekeeper study friends from Kansas) at their AirBnB.

Marylanders/DCers did well in the honey show. Honey from our area was 3rd (Allan Storm) and 7th (Emily Locke) place out of 200 in the black jar contest.

About the Expo

NAHBE includes a trade show, conference sessions, and workshops. The slate of workshops on offer  was much expanded this year and all were sold out. The presentations are generally from significant speaker/experts, including, this year, Randy Oliver on his research and our own Frank Linton on observation hives.

Frank Linton, of MCBA, spoke on the value of observation hives in your home for beekeepers. He had a line of folks wanting to ask questions after his talk

The old continues alongside the new at NAHBE. This is a hallmark of today’s beekeeping, which of course uses gear much like what was used 150 years ago. Big vendors broker a ton of hive bodies, frames, treatments and other standard equipment often at low prices (you also avoid shipping costs if you buy there).

You can readily find a speaker at the conference part who will talk against a product or practice and then see that same item for sale in the vendor show. For example, Randy Oliver discussed his testing of robbing screens, showed the problems with certain designs, with pictures of them. Those problem screens were for sale in the Expo.

Similarly, one or several portable observation hives were on offer which holds frames back to back. Frank Linton in his talk on observation hives pointed out that with that arrangement, the bees are likely to be between the frames, and you cannot see what they are doing.

But this reality is good to see; it means the organizers are allowing presenters to give their views without concern that a vendor will get upset.

Standout topics and key observations:

  • Talk and insights on tropilaelaps, when it might be a problem in the United States, and what, if anything, we can do about it was a top subject for the Expo.
  • Reinventing the mousetrap continues apace with new beekeeping gadgets, hive formats, tools, software, etc. [PHOTO]
  • An alternative smoker, still in beta, that shows promise

    A promising smoker alternative that is a pistol-gripped, battery-charged “gun” which uses a liquid which it emits as a vapor on the pull of a trigger. This is still in beta.

  • I observed even more gizmos, particular doohickies of plastic, for various purposes. I think 3D printing, at least for prototyping, and cheap injection molding production with plastics, leads to excess.
  • An Australian? group is selling a mini, table-top extractor, which uses plastic cartridges of plastic comb, 8 of them in a deep frame. This is a gimmick, though a fun one. I noted it was a party trick and the guy didn’t argue. One run of the device loaded with two sides of the snap-together cartridge would yield about 6 oz.
  • The insulate versus not and ventilate versus not (to put these simplistically) continues.
  • Norroa is now for sale exclusively, for now, from Mann Lake.
  • There are wholly, to me, unnecessary devices such as a bucket full alarm, which sits on the lip of a pail and alerts when the honey is close to the top.
  • Fighting varroa is still a dominant subject though the rising threat of tropilaelaps takes that on as a sort of “if you think that’s bad, what ’til we have tropilaelaps!”
  • There are more than ever, and probably too may, oxalic acid vaporization devices on offer.

Who comes:

Lots of big buys at NAHBE!

My sense is that there are lots of folks, maybe each year here has been this way, who are ramping up from a few colonies to a few dozen, maybe more. Some are farmers, some wanting a significant side-line operation to add to their family income, and some are hobbyists gone nuts.

Attendees are of different sorts:

  • Sideliners growing their operations and gearing up.
  • Tinkerers and experimenters and tech geeks wanting to try new stuff
  • Bewildered beginners and enthralled beginners
  • People there for the conversations; to be with their tribe
  • Farmers and farm families for whom a bee and honey sideline is essential to their family economics
Big buys, by pre-order or on sudden impulse, are the norm at NAHBE

And surely more

NAHBE would be especially good, economically, if you were building up an operation when a year or two in; you’d know enough what you wanted and needed, and wouldn’t have already bought all of it. The deals for standard gear are probably the best.

Other topics in the mix

  • Queen rearing and management has a pretty strong presence and with it conversations about it being better to raise your own queens than to buy them from far away.
  • AI has growing attention, including via meet ups organized during the Expo. Fred Nichols, from our club, is a leading thinking and experimenter on this.
  • More polystyrene and possibly other materials for insulated hives.
  • New types of internal, external, and top feeders
  • Bee suits with bold claims
  • and so on

I had a marvelous time for the third year in a row. In other words, highly recommended.

A dose of George Imirie’s medicine (wrath?)

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This entry is post 1 of 24 in the ongoing series Landing Board beekeeping history posts

George Wady Imirie, Jr. (1923-2007), a native of Bethesda, Maryland, was a beekeeper who had a strong influence on beekeepers in that area and beyond. His legacy echoes, even nearly 20 years after his death. Vendors still sell the “Imirie Shim” which he invented.

I did not know George, but from about the time I started learning about beekeeping, I started hearing about George Imirie. If he comes up in conversation with a long-time beekeeper in Maryland, they usually say something along the lines of ‘George was quite the character’ or ‘George could be difficult.’ (And some less polite language pops up, I’ll leave that to your imagination).

Imirie sometimes kept bees while shirtless. Some local beekeepers remember him demonstrating beekeeping at the Montgomery County (Maryland) Agricultural Fair wearing only a Speedo.

He told a reporter in 1997 “Bees don’t like socks, especially woolly ones. A hat is a good idea, because if a bee gets tangled up in your hair, it’ll sting you. I don’t wear a shirt, because that way, if a bee is on me, I can feel it and brush it away.”1)Patricia Sullivan, George W. Imirie Jr., 84; Beekeeper Extraordinaire, Washington Post, October 6, 2007, p. B05.

His ideas on beekeeping, delivered with attitude, are preserved in his Pink Pages.

One time (July 2003), George wrote a nasty letter to Montgomery County members. And he titled it, “A Nasty Letter to Montgomery County Members.”

The letter is of the typical George Imirie style of his Pink Pages.

(Please note, you must decide for yourself or seek the counsel of others as to whether the advice George shouted is still valid. They don’t match, from what I am seeing, current opinions. I share this because it’s fun to see, not to advise anyone on their beekeeping.)

His words are posted below, in full.

A Nasty Letter to Montgomery County Members

I have written about this many times, but people “forget”, “Daddy didn’t have it”, and some new beeHAVERS have not heard it before; so here it is again. Frankly, I am tired of hearing all this CRAP about a hard, cold winter killing bees. How do you think wild bees survive in a hollow tree, and there are many beekeepers in northern states that do not pack their bees in boxes, cellars, or tar paper wrap. If you are a keeper of your bees instead of a haver, your bees will survive 20° below and will have an UPPER ENTRANCE 365 days/year, particularly in the winter!

WHY an upper entrance? Surely you have seen people blow their hot breath on their glasses to moisten them in order to clean them. Your exhaled breath contains water vapor, and the same is true of a bee’s exhaled breath. YOUR HOUSE, the inside of a beehive is NOT HEATED and the wood walls and inner cover are cold. Everybody knows hot air goes UP (hot air balloons!). What happens to the exhaled WATER VAPOR breath of 20,000 warm clustered bees when it goes UP and hits that cold inner cover? It CONDENSES into water droplets on the inner cover surface; and when enough is condensed these droplets become drop size and this cold water “rains” down on the warm clustered bees? Wow, the thought makes me shiver! Let’s consider something else that has happened a few winters in my 65 years of beekeeping: It snows and that is followed by a sleet storm and all of this freezes the bottom board entrance closed, and this may last for several days until things warm up. Without an upper entrance, your bees might suffocate, or if the temperature suddenly shot up to 50° for an hour or so, your bees can fly out and cleanse themselves. So PLEASE provide your colonies with a 365 day UPPER ENTRANCE, just another upgrade from beeHAVER to beeKEEPER!

HOW TO DO IT? I HATE holes drilled in my hive bodies or supers (’cause I get stung putting my hand over the hole plus it is a great entrance for robbing bees). Putting sticks, twigs, or nails under the edge of the inner cover to lift it is sloppy, too much trouble, easily knocked apart, and just unprofessional! Here is the BEST system. An inner cover outside frame is 3/4″ thick and most have an 1/8th inch piece of Masonite in the frame. On the end that is 16-1/4″ wide, notch out a piece of the frame about 5/16″ high by 1-1/2″ wide in the center of the 16-1/4″ end. That is it! Leave that inner cover, notch DOWN, in place 365 days a year!

There is always some SMART ALEC, WISE GUY, or KNOW-IT-ALL beeHAVER who will say: “The bees will build burr comb between the frame top bars and the inner cover.” If they do, your bees are TOO CROWDED for comb space, or you are using foundation instead of drawn comb, or most of the time there is not enough super space. You can come to any of my apiaries in Maryland or Virginia, and every colony has this inner cover in place the year around, and never is there any gross amount of burr comb present; and I have done this over 50 years.

MY BEES WINTER WARMLY, DRY, AND HEALTHY!

References[+]

A long history of honey adulteration

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This entry is post 3 of 24 in the ongoing series Landing Board beekeeping history posts

The adulteration of honey is an ongoing issue, with roots in the far past.

Honey, in the 1800s, was considered adulterated in two ways: if it was mixed with, or replaced by, non-honey ingredients, such as glucose, or, if the bees who made it were fed sugar, rather than collecting nectar.

One of many news bits about adulterated honey from the 1800s1)Brooklyn Eagle, October 9, 1867

Worry about adulterated honey started at least as early as the 1810s and intensified by the 1870s. At first, beekeepers seemed to most worry that the very mention of the possibility of adulteration would cast doubt on the quality of own their natural honey in the marketplace. And it surprised some that it was an issue at all.

“It would naturally seem that the very last article of consumption that would be adulterated is honey, an article which is so plentiful in this State [California] that many times beekeepers can find no market for their crops of honey.2)San Francisco Chronicle, July 2, 1877, p. 2.

Adulterated honey a big discussion at the National Beekeepers’ Association in 18743)The Perry Chief (Perry, Iowa), December 5, 1874

But they soon decided that it would be a better defense of their product to denounce adulteration. All this is while other honey producers routinely adulterated their honey for economic reasons, usually by cutting it with cheap glucose.

Charles Muth (1834–1898), the “Honey King of Cincinnatti,” for whom the Muth honey jar is named, wrote:

“It is a pity that adulterated honey cannot be told more readily. It will seriously damage the honey business as consumers will become suspicious. … I should be an object to every bee keeper, and especially to the editors of every bee journal, to post everybody in regard to the matter.”4)quoting C. F. Muth, writing in the Bee Journal, The Southern Plantation (Montgomery, Alabama), October 14, 1875, p. 7.

Beekeepers learned to explain to people that a sure sign of real, unadulterated honey was granulation.

“we must be teachers, showing how much better the pure article is than the adulterated, even when the latter has the advantage of cheapness to recommend it.”5)citing Moon’s Bee World in The Southern Plantation (Montgomery, Alabama), October 21, 1875, p. 7.

Beekeepers began to seek laws making adulteration of honey illegal by the 1870s. It was a state-by-state effort.

In 1898, beekeepers in western Maryland formed the Beekeepers’ Association of Western Maryland, electing a slate of officers. At their formation session, they immediately chose a board member to draft a bill asking the state legislature to prohibit the sale of adulterated honey unless the honey was label as such. Their purpose for organizing was to press for laws against adulteration.6)The Baltimore Sun, March 10, 1898.

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Our 150-year-old, and going-strong tools of the trade

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This entry is post 4 of 24 in the ongoing series Landing Board beekeeping history posts

When I first trained for beekeeping and learned about the smoker, I thought: ‘Look at this quaint antique thing. Might as well get a butter churn while I am at it.’

Moses Quinby, of New York, invented the first modern smoker, one looking much like those we use today, in 1873. So our common present-day design is over 150 years old. (The Langstroth hive is even older, at about 150 years.)

Moses Quinby’s bellows smoker late 1870s. He did not patent it, and let anyone build their own versions1)Source: Lyman C. Root, Quinby’s new bee-keeping. The mysteries of bee-keeping explained. Combining the results of fifty years’ experience, with the latest discoveries and inventions, and presenting the most approved methods, forming a complete guide to successful bee-culture, New York: Orange Judd Company, 1879, p. 91.

Other intriguing smoking and “stupefying” devices are scattered through the long history of beekeeping. Designs like Quinby’s have dominated beekeeping, but over the past 200 years, smoker designers tried variations on the still-standard form.

This bellows and chamber smoker has the delighted named purpose to “stupefy bees”2)Louis Figuier, The Insect World: Being a Popular Account of the Orders of Insects; Together with a Description of the Habits and Economy of Some of the Most Interesting Species, New York: D. Appleton & Co. 1872.

While this elegant pipe looks fun, it was no doubt cumbersome and perhaps didn’t have one-handed operation as our bellows smokers do3)Phillips, Everett Franklin. Beekeeping: A Discussion of the Life of the Honeybee and of the Production of Honey. United Kingdom, Macmillan, 1915, p. 30.

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“Set no cabbages before them” (1781)

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This entry is post 5 of 24 in the ongoing series Landing Board beekeeping history posts

The nuances of beekeeping are part of the fun of doing it. Everything can matter to your success and the well-being of your bees.

A cabbage1)Public Domain Image

Here is an example of beekeeping advice from 1781. W. Dyer wrote, regarding honey bees:

Set no cabbages before them, for should they fall in it is seldom or ever they can come out again, though they can walk upon glass, they cannot upon a cabbage leaf, and generally in the heart of cabbages there is water, wherefore the bees falling therein may be lost.2)W. Dyer, The apiary laid open, or, an advantageous treatise on the construction and use of retro-coupling bee boxes, {a new invention} also, plain instructions for the management of bees in general, respecting their preservation from cold, heat, enemies and hunger. A plain description of the queen, drone, and common honeybees, Tewksbury, England: W. Dyer, 1781.

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How the honey bee got its sting (ancient story)

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This entry is post 6 of 24 in the ongoing series Landing Board beekeeping history posts
A bee visiting Jupiter, from a 1501 edition of Aesop’s fables1)Steihowel’s Aesop, illustrations, http://mythfolklore.net/aesopica/aesop1501/111.htm

An Aesop fable2)From the Townsend 1867 version of the Aesop fable  Three Hundred Aesop’s Fables. United Kingdom, George Routledge and Sons, 1867, p. 86. https://www.google.com/books/edition/Three_Hundred_Aesop_s_Fables/FokAAAAAMAAJ explains how the honey bee got her sting:

A bee from Mount Hymettus, the queen of the hive, ascended to Olympus to present Jupiter some honey fresh from her combs. Jupiter, delighted with the offering of honey, promised to give whatever she should ask. She therefore besought him, saying, “Give me, I pray thee, a sting, that if any mortal shall approach to take my honey, I may kill him.” Jupiter was much displeased, for he loved the race of man, but could not refuse the request because of his promise. He thus answered the Bee: “You shall have your request, but it will be at the peril of your own life. For if you use your sting, it shall remain in the wound you make, and then you will die from the loss of it.”

Aesop included a moral, which takes a decidedly anti-bee position:

Evil wishes, like chickens, come home to roost

References[+]

Notably elegant Victorian aspirations for housing bees (1860s-1880s)

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This entry is post 7 of 24 in the ongoing series Landing Board beekeeping history posts

In beekeeping, mad schemes, intricate new technologies, and fancy designs sometimes pop up to try to entice the hobbyist.

In recent times we have seen Flow Hives, and other multi-featured new material and format hive equipment.

But we’ve got nothing on the Victorians.

A Victorian English bee house. It’s not at all clear how many houses like this actually came into existence1)Henry Taylor, The Bee-Keeper’s Manual; or, The Honey Bee its Management and Preservation, London: Groombridge and Sons, 1880, seventh edition, frontispiece.
Another multi-hive enclosure, of simpler elegance2)Henry Taylor, The Bee-Keeper’s Manual; or, The Honey Bee its Management and Preservation, London: Groombridge and Sons, 1880, seventh edition, p. 150.
Nutt’s Collateral Hive, No. 1. Not only bee houses, but bee hives came with aesthetic flourishes and complex fittings3)Alfred Neighbour, The Apiary; Or, Bees, Bee-hives, and Bee Culture Being a Familiar Account of the Habits of Bees, and the Most Improved Methods of Management, with Full Directions, Adapted for the Cottager, Farmer, Or Scientific Apiarian, London: Kent & Co., 1865, p. 17.

Key/explanation for Nutt’s Collateral Hive: Three boxes (C, A, and C) sit side-by-side. An octagonal box B is on top, enclosing a bell glass (a glass vessel for the bees to build and fill comb with honey).

The bees can move laterally amongst C, A, and C through multiple openings. Those openings can be closed. There are two large windows in each of the end boxes, and a smaller one in the center box. The center window includes a thermometer, for monitoring hive temperature.

D and D are ventilators. Zinc tubes project down below the middle for insertion of thermometers for further hive activity analysis. A is the central “stock” box, which receives a swarm. E and E are additional ventilation openings. F is a feeding drawer.

To me beautiful and elegant bee gear is a nice idea, but unlikely to work. Bees and the weather, among other things, take control of the equipment, and it takes on a ‘hard work’ appearance. It cannot have been easy to keep those Victorian bee palaces tidy.

References[+]

Beekeeping Supplies at (some of) your nearest Sears Roebuck (1960)

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This entry is post 8 of 24 in the ongoing series Landing Board beekeeping history posts

Sixty-some years ago, there were locations of Sears, Roebuck & Co. that carried beekeeping supplies.

I live eight tenths of a mile from where Sears was on Wisconsin Avenue in Tenleytown, Northwest Washington, DC. Wouldn’t it be nice to nip up there, park on the roof, and grab a few more supers or a new smoker? And you can’t beat the 1960 prices (see below).

You could also, via the Sears catalog, order package bees and queens through the mail.

Evening Star (Washington, DC), April 13, 1960

Sears ran similar ads during the mid 1950s. I did not search out how many years they offered gear. They likely still carried it when I went to get jeans and t shirts there as a kid, with my Mom. But I wasn’t even aware of beekeeping then. 

Bugonia: the ancient belief that honey bees emerge from putrefying carcasses (ancient times)

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This entry is post 9 of 24 in the ongoing series Landing Board beekeeping history posts

Dead cow on your back 40? Maybe leave it out there.

In the late 1600s, n his treatise on beekeeping, John Worlidge uncritically wrote that it was well known that bees, at least sometimes, come from the putrefaction of animal carcasses. In fact, other insects, not just honey bees, were also thought to emerge from rotting carcasses.

This persisting belief had ancient roots. The concept is called bugonia.

John Worlidge wrote:

That bees are insects, and that the most, if not all, of insects are sometimes engendered by putrefaction, is not by any denied; bees many times being engendered in the corrupted carcasses of beasts.1)John Worlidge, Apiarium: or, a discourse of bees … England: Thomas Dring, 1676.

That this idea persisted into the late 1600s is surprising, since people had been observing bees closely and writing treatises which even today still hold plenty of accurate and useful insights on bees.

The truth of this is that folks back then were seeing flies, hatched of maggots from eggs laid in rotting carcasses. And the idea of putrefaction as a source for honey bees, along with other insects, goes back to ancient times. Aristaeus was the Greek god of beekeeping, mead making, and honey production (along with cheesemaking and shepherds). I’ll share more on Aristaeus and bugonia in a future post.

Aristaeus procuring bees via bugonia. Note that there are mermaids observing.2)Virgil’s Georgics Lyon, France: 1517

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Swarm prevention in the past (19th Century beekeeping)

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This entry is post 10 of 24 in the ongoing series Landing Board beekeeping history posts

It is swarm season, probably in most of the Northern temperate climate, as I write this.

Ever-tinkering and experimenting beekeepers have long tried to find ways to prevent, slow, and divert honey bee swarms. Nineteenth century approaches included leading the exiting swarm directly into another set of equipment.

The device below claimed to do this via a perforated metal tunnel:

When once in place, the bee-master can go about his business, whether fifty miles away or near the apiary; and he can rest assured that, should the bees swarm during his absence, they will be self-hived, and all settled to work upon his return.1)Henry Alley, “Novel Self-Hiving Arrangement for Bees,” American Bee Journal, Vol. XXVI, No. 2, January 11, 1890.

A swarm re-directing device from 18902)Henry Alley, “Novel Self-Hiving Arrangement for Bees,” American Bee Journal, Vol. XXVI, No. 2, January 11, 1890.

Other devices aimed to catch and contain the swarm in the apiary, to then make it easy to put the bees and their queen into another set of equipment.

A correspondent wrote to Gleanings in Bee Culture in 1904 to show his home-made device to stop swarms:

Another swarm-catching device from the early 1900s3)Letter to the editor from J. M. Mack, San Diego, California, Gleanings in Bee Culture, July 15, 1904, p. 706.

As ever, dealing with swarms is the plight of the beekeeper. Newfangled approaches will likely continue to emerge as we go.

References[+]

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