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
