With no judgment on how you and yours may be planning to spend this Independence Day, I share the following, a story of drunken bees and Prohibition.
If bees gather juices from over-ripe fruit or the fermenting mash of moonshiners, they may fly impaired.
A few times during Prohibition, this led revenuers straight to the moonshiners’ stills. Recognizing this, in 1930, a police department in Wichita, Kansas, added a bee colony to its law enforcement equipment. The stories here are too brief to say whether the detectives mastered some reverse form of beelining to find the stills.
The Times-Union (Rochester, NY), May 23, 1930.
Newspapers had fun with this tale, and it was reported as far away as Tasmania, Australia (where there was no prohibition).
The Advocate (Burnie, Tasmania, Australia), August 16, 1930
The Industrial Revolution eventually reached beekeeping. In the 19th century, as agriculture and production mechanized, and saw the arrival of all sorts of innovations, so did beekeeping.
It was not just Reverend Langstroth’s patented hive – which beekeepers still use – that emerged. And as with today’s trade in beekeeping innovations, some had merit, perhaps many did not. The critic quoted below made perhaps wise points about the phenomenon in general, whether or not he was right about the specific example he pilloried, Bevan’s Cross Bar Hive.
Thomas Miner wrote in 1849:
During the last twenty years, many new and useless bee-hives have been palmed off on the ignorant and too confiding bee-keepers of our country. Men who have had sufficient brains to devise some new plan and style of hive that did not before exist — who never understood a single principle of the management of bees correctly, have, by dint of unblushing falsehood and impudence, bled the bee-keeping community pretty freely. There seems to be a greater cloud of darkness hanging over the management of bees, than over any other branch of rural economy.1)Thomas B. Miner, The American bee keeper’s manual: being a practical treatise on the history and domestic economy of the honey-bee, embracing a full illustration of the whole subject, with the most approved methods of managing this insect through every branch of its culture, the result of many years’ experience, New York: C. M. Saxton, 1849, p. 117.
One of many inventions Miner denounced: Bevan’s cross bar design of which he wrote: “This is all very well, provided the bees will follow these bars; but they will not.”2)Thomas B. Miner, The American bee keeper’s manual : being a practical treatise on the history and domestic economy of the honey-bee, embracing a full illustration of the whole subject, with the most approved methods of managing this insect through every branch of its culture, the result of many years’ experience, New York: C. M. Saxton, 1849, p. 138.
Thomas Miner did not like Thomas Bevan’s top bars, and suggested not using such.
Every new-fangled ”patent” hive that is brought along, is represented as the ne plus ultra of improvement, and the very acme of perfection ; and the lesson that is so glibly recited by their vendors, of the wonderful and astonishing merits of their inventions, often causes one to become duped again and again, until he gives up in despair, and returns to his first love — the simple box and brimstone management of ages past. 3)Source: Thomas B. Miner, The American bee keeper’s manual : being a practical treatise on the history and domestic economy of the honey-bee, embracing a full illustration of the whole subject, with the most approved methods of managing this insect through every branch of its culture, the result of many years’ experience, New York: C. M. Saxton, 1849, pp. 117-8.
His view on the proliferation of beekeeping and hive gizmos, gadgets and purported improvements:
But a wise Providence has so ordered, that the bee requires merely the simplest tenement. Screens, ventilators, valves, &c., are but hindrances to their natural prosperity, and the thousand and one complicated inventions of the day are but so many deceptive tricks of the astute and keen, to filch our pockets of a few spare dollars.
Thomas B. Miner, The American bee keeper’s manual: being a practical treatise on the history and domestic economy of the honey-bee, embracing a full illustration of the whole subject, with the most approved methods of managing this insect through every branch of its culture, the result of many years’ experience, New York: C. M. Saxton, 1849, p. 117.
Thomas B. Miner, The American bee keeper’s manual : being a practical treatise on the history and domestic economy of the honey-bee, embracing a full illustration of the whole subject, with the most approved methods of managing this insect through every branch of its culture, the result of many years’ experience, New York: C. M. Saxton, 1849, p. 138.
Source: Thomas B. Miner, The American bee keeper’s manual : being a practical treatise on the history and domestic economy of the honey-bee, embracing a full illustration of the whole subject, with the most approved methods of managing this insect through every branch of its culture, the result of many years’ experience, New York: C. M. Saxton, 1849, pp. 117-8.
Maryland beekeeper and author Frank Linton is a strong advocate for beekeepers having an observation hive, so they can learn about bees and become better at beekeeping. His book on the subject is a great source for more on that.1)https://www.amazon.com/Observation-Hive-Handbook-Studying-Honey/dp/1501707264
Frank Linton, Bethesda, MD, EAS Master Beekeeper and authorJoseph Warder from his 1716 book
Frank and Joseph Warder (1655-1724) would find much to agree on. Warder, like Frank, urged beekeepers to watch and wonder at what bees do.
Warder wrote in 1716:
When-ever there comes a warm rainy Day, that they are totally hindered from going out to gather Food, these curious Contrivers set apart that time for the Solemnizing the Funerals of the Dead; and let any who are curious but observe it, and they shall hear them very busy within the Hive, and see them dragging out their white dead young Bees, those that have them in boxes with glass Windows, may with more Satisfaction gratify their Curiousity.2)Joseph Warder, The true amazons: or, the monarchy of bees: being a new discovery and improvement of those wonderful creatures, London, J. Pemberton and W. Taylor, 1716.
A hive from the mid 1800s. It was common advice to construct hives with glass windows for observation through the 18th and 19th centuries3)Thomas B. Miner, The American bee keeper’s manual : being a practical treatise on the history and domestic economy of the honey-bee, embracing a full illustration of the whole subject, with the most approved methods of managing this insect through every branch of its culture, the result of many years’ experience, New York: C. M. Saxton, 1849, p. 153.
It’s in fact common in the old beekeeping literature to see advocates for observation hives, often in suggestions in hive designs to include a glass window to see into the hive. We should do more of this today. There is much still to learn.
Joseph Warder, The true amazons: or, the monarchy of bees: being a new discovery and improvement of those wonderful creatures, London, J. Pemberton and W. Taylor, 1716.
Thomas B. Miner, The American bee keeper’s manual : being a practical treatise on the history and domestic economy of the honey-bee, embracing a full illustration of the whole subject, with the most approved methods of managing this insect through every branch of its culture, the result of many years’ experience, New York: C. M. Saxton, 1849, p. 153.
As swarm season in the Northern hemisphere continues, it seems timely to look in on tanging.
Tanging means making loud noises to induce a honey bee swarm to return or settle on a bush or similar for recovery. If there’s any efficacy of doing this, it may be in that sometimes the bees think there is a thunder storm arriving and want to return to the hive because of that.
The practice or belief is ancient. Pliny the Elder (Roman naturalist and military general of the first century CE) wrote:
BEES JOY in the clapping of hands, and ringing of brasen basons: at the sound thereof they will assemble and come together.1)Philemon Holland, translator (1601): C. Plinius Secundus The Historie of the World. Book XI. (Pages 310-356)
A woman tanging (banging a pot to get her bees to return or settle)2)William Hetherington Harris, The Honey-bee: Its Nature, Homes and Products, London: The Religious Tract Society, 1884, , p. 174.
It’s not clear if too many people still practice tanging, but modern beekeepers might do so, but not tell anyone.
Will your bees heed a no trespassing sign?1)By Rutebega – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24513617
A Canadian court, in 1887, enjoined a beekeeper from operating an apiary in a village because the bees were considered a nuisance. An editorial commented:
“it is not known if bees injure crops by taking the honey from the blossoms, but some farmers have claimed that they do. It cannot be alleged with reason and truth that farm crops are usefully served by bees in the way of fertilizing the blossoms, although they may do something in the way of spreading the pollen from plant to plant. The air is filled with pollen of prevailing plants, such as farm crops, at their flowering season, and there are many plants, as corn, which is never or hardly ever visited by the bees. hence beekeepers have no reason to claim that when their bees are supplied by a neighbor’s crops they pay their way by doing useful work in producing seed. One large beekeeper pays the neighboring farmers a yearly rent for the pasturage of his bees, and this seems just, for otherwise the beekeepers reap where they have not sown and gather where they have not strewn and make their money form other men’s labors. This is a manifest injustice.”2)The National Tribune, March 31, 1887, p. 7.
The Maryland Supreme Court took this up too:
The general term of the Supreme Court in the central part of this State [Maryland] has decided that it is trespass for honey bees to go upon lands not belonging to their owner. This may be good law, but the wonder is how this law is to be carried out. It perhaps will offer a new field for the rubber stamp men to affix the owner’s initials to the bees’ feet, or Mr. Edison might invent some electric appliance by which trespassing bees could be made to leave their mark, or nature, perhaps would be sufficient if the bees would notify the owner of the land where the trespass is committed by presenting their business end as a sort of card of identification, or the owners of the bees might brand them. Otherwise we cannot see how this decision will help those who are trespassed upon.” 3)The News (Frederick, Maryland), August 27, 1889, p 2.
We face a lot of issues today as beekeepers, but let’s hope most people don’t have this misunderstanding.
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.
