Beekeeping then and now
Introduction
To better understand the history of bees and beekeeping it helps to have an understanding of the workings of a honey bee colony so I propose to spend a few brief minutes on how and why bees do what they do.
Basics of a honey bee (Apis Meleflora) colony
Approximate times, as will vary with type of bee, temperatures etc.
Workers - 21 days total.
Egg hatch in 3 days, unsealed larvae 5 days, sealed larvae 5 days,
takes another 8 days to pupate.
Queen - 16 days total
Egg hatch in 3 days, unsealed larvae 5 days, sealed larvae 4 days,
takes another 4 days to pupate.
Drone - 24 days total
Egg hatch in 3 days, unsealed larvae 6 days, sealed larvae 7 days,
takes another 8 days to pupate.
How it all started
It is believe that flowering plants and insects appeared during the same period of evolution about 100 million years ago.
All honey storing insects evolved from the same line, most common are honey bees but there are a few types of wasp and ants that also produce and store honey.
The first social honey storing insects evolved in the Cretaceous period and honey bees in the Tertiary period. Fossil remains have been identified from this period some 50 million years ago.
All these insects started their evolution in warm climates where all year round pollen and nectar were available and they would have been solitary bees, by that I mean that they would have lived as individuals and only met for mating or lived as small family units similar to bumble bees do today.
As the worlds climate dramatically changed during the various ice ages the areas of the world populated by insects followed these changes and the need to survive over periods when food was unavailable drove them to store food, in essence the bees that stored more food were less likely to starve to death in the cold of winter or dry summers, this ploy worked so well that honey bees can be found in very diverse climates almost all over the world, I have seen bee hives in Norway where they have to survive eight or nine months of sub zero winter conditions and inversely in California where most of the vegetation, to conserve moisture, is dormant in the summer and only flower in the wet season.
This food was stored in two forms, sugars for energy and pollen for carbohydrates, pollen if stored dry keeps very well but nectar will begin to ferment as the natural yeasts begin to multiply. The bees evolved a method of evaporating the water from the nectar until the solution is a saturated sugar solution which is basically a pure preservative and hence will keep almost indefinably.
To allow food to be stored in useful quantities the family size had to increase and at some point in the evolutionary path specialisation of tasks proved to be a winner to such an extent the individuals in a hive can no longer survive and reproduce outside the colony.
The workers are all female but with their hormones suppressed they live a life of toil uninterrupted by having to breed they are the brains of the outfit, between them they make all the decisions including when to replace the queen, workers will only live for about six weeks in the summer when they are working hard but the ones that are born in the autumn will over winter and start the colony off in the spring.
The queen who is the only other female does nothing apart from mate once, but with more than one drone, at the beginning of her life and lay eggs, up to five thousand a day in the spring she will live for up to three years.
The males or drones are few and far between as they have only one reason for existence, they do no work only eat and laze about waiting for the opportunity to mate with a fertile queen, this happens on the wing high in the sky and then the drone dies in the process. A colony will produce small numbers of drones in the spring and depending on whether it has a laying queen will increase or decrease the number laid, in the autumn the drones are either chucked outside or hunted down and killed as the colony cannot afford to feed useless passengers over the winter.
How does a queen lay different types of eggs?
She can only lay fertile and non fertile eggs. Fertile eggs become females and if fed large quantities of a rich food called royal jelly during its larval stage will develop into a queen. If fed the normal diet it will develop into a worker.
Non fertile eggs become drones, just to complicate matters they all have different cells sizes and types.
Planning for survival
The queen will begin to start laying eggs early in the year around the shortest day so that by the time the first plants and flowers are coming into blossom in the spring the colony has a workforce capable of cashing in on this harvest, the colony population will continues to climb until late spring or early summer (up to 30,000) and then the queen will slow down and allow the colony size to shrink back to its winter numbers. It’s a balancing game, not enough workers at the right time and a poor harvest is collected, too many bees in the winter and running out of food is a serious risk so the trick is to have a huge keen workforce ready at just the right time, but we live in England and the unpredictability of the seasons does cause problems. Most winter losses occur in March and April when the weather is poor and the bees cannot forage, this can sometimes be avoided by feeding light weight hives with sugar syrup.
Wax
As soon as the storing of honey started the storage became a problem, bees cleverly used the brood chambers that were not in use to store pollen, nectar and eventually honey, it’s a very neat solution as the cells emptied by the over wintering bees are ready for the spring rush of egg laying and inversely at the end of the season as the egg holding requirements drops the food storing requirement increases. The cells are made of wax that is produced by special glands of young worker bees’ legs between 6 and 15 days old, this is then manipulated by special parts of the bees front legs and formed into cells.
Defence
During the whole of the evolutionary development other creatures would have robbed these valuable stores, which is why bees developed a nasty sting as a form of defence and the distinctive colouration and noise as a warning to other creatures, interestingly quite a few other insects copy the colouration and shape to protect themselves. It is interesting if we do a quick survey of the people here most are naturally afraid of bees even though they may never have been stung or if they have if caused them no long term harm, I put this down to our distant ancestors being frequently stung whilst robbing colonies.
This slow evolution carried on for millions of years leaving dinosaurs behind and into the age of mammals about 20 Million years ago, through various ice ages and eventually Homo Sapiens appeared on the scene.
Earliest records of beekeeping
The earliest record so far of mans involvement are some cave painting found in Spain that date back some eight thousand years.
My view is that man the hunter probably noticed bears or some other creature actively looking for wild bees nests and attacking them for the rich rewards hidden inside, at the time mankind were nomads following their prey and probably collected honey when they could, this involved destroying the hive and this is possibly when they discovered that smoke has a calming effect on bees.
One theory I have come across is that honey gathering is possibly one of the earliest forms of hunting and would have predated man the animal hunter because to hunt large animals needs the help of dogs, as depicted in some cave paintings, but to keep dogs would have required to living at ground level and it is probable that man spent the nights in trees to be out of reach of predators.
Why does smoke calm bees?
I believe that the bees in the wild would have been very wary of forest fires and the first smell of smoke they all filled their stomachs with as much food as possible so they were prepared to vacate the colony if they had to, a simple survival trait, the bees are concentrating on whether to vacate the hive and what happens after a large meal? Most of us become soporific.
As the nomadic hunter gatherer began to tame and domesticate livestock the need to roam would have diminished, the temporary shelters would have become more substantial and instead of the chance encounter with a wild bee colony they would probably have made a mental note of the locations within their hunting grounds where colonies where and where they most often swarmed to, often they would find that a wild creature had robbed out the hive or even a member of another tribe so if the colony was in a dead fallen tree trunk they probably dragged it to a place where it was safe from attack and possibly nearer the homestead this would have been the first step from honey gathering to beekeeping.
Some parts of Africa still keep bees in hollow logs and hoist them up into the tree to keep them safe from robbing by ground dwelling creatures and I recall reading something about in Canada using metal drums suspended between trees because it is the only was to keep them out of reach of the local bears.
Old Types of Hive
The type of container used will have varied with what was available, the Egyptians and early Greeks used earthenware pots laid on their side, as mentioned hollow loge were easily available in forested areas and straw baskets upside down came into use in what was to become Europe, skeps as they are called can be made out of just about anything, I guess it would have been made of the same material that cheap buildings were thatched with.
See picture of 3000 year old hive found in what is now Israel, it is made of straw and unbaked clay, has a hole in one end for the bees and a lid on the other end to allow access for the beekeeper
The advantages with Skeps are they are light weight therefore easy to move, nice and warm in winter, the bees like the rough interior because it has plenty of handholds, the down side is they are not very waterproof and will eventually rot away if left damp, I have see in France alcoves in old walls that were formed to house a skep so it was out of the weather and high enough to be out of reach from wild animals.
This one I made myself, it took about seventeen hours to make which seems a lot of input for not much result but a proper skep maker will make one in a day and if kept dry will last a lifetime, this one is about ten years old and I use it to house swarms when I am collecting them until I can house them in a wooden hive.
More modern hives I will cover a bit later.
Bee keeping records
The Greeks and the Egyptians were possibly the earliest race to record the working of a bee colony unfortunately the educated writers of the day were unlikely to be hands-on bee keepers and they probably obtained their information from uneducated and probably very superstious and possibly the bee keepers were guarding the secrets of their trade so the great philosophers and writers of their day mostly recorded superstitions often distorted by their own view on life, for example it had been noticed that all colonies had one particularly large bee this of course had to be the “king” as women had little standing in their own society so it never entered their heads the this large bee could be a female.
During medieval times in Europe the church was the main source of learning and record keeping, unfortunately the early Greek and roman writings were considered to be undisputed and many of the archaic ideas were regurgitated often with embellishments until the beginning of the industrial revolution.
Why were monasteries often associated with strong alcoholic beverages?
I believe that the practice of illuminating places of worship using candles that didn’t smoke created a demand for beeswax that would have been a serious financial drain on the Church’s resources so the Monks began keeping their own bees, some the honey would have been used in the kitchens but all the dross and cappings would have been surplus, until some enterprising monks probably started making mead for medicinal purposes but later on branched out into beer and mead making and sometimes distilling the mead.
Uses for beeswax
Most people immediately think of candles and this was undoubtedly it’s prime use before oil lamps, this is reflected in its price for example in the 16th Century beeswax sold for the huge sum of 12d per pound whereas honey sold for 1.5d per pound. It is believed that beeswax was also used by Bronze and Iron Age man to make the formers for casting metal implements (known as the lost wax method), how do we know this? Bronze arrow heads have been found with fingerprints clearly showing on the surface of the metal and the only way they could have got there is for a pattern to be made in some soft material that is then surrounded in clay and when the clay is dry the pattern is melted leaving a cavity which is then filled with molten metal, any marks on the original pattern would have been transferred on to clay mould and then onto the finished item, beeswax was probably the only material available at the time that had the correct properties to do this.
The practice of covering wooden tablets with wax and using it as note pads was probably fairly common and certainly by Romans times.
Some of it’s other uses spring to mind such as use as a waterproofing agent on fabrics, as a lubricant, as a seal on bottles and jars, furniture polish, pattern making for locks, was used to waterproof and reduce wear on bowstrings, in soap manufacture, protective coating on cheese, moustache wax, in the middle ages it was sufficiently valuable to be used as a form of currency.
Uses for propolis or Bee Glue
Propolis is a mixture of tree resins gathered by the bees and it is used as glue or cement to fill cracks and holes in the hive some colonies produce lots of propolis which is a bit of a pain to the beekeeper as it makes inspecting the hive more difficult, others produce relatively little, you will see it on the hive parts as a deep red substance, when cold it is quite hard and can be brittle, when warm it becomes malleable and when hot becomes fluid.
Its earliest known use was used to strengthen the binding holding stone arrow and spear tips to wooden shafts. Later on when documents and envelopes were sealed with “wax”, I am sure it was fact propolis.
It also has medicinal uses and can be bought in most health food shops, when I am scraping the frames clean in winter it gives off a fabulous almost intoxicating smell.
Uses for honey
Before the discovery and introduction of refined sugars made from beet or cane, honey would have been the only sweetener available so its main uses would have been as a food in its own right or as a sweetener to make other foods palatable.
Mead and beer making has been practiced all over the world from earliest times, I am sure stone age man eased his aches and pains and made his hard bed seem comfortable on many an occasion.
Honey has strong antiseptic properties and is still used to this day for cuts and burns.
Collecting the sweet harvest
Hunter Gatherers
The earliest hunter gatherers probably scavenged what was left after other predators had attacked the colonies, this would have slowly changed to the hunter locating a colony and collecting the honey comb, a risky business that would have either totally destroyed the colony or left it in a poor state, the honey comb would have had a mixture of brood in various stages of development, sealed honey and freshly collected nectar, they probably either ate it as it was brood and all, highly nutritional but today most people would baulk at eating it, this would not have kept for more than a few days until the brood died and started decomposing!
They probably wrapped themselves in skins or woven fabrics to protect themselves from the bees, smoking the bees was certainly used as it is depicted in early cave paintings.
Medieval beekeepers
By the time we get to the medieval period the methods had evolved into killing all the bees by digging a small pit under the hive, usually a straw skep and lighting a “sulphur candle” this was a mixture of sulphur and a slow burning medium that gave off sulphur dioxide which in the confined space of a hive would have killed all the bees within a quarter of an hour, not a pleasant thought, other methods involved drowning the bees but this reduced the value on the honey so was not recommended if top grade honey was required.
The honeycomb was then cut out and carefully divided up into capped comb without brood, comb with brood, uncapped comb with honey and just comb, this would have been done some distance from the hives and no doubt with lots of angry bees trying to take back their honey and possibly their revenge.
Protection was often a sort of coat with a hood and wickerwork screen to keep the bees out of your face and leather gloves.
Industrial revolution
The industrial revolution made possible accurate wooden boxes and wooden frames and clear glass combined with a change in the mindset that made many people question the traditional views and this led to lots of experimentation and the development of a very different system of beekeeping.
In 1851 an American priest, the Rev Lorenzo Langstroth discovered a thing that became known as “bee space” that is if a gap is left in the hive more than about one quarter of an inch wide the bees will fill it with comb and either store food in it or the queen will lay eggs. If the gap is much less the bees will block it up with propolis (their equivalent of glue) but if the gap is carefully designed to be “bee size they keep it clear.
This doesn’t sound too earth shattering but constructing a hive with removable wooden frames will only work if the frames can be removed without destroying large parts of the colony.
Having a hive that could be examined with fairly minimal disruption allowed beekeepers to study the internal workings of hives in minute detail and out went most of the old superstitions and in came science and logic. Well almost.
I am sure I read somewhere that Langstroth applied for and obtained a patent on this which would probably explain why his design was the universally accepted standard throughout much of the developed world upon which many beehives were designed except of course England where we use predominantly three types, the WBC designed by the Rev William Braughton Carr in 1890 , the National was designed in the 1930’s and I have been unable to discover by whom so I assume it was a committee from the BBKA and the Smith hive predominantly used in Scotland.
This all led to the realisation that the honey comb could be removed without harming the bees so a fundamental change happened, the bees were suddenly carefully over wintered and nurtured and for example in 20 odd years beekeeping I have only intentionally killed one colony and that was because they were lethal and someone was going to get killed possibly me or one of my family.
The other, in my mind, great invention was the queen excluder, this is a metal grill that has slots in it just big enough so the workers can pass through but the queen is prevented thus one can keep all the brood and larval activity in one part of the hive thus making the harvesting of honey so much easier and less destructive to the colony.
See pictures of Victorian hives, very pretty but possibly not very practical as some appear to have different size frames depending how near the centre of the brood box on is and are therefore not interchangeable.
The Modern Hive
As mentioned earlier the WBC hive which is the “traditional” white painted hive seen on pictures and labels, this is the type I use, it has some advantages such as the brood box and supers are smaller hence lighter, because it is twin walled it is more weather proof and also suffers less from woodpecker attack. It also has disadvantages as it is slower to inspect as it has more bits to dismantle and is less suitable to transport to the crop.
Commercial hives such as National, Smith and Langstroth vary in size and weight but are all heavier than WBC’s, are cheaper to manufacture, easier to stack on a lorry, quicker to inspect and more prone to be affected by inclemental weather the frame design also varied with different length lugs which affect the way they are handled.
There is always lots of hot debate between beekeepers as to the best hives and different hives suite different people and different applications, we recently were invited to inspect some hives belonging to one of our members who learnt his beekeeping skills in Germany and had brought the equipment with him, the brood box and supers were identical hence interchangeable which sounds a really good idea but unfortunately when a super is full of honey and ready to extract it weighs more than fifty pounds, far more than I can pick up.
The Very Modern Hive
Plastics have been entering the world of beekeeping for some years and one can now buy polystyrene hives which are very light (don’t locate them in windy areas) and many of the hive parts are also manufactured in plastic which are probably better from a contamination point of view as they will be easier to clean.
From a eco-friendly point of view eg their C0² production during manufacture compared with wooden hives is not good.
Honey Houses
These come in all sorts of size and shape and tend to be used in colder climates where sheltering the hives from snow, protection against wild animals and the added benefit of additional warmth is beneficial. I have seen one in Switzerland dating from the 1870,s where the entrances are all painted different colours to help the bees know which entrance is theirs and access to the brood chamber and honey store is from inside the house, I can imaging the luxury of working in the dry, with all your equipment at hand even with a stool to sit on while you examine your bees. Only a few obvious drawbacks: difficult to move to another location, and jolly expensive.
As mentioned earlier the WBC hive which is the “traditional” white painted hive seen on pictures and labels, this is the type I use, it has some advantages such as the brood box and supers are smaller hence lighter, because it is twin walled it is more weather proof and also suffers less from woodpecker attack. It also has disadvantages as it is slower to inspect as it has more bits to dismantle and is less suitable to transport to the crop.
Commercial hives such as National, Smith and Langstroth vary in size and weight but are all heavier than WBC’s, are cheaper to manufacture, easier to stack on a lorry, quicker to inspect and more prone to be affected by inclemental weather the frame design also varied with different length lugs which affect the way they are handled.
There is always lots of hot debate between beekeepers as to the best hives and different hives suite different people and different applications, we recently were invited to inspect some hives belonging to one of our members who learnt his beekeeping skills in Germany and had brought the equipment with him, the brood box and supers were identical hence interchangeable which sounds a really good idea but unfortunately when a super is full of honey and ready to extract it weighs more than fifty pounds, far more than I can pick up.
The Very Modern Hive
Plastics have been entering the world of beekeeping for some years and one can now buy polystyrene hives which are very light (don’t locate them in windy areas) and many of the hive parts are also manufactured in plastic which are probably better from a contamination point of view as they will be easier to clean.
From a eco-
Honey Houses
These come in all sorts of size and shape and tend to be used in colder climates where sheltering the hives from snow, protection against wild animals and the added benefit of additional warmth is beneficial. I have seen one in Switzerland dating from the 1870,s where the entrances are all painted different colours to help the bees know which entrance is theirs and access to the brood chamber and honey store is from inside the house, I can imaging the luxury of working in the dry, with all your equipment at hand even with a stool to sit on while you examine your bees. Only a few obvious drawbacks: difficult to move to another location, and jolly expensive.
Foundation
To encourage bees to build nice neat honeycomb in the wooden frames a sheet of wax is inserted upon which is impressed a honeycomb pattern, the bees mostly follow this.
Bee size
Honey Bees vary considerably in size, most of mine were always very small and I assumed that as they were local “hedgerow” bees and that was their genetic size, when I visited other local beekeepers some of their bees were considerably larger perhaps twice the size! Then someone told me that the Victorians in an attempt to increase the efficiency and hence honey yield had enlarged the pattern on the foundation so that the bees built bigger cells and hence more space for the larvae to grow and hey presto bigger bees.
The bees don’t quite clean the brood cells back to the original size they apply another layer of wax polish and with repeated use the cells get smaller and if like me you were reusing some very old brood frames the result is small bees.
Honey Bees vary considerably in size, most of mine were always very small and I assumed that as they were local “hedgerow” bees and that was their genetic size, when I visited other local beekeepers some of their bees were considerably larger perhaps twice the size! Then someone told me that the Victorians in an attempt to increase the efficiency and hence honey yield had enlarged the pattern on the foundation so that the bees built bigger cells and hence more space for the larvae to grow and hey presto bigger bees.
The bees don’t quite clean the brood cells back to the original size they apply another layer of wax polish and with repeated use the cells get smaller and if like me you were reusing some very old brood frames the result is small bees.
Extracting honey
Early methods involved crushing the comb to force out the honey and leave the wax behind probably by hand and later in presses similar to fruit presses. I have an old book the details this and it seems incredibly complicated as they were separating it into four or five different qualities of wax, church candle being the best quality down to the rubbish you gave back to the bees to scavenge the remains of honey from.
With the introduction of hives with frames the honey could be uncapped with a long knife and left to drain into a bucket which meant that the frame of empty comb could be replaced and the bees reuse it, the manufacture of wax is very energy and time consuming for the bees and they will mostly reuse comb quite happily.
The centrifugal extractor or spinner was invented a hundred years ago or so and vastly improved the amount each frame will yield, all early models were hand driven wear as nowadays larger machines are powered by electric motors.
Under the centrifuge is a storage tank with a drain valve for removing the honey.
The extractor I used until a couple of years ago was probably pre-war and held four frames at a time, it eventually suffered from metal fatigue and I got fed up with repairing it, I now use a stainless steel unit that holds three frames which is a bit laborious.
Commercial enterprises use huge automatic spinners that hold large numbers of frames. I have seen one at the annual bee conference that held sixty four frames.
Storage and bottling
I do as little as possible to the honey as I believe the more it is mucked about with affects it unique taste and texture, as it comes from the spinner I pass it through a double filter, the course mesh to remove any large bits, propolis and other debris, fine mesh to remove most of the fine wax flakes. It is then stored in drums weighing about 30lbs until it is required for bottling.
Some honey will set quickly so will require warming up gently so it can be decanted into the jars where it will reset others will remain runny for long periods but eventually most types of honey will crystallise.
Collecting different types of nectar
Bees gather nectar and pollen as efficiently as possible and their decision if a particular crop is worth collecting is based on many things, some of which we think we understand such as which sugars are present and in what proportions, water content, distance from the hive and abundance.
They will travel no more than about three miles from their hive.
The nectar brought back will vary with the season and obviously what the local farmer has planted, in this part of Essex we normally get lots of Oil Seed Rape early in the season (those yellow fields) which produced white set honey which incidentally is of no use to the bees in the winter as it sets solid and they cannot consume it.
Middle of the season is often a mixture of hedgerow flowers, garden flowers and field beans which produce a variety of amber coloured honeys, lime tree flowers are short lived but if the weather is warm the bees go mad for it.
Later in the season, borage (those blue fields) which produces a very pale almost clear honey that the bees also love and will work really hard at.
One occasionally gets some really odd looking stuff almost black, I had one analysed a few years ago and it turned out to be mostly the sweet sticky sap from pine trees, the bees will go for anything with a sugar content.
One of our members from Felsted used to produce huge quantities of clearish honey until the sugar beet factory closed down!
Keeping bees yourself
Almost anyone can become a beekeeper, they can be kept in a variety of places provided thought is given to flight paths and any neighbours, two hives is the minimum recommended, join your local Beekeepers Association as you will get help and advice and third party insurance.
Second hand equipment is fairly easy to find but decide on the type of hive that is good for you and stick to it as having incompatible frames and hive parts will make your life difficult, probably the only things you will have to buy new and will be happy to do so is your protective clothing e.g. bee suite and gloves.
It’s a hobby that you can spend as much or as little time within certain limits as you want, doesn’t need any wintertime outside work, will pay for itself if things go well.
A word of warning, a few years ago when I thought I had learned a reasonable amount about the habits of bees I assumed that when they did something unexpected it was them being difficult, but it eventually dawned on me that it was because I didn’t understand what was happening and I was groping around in the dark most of the time and the more I learnt the more I realised how little I knew.
It is all rather addictive.