Speaker 1: Happy Saturday. Since we got a little bit about beekeeping
Speaker 1: in this week's installment of Unearthed, we're revisiting our episode
Speaker 1: on the history of beekeeping today. This episode traces the
Speaker 1: history of beekeeping up through the development of the Langstroth
Speaker 1: hive in the nineteenth century. But to be clear, the
Speaker 1: beekeeping and bee hunting methods that we talk about in
Speaker 1: the earlier parts of the episode are still practiced today
Speaker 1: all around the world. This episode originally came out on
Speaker 1: May eleventh, twenty twenty. Enjoy Welcome to Stuff You Missed
Speaker 1: in History Class, a production of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Frye.
Speaker 1: I'm fond of bees, me too. Yeah, I don't know
Speaker 1: if I've mentioned that on the show before. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I spent way too much time, Yes, Dad ushering a
Speaker 1: bee out of my garage so I could close the door.
Speaker 1: So this is especially timely. Yeah, you know, continuing the
Speaker 1: theme of wanting to do some episodes that feel like
Speaker 1: they are not catastrophically upsetting because of the state of
Speaker 1: the world. I really like bees and beekeeping as you
Speaker 1: might think of it today. With square hives and the
Speaker 1: beekeeper in the white suit with a big veiled hat.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a relatively recent invention, but beekeeping has
Speaker 1: a practice has existed for thousands of years. Basically all
Speaker 1: over the world. Every continent except Antarctica has native bee
Speaker 1: species that store at least some honey in their nests,
Speaker 1: and almost without exception, people who have lived near these
Speaker 1: bees have developed methods to keep them and manage them,
Speaker 1: either in their nests out in the wild, or in
Speaker 1: hives that are made for that purpose. So this is
Speaker 1: really a global story. It's one that has lots of
Speaker 1: pieces that overlap and lots of different methods being practiced
Speaker 1: at the same time. So, for example, if you're listening
Speaker 1: to the episode and we're talking about methods of tracking
Speaker 1: wild bees that are about two thousand years old, and
Speaker 1: you're thinking, but wait, weren't people keeping bees in hives
Speaker 1: by that point. We will get to that part two. Also,
Speaker 1: we're using the past tense for a lot of this
Speaker 1: episode because we're talking about techniques and practices that started
Speaker 1: way in the past. But in a lot of cases,
Speaker 1: these same things, including hunting bees and keeping bees out
Speaker 1: in the wild, like they're all, they're still practice today.
Speaker 1: They did not go away. So most of humanity's beekeeping
Speaker 1: efforts have involved social bees that store honey in their nests.
Speaker 1: Today that tends to be one of various subspecies of
Speaker 1: the western or European honeybee or APIs melifera, but there
Speaker 1: are lots of other bees that also store honey, and
Speaker 1: they are part of beekeeping history too. The giant honeybee
Speaker 1: or APIs dorsata, is native to southern and Southeast Asia.
Speaker 1: Most tropical regions of the world have their own native
Speaker 1: species of stingless bees. That name is something of a misnomer.
Speaker 1: Most stingless bees do have stingers, but those stingers are
Speaker 1: smaller and they don't usually have structures for injecting venom.
Speaker 1: Other bees, including bumble bees, also store some honey, but
Speaker 1: in much smaller amounts, and there are also honey storing
Speaker 1: insects besides bees, including some species of wasps and ants.
Speaker 1: People have harvested and used the honey and other resources
Speaker 1: that all of these insects produce and store in their nests,
Speaker 1: and in some cases they've kept these insects in one
Speaker 1: way or another, But for the most part, today we
Speaker 1: are focusing on honeybees, giant honey bees, and stingless bees,
Speaker 1: which have historically made up just the vast majority of
Speaker 1: bee keeping efforts around the world. I'm thinking of the
Speaker 1: eddyizard line. If bees make honey, do earwigs make chutney?
Speaker 1: Bees have been on earth for longer than humans have.
Speaker 1: Fossil evidence shows that flowering plants existed at least least
Speaker 1: one hundred million years ago during their Cretaceous period, so
Speaker 1: did insects that fed from the pollen and nectar found
Speaker 1: in those flowers. The oldest fossilized bee honey is about
Speaker 1: fifty million years old. Of course, there is no written
Speaker 1: record of this, but based on the behavior of other primates,
Speaker 1: it is incredibly likely that our earliest ancestors found and
Speaker 1: raided these nests as soon as they realized that they
Speaker 1: were there. So yeah, it's it's not a far logical
Speaker 1: leap that basically as soon as hominids were like there
Speaker 1: is something sweet and delicious over there, that they would
Speaker 1: have figured out how a way to get at it,
Speaker 1: and then the brood, like the immature bees that are
Speaker 1: in the honeycomb, like they're a source of protein. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff you can get out of nests
Speaker 1: that people were clearly getting way back before recorded history.
Speaker 1: Our first documentation of humans interaction with bees goes back
Speaker 1: to rock and cave art from the Mesolithic period, and
Speaker 1: that period started about twenty thousand years ago. This artwork
Speaker 1: exists in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia, and it shows
Speaker 1: people in a variety of situations. The exact details vary
Speaker 1: based on what kind of bees lived in a particular
Speaker 1: area and what people did to hunt them and harvest
Speaker 1: their nests. For example, in places where bees nest in cavities,
Speaker 1: figures are shown on ladders next to holes surrounded by
Speaker 1: flying insects, while others in the scene are holding things
Speaker 1: like buckets or what may be smokers to pacify or
Speaker 1: drive away those insects. In places where giant honey bees
Speaker 1: nest out in the open, people are climbing ladders or
Speaker 1: scaling cliffs to get to the exposed combs. There's also
Speaker 1: a painting at the Chatakuk Archaeological site in what is
Speaker 1: now Turkey that dates back to about sixty six hundred
Speaker 1: BCE which appears to show honeycombs with immature bees inside
Speaker 1: the cells that suggests that the people who made the
Speaker 1: art have a lot of first hand familiarity with bees
Speaker 1: and their nests. There's also some Mesolithic cave art showing
Speaker 1: bee's importance to other animals. One rock painting in eastern
Speaker 1: Spain shows what appears to be an animal's paw reaching
Speaker 1: toward a hole that has flying insects around it, so
Speaker 1: that's most likely a bear trying to get it a
Speaker 1: nest of honey. And we have evidence of some of
Speaker 1: the things that people made using what they harvested from
Speaker 1: bees nests. For example, archaeologists have dated artifacts made using
Speaker 1: the lost wax process to about thirty five hundred BCE.
Speaker 1: These artifacts, which were made in the region around the
Speaker 1: Dead Sea, were made by creating a model out of
Speaker 1: beeswax and then making a cast of that model using
Speaker 1: sand or clay. The wax would burn away or be lost,
Speaker 1: which is where it gets its name when the mold
Speaker 1: was fired, and then molten metal would be poured into
Speaker 1: the space in the mold. Humanity's first honey and bee
Speaker 1: hunts were probably pretty opportunistic. People would happen upon a
Speaker 1: nest of bees somewhere and rate it, probably without a
Speaker 1: lot of protection from stings or, in the case of
Speaker 1: stingless bees, from things like bites or irritating substances that
Speaker 1: they carry on their legs. Early opportunistic bee hunts probably
Speaker 1: also didn't do a lot to protect the bee colony
Speaker 1: that was being rated. People would carry away everything that
Speaker 1: they could from the nest, and when the human population
Speaker 1: was pretty small and bee colonies were really abundant, there
Speaker 1: still would have been lots of unaffected colonies so that
Speaker 1: the bees themselves survived as a species. As soon as
Speaker 1: societies developed the concept of personal property and laws related
Speaker 1: to that property, there were also laws about who owned bees.
Speaker 1: These laws included things like the ownership of nests on
Speaker 1: a person's property, the ownership of swarms that hadn't yet
Speaker 1: found a new nesting site, how nests had to be
Speaker 1: marked to show who owned them, and punishments and restitution
Speaker 1: to be paid if someone harmed someone else's bees or nests.
Speaker 1: And of course, on a more general note, there are
Speaker 1: references to bees, bees, wax, and honey all over literature
Speaker 1: all over the world, going back to the earliest uses
Speaker 1: of written language. Over time, opportunistic bee hunting and just
Speaker 1: sort of taking advantage of bees that were already there
Speaker 1: evolved into a more intentional process, with people methodically looking
Speaker 1: for bees and their nests instead of basically harvesting nests
Speaker 1: as they happened to find them, and this essentially happened
Speaker 1: everywhere on Earth that had both people and honey storing bees,
Speaker 1: with the only exceptions being in places that developed religious
Speaker 1: prohibitions against harming insects or depriving them of their honey
Speaker 1: or their brood. The exact steps involved in hunting bees
Speaker 1: depended on what kind of bees lived in a particular area,
Speaker 1: but in general, people started by watching for bees, either
Speaker 1: at water sources or near flowers. In about the year
Speaker 1: fifty CE, Roman writer Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella described it
Speaker 1: this way quote, First we must try to discover how
Speaker 1: far away they are, and for this purpose liquid red
Speaker 1: ochre must be prepared. Then, after touching the backs of
Speaker 1: the bees with stocks smeared with this liquid, as they
Speaker 1: are drinking at the spring waiting in the same place,
Speaker 1: you will be able to more easily recognize the bees
Speaker 1: when they return. If they are not slow in returning,
Speaker 1: you know that they dwell in the neighborhood. But if
Speaker 1: they are late In doing so, you will calculate the
Speaker 1: distance by the period of their delay. So bees obviously
Speaker 1: are small they move fast, so it can be hard
Speaker 1: to track a bee, even for an experienced bee hunter.
Speaker 1: So people also figured out ways to make it easier
Speaker 1: to follow a bee back to the nest. In some cultures,
Speaker 1: people have physically attached something to the bees to make
Speaker 1: them more visible, like a very fine thread, or a
Speaker 1: piece of grass or a little bit of paper. This
Speaker 1: idea is so charming to me, but also I'm like, man,
Speaker 1: how challenging it must be to just attack something to
Speaker 1: a bee while it's drinking some water. This would both
Speaker 1: make the bee easier to see by basically sticking a
Speaker 1: little flag on it, and then also slow the bee
Speaker 1: down as it tried to carry this extra weight while
Speaker 1: it flew back to the nest. People also figured out
Speaker 1: ways to take advantage of the fact that bees generally
Speaker 1: fly in a straight line when going back to their nest,
Speaker 1: So if you collect several bees in a portable box
Speaker 1: or trap, you can let them out one at a time,
Speaker 1: following each bee until you lose sight of it. Kalumela
Speaker 1: has more detail about how this was done in the
Speaker 1: Roman Empire writing quote, the joint of a reed with
Speaker 1: the knots at either end, is cut, and a hole
Speaker 1: bored in the side of the rod thus formed, through
Speaker 1: which you should drop a little honey or boiled down must.
Speaker 1: The rod is then placed near a spring. Then when
Speaker 1: a number of bees attracted by the smell of the
Speaker 1: sweet liquid have crept into it, the rod is taken
Speaker 1: away and the thumb placed on the whole, and one
Speaker 1: bee only released at a time, which, when it has escaped,
Speaker 1: shows the line of its flight to the observer, and he,
Speaker 1: as long as he can keep up, follows it as
Speaker 1: it flies away. Then when he can no longer see
Speaker 1: the bee, he lets out another, and if it seeks
Speaker 1: the same quarter of the heavens, he persists in following
Speaker 1: his former tracks. Otherwise, he opens the hole and allows
Speaker 1: them to emerge one after another, and marks the direction
Speaker 1: in which most of them fly home, and pursues them
Speaker 1: until he is led to the lurking place of the swarm.
Speaker 1: Kalamela describes using a piece of reed for making this
Speaker 1: bee tracking trap, but other cultures have used this same
Speaker 1: basic process, making their traps out of other materials, including antlers, horns,
Speaker 1: and crafted boxes made of something like wood or metal
Speaker 1: that were created specifically for that purpose. Historically, people have
Speaker 1: also observed other animals to figure out where bees might
Speaker 1: be nesting, particularly animals like bears and honey badgers, which
Speaker 1: are also known to be fond of honey, and in
Speaker 1: parts of tropical Appa and Asia, there is also the
Speaker 1: honeyguide bird. These are birds that are fond of eating beeswax,
Speaker 1: and bee larvae, but can't easily get into the nest
Speaker 1: without help, so after finding a nest, the honeyguide will
Speaker 1: try to attract the attention of a mammal like a
Speaker 1: badger or even a person. For at least five hundred years,
Speaker 1: people in some parts of Africa, including Tanzania, Zambia, and
Speaker 1: Mozambique have developed calls to basically let the honey guides
Speaker 1: know that they are ready to go on a hunt.
Speaker 1: And exactly what that call sounds like varies from place
Speaker 1: to place. That's a relationship between honeyguide birds and people.
Speaker 1: Delights me. Oh same, It's so cool just in general.
Speaker 1: The fact that the bird was like, I want to
Speaker 1: get in this nest. I can't by myself. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: flap my wings around and make noise attention of something bigger.
Speaker 1: So as people moved from harvesting nests that they happen
Speaker 1: to find to intentionally searching for them, they also move
Speaker 1: from just harvesting the nests when they found them to
Speaker 1: ten those nests in the wild. People have done things
Speaker 1: like wrapping bee trees to insulate them in the winter,
Speaker 1: keeping the nests entrances clear, enlarging a cavity where the
Speaker 1: bees were nesting to make more room, or hollowing out
Speaker 1: similar cavities nearby with the hope of attracting a swarm.
Speaker 1: People have also improved wild nests to make it easier
Speaker 1: to access their contents, things like adding little doors into
Speaker 1: a tree that a person could reach into and then
Speaker 1: close the door behind them, or building steps and ladders
Speaker 1: to reach nests that are in high places. Eventually, people
Speaker 1: also started building structures specifically with the hope of attracting bees,
Speaker 1: including in places where the bees couldn't have survived otherwise, like,
Speaker 1: for example, building thick walled cavities at oases in the
Speaker 1: Sahara Desert with the hope of sustaining bee colonies inside
Speaker 1: the walls. That gets a little closer to the way
Speaker 1: most people think of bee keeping today with purpose built
Speaker 1: enclosures to house bees in a specific location, and we'll
Speaker 1: get more into that after a sponsor break. In a
Speaker 1: very general sense, a beehive is any man made enclosure
Speaker 1: for housing bees, and people have been keeping bees in
Speaker 1: hives for a really long time, overlapping all that bee
Speaker 1: hunting that we just talked about earlier. This possibly goes
Speaker 1: back all the way to the very beginnings of agriculture.
Speaker 1: A paper published in the journal Nature in twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: describes bees wax lipid residues that were found in Neolithic
Speaker 1: pottery samples from Europe, the Near East, and northern Africa,
Speaker 1: and these findings suggest that the pots might have been
Speaker 1: used as hives, although it's also possible that they were
Speaker 1: used to store wax that people had harvested out in
Speaker 1: the wild. We do know that people were keeping bees
Speaker 1: in hives in the Nile Delta by about five thousand
Speaker 1: bees An ancient Egyptian art is full of depictions of
Speaker 1: bees and hives and beekeeping. One relief dating back to
Speaker 1: the Fifth Dynasty, which started around twenty four to sixty
Speaker 1: five BCE, shows beekeepers at work in an apiary, suggesting
Speaker 1: that beekeeping was well established in ancient Egypt at that point.
Speaker 1: Honey bees also have a place in Egyptian mythology as
Speaker 1: being transformed from the tears of the god Raw after
Speaker 1: they fell to earth. The first written depiction of a
Speaker 1: beehive in China dates back to about three hundred BCE,
Speaker 1: although the first Chinese references to honey as medicine are
Speaker 1: ten times older than that. In Mesoamerica, people started keeping
Speaker 1: stingless bees in hives made out of calabash gourds somewhere
Speaker 1: between three hundred BCE and three hundred cees, so in
Speaker 1: a lot of different parts of the world this goes
Speaker 1: back for thousands of years. These first bee hives tended
Speaker 1: to be pretty simple. Most were horizontally oriented cylinders with
Speaker 1: a small opening at one end that was big enough
Speaker 1: for bees to pass through most of the time, but
Speaker 1: not always. The other end had some kind of removable
Speaker 1: covering to allow people to harvest from the hive, sometimes
Speaker 1: after using smoke to drive the bees away from that
Speaker 1: end of the hive first. In some regions, these hives
Speaker 1: were like a long, narrow pot placed on its side,
Speaker 1: with a removable covering at one end that had a
Speaker 1: hole in the middle for the bees to pass through.
Speaker 1: Around the world, these horizontal hives were made using a
Speaker 1: variety of materials. Hollow logs, including logs that had been
Speaker 1: cut from trees with the bees already inside and then
Speaker 1: taken somewhere else, straw or grass mats rolled into a
Speaker 1: cylinder and then covered with mud or clay pottery. Sometimes
Speaker 1: people scored the interior of pottery cylinders with shallow lines
Speaker 1: that were cut into the surface, both to give the
Speaker 1: bees a roughened anchor point when they started to build
Speaker 1: their honeycombs, and also to encourage them to build those
Speaker 1: combs in a particular direction. Other hive designs followed from
Speaker 1: these basic horizontal cylinders. Some were similar to the ones
Speaker 1: we just described, but rectangular rather than cylindrical. Others were
Speaker 1: vertically oriented rather than horizontal. The giant honey bees that
Speaker 1: are native to parts of Asia don't nest in enclosed spaces,
Speaker 1: so in that part of the world people attach slanted
Speaker 1: boards to trees as anchor points for honeycombs. These are
Speaker 1: known as rafters because of their resemblance to the rafters
Speaker 1: in the roof of a house, and it is not
Speaker 1: just a matter of sticking them to a tree. Beekeepers
Speaker 1: have to account for wind, sunlight, surrounding foliage, and more
Speaker 1: when selecting the exact right spot to hang a rafter.
Speaker 1: In some places, particularly in Western Europe, people have also
Speaker 1: kept bees in skeps that are woven from things like
Speaker 1: straw or wicker. These look pretty much like upside down baskets,
Speaker 1: with the open mouth resting on a flat surface and
Speaker 1: a small opening on the side that acts as a
Speaker 1: doorway for the bees. Especially in places where the weather
Speaker 1: was cool and damp, like for example, in England, steps
Speaker 1: were usually kept in little shelves or shelters that offered
Speaker 1: some kind of protection from the elements. Most of the
Speaker 1: time a skeep is harvest by lifting it up off
Speaker 1: of that flat surface that it rests on and then
Speaker 1: removing the contents from underneath, but some steps also have
Speaker 1: sort of a hinged lid up at the top. In
Speaker 1: many cases, harvesting these fixed comb hives involved killing the
Speaker 1: bee colony inside. In some cases, as many bees as
Speaker 1: possible were shaken or drummed into another hive first, but
Speaker 1: a lot of the time the loss of the hive
Speaker 1: was just considered part of the process. People captured swarms
Speaker 1: of bees in the springtime, tended the hive for a season,
Speaker 1: and then harvested them before winter, starting that whole process
Speaker 1: over again the following spring, or a beekeeper might leave
Speaker 1: the hives that seemed most likely to survive the winter unharvested,
Speaker 1: with the hope that they would swarm and fill empty
Speaker 1: hives in the spring. So this was one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why people started trying to figure out ways to
Speaker 1: make bee hives that had removable colmbs to try to
Speaker 1: preserve more of the bee colonies. If you could easily
Speaker 1: remove just some sections of honeycomb without damaging the others
Speaker 1: or the hive itself, that could preserve the colony. Also,
Speaker 1: at least in theory, such a harvesting method might also
Speaker 1: be easier and cause less agitation for the bees, maybe
Speaker 1: leading to fewer stings on the beekeeper. The first hives
Speaker 1: with removable combs were vertically oriented and opened at the top,
Speaker 1: with a series of slats or bars placed over the
Speaker 1: opening instead of one solid lid. People had figured out
Speaker 1: that if you left some space between each slat, the
Speaker 1: bees would build separate combs, one per slat, and then
Speaker 1: you could remove a slat from the hive, taking it
Speaker 1: in the attached comb out of the hive, while leaving
Speaker 1: the rest of the combs untouched. One of the first
Speaker 1: written records of a hive like this came from French
Speaker 1: doctor Jacob Spon and English botan George Wheeler. They were
Speaker 1: traveling together and saw them in use in Attica, Greece
Speaker 1: in sixteen seventy five, so hundreds of years ago. Similar
Speaker 1: systems also developed, apparently separately, in Vietnam. By the time
Speaker 1: people started developing hives with removable combs, they had also
Speaker 1: started developing beekeeping garments that were meant to minimize stings.
Speaker 1: For much of beekeeping history, people didn't really have specific
Speaker 1: bee keeping attire in places where the bees were stingless
Speaker 1: or very gentle. It wasn't really needed in tropical regions
Speaker 1: where people didn't wear as much clothing, Sometimes they removed
Speaker 1: what they did wear to keep bees from being trapped
Speaker 1: in that fabric. In other places, people may have done
Speaker 1: sturdy clothing with long sleeves and gloves, but it really
Speaker 1: wasn't much different from what they would wear for other work.
Speaker 1: By about the fourteen hundreds, though, people in Europe had
Speaker 1: started making garments specifically for working with bees, which were
Speaker 1: intended to minimize the likelihood of getting stung. The details
Speaker 1: depended somewhat on what was already fashionable in a particular place.
Speaker 1: In France, for example, the first purpose made beekeeping garments
Speaker 1: were hoods that covered the face with an insert that
Speaker 1: was made of a mesh of horsehair or wire or
Speaker 1: some other material that would offer some protection but also
Speaker 1: offer at least some visibility. Was because hoods were a
Speaker 1: little more common in terms of fashion in England, where
Speaker 1: brimmed hats were in fashion. The first beekeeping hoods were
Speaker 1: large hats with veils attached around that brim, and eventually
Speaker 1: the standard outfit also evolved to include a blouse. In
Speaker 1: seventeen ninety six, bee master John Keyes published a book
Speaker 1: called The Antient Bee Master's Farewell or Full and Plane
Speaker 1: Directions for the Management of Bees to the greatest Advantage,
Speaker 1: disclosing further improvements of the hives, boxes, and other instruments
Speaker 1: to facilitate the operations, especially that of separating double and
Speaker 1: trouble hives or boxes. Also brief remarks on Shirach and
Speaker 1: other distinguished apiators on the continent. Deduced from a series
Speaker 1: of experiments during thirty years. Oh how I love a
Speaker 1: long title. HU. It has a chapter on bee dress
Speaker 1: in which Keys advises making a hood by attaching bolting
Speaker 1: cloth to the brim of an old hat, with the
Speaker 1: brim cut down to two inches all the way around
Speaker 1: and the cloth hanging a foot in the areas around
Speaker 1: the nose, chin, and neck reinforced with oiled linen. He
Speaker 1: also recommends leather gloves, old stockings over the extremities, and
Speaker 1: an apron. If you're not familiar with bolting cloth, it's
Speaker 1: like a pretty sturdy cloth that was woven to allow
Speaker 1: for things like sifting with it. Keys also concludes this
Speaker 1: chapter by saying, quote, women should not meddle with bees
Speaker 1: without this bee dress, nor than without the addition of
Speaker 1: a man's coat. And I almost said breeches. Also, I
Speaker 1: don't want it tell you to dress like a man,
Speaker 1: but it might be in your best interest, but I'm
Speaker 1: not saying it. I love that quote a lot, like
Speaker 1: I almost said breaching, almost, but maybe not. Keith's book
Speaker 1: was just on the cusp of beekeeping as most people
Speaker 1: might recognize it today, and we're going to get into
Speaker 1: that after we first paused for a little sponsor break.
Speaker 1: Starting in about the seventeenth century, a couple of things
Speaker 1: happened in tandem that radically changed beekeeping pretty much around
Speaker 1: the world. One was that colonists started introducing European or
Speaker 1: Western honeybees into other parts of the world to which
Speaker 1: they were not native. This started with the first successful
Speaker 1: introduction of European honeybees into Bermuda in sixteen seventeen, with
Speaker 1: those bees kept cool during the voyage across the Atlantic
Speaker 1: to try to keep them in a way intertime state
Speaker 1: of dormancy during the trip. The colonial introduction of the
Speaker 1: European honeybee into other parts of the world continued for
Speaker 1: more than two hundred years, and a lot of places
Speaker 1: European honeybees spread really quickly, with swarms of bees pretty
Speaker 1: much moving ahead of the colonists. The other was a
Speaker 1: shift in beekeeping as it was practiced with European honeybees.
Speaker 1: Starting in the sixteen hundreds, there was a huge focus
Speaker 1: on the idea of scientific beekeeping, especially in Europe. Beekeepers, naturalists, entomologists,
Speaker 1: and others all wanted to improve the practice of beekeeping
Speaker 1: based on scientific principles, ideally in a way that allowed
Speaker 1: beekeepers to harvest from hives without killing the bees. During
Speaker 1: this process, beekeeping was being informed by new scientific discoveries
Speaker 1: about bees, and science was making new discoveries about bees
Speaker 1: thanks to beekeeping. One development that was part of this
Speaker 1: was the observation high, in other words, a hive with
Speaker 1: transparent walls that allowed people to see the bees and
Speaker 1: their work inside. And his fourteenth century work Life of Animals,
Speaker 1: al Damiri described an observation hive that had belonged to Aristotle.
Speaker 1: Wrote that the bees were so annoyed by Aristotle's nosing
Speaker 1: into their business that they covered over the glass with clay.
Speaker 1: Aristotle lived in the fourth century BCE, and this fourteenth
Speaker 1: century reference seems to be the first account of him
Speaker 1: having a hive like this, so that's probably not accurate
Speaker 1: that he really did have one, but it does mean
Speaker 1: that by the time al Damiri was writing, at least
Speaker 1: the idea of an observation hive existed. I love the
Speaker 1: idea of bees building a privacy wall, though, yea. By
Speaker 1: the seventeenth century there were definitely observation hives out in
Speaker 1: the world, thanks in part to earlier developments in glassmaking.
Speaker 1: In sixteen fifty four, doctor John Wilkins gave an observation
Speaker 1: high to English gardener and diarist John Evelyn, who documented
Speaker 1: it with a diagram. A year later. On May fifth,
Speaker 1: sixteen sixty five, Samuel Peeps wrote about seeing this hive
Speaker 1: quote after dinner to mister Evelyn's he being abroad, we
Speaker 1: walked in his garden, and a lovely noble ground he
Speaker 1: hath indeed, and among other rarities, a hive of bees.
Speaker 1: So as being hived in glass, you may see the
Speaker 1: bees making their honey and combs mighty pleasantly. I agree
Speaker 1: with Samuel Peeps that it is mighty pleasant to watch
Speaker 1: the bees through the class. It really is. Anytime I'm
Speaker 1: in a science museum, I get super excited when there
Speaker 1: is a glass bee enclosure. I think it's oddly soothing.
Speaker 1: There's something about it that just puts the brain at rest.
Speaker 1: Transparent hives let people get a much closer and more
Speaker 1: accurate look at a lot of day to day life
Speaker 1: of bees, including their anatomy and their reproduction. In the
Speaker 1: eighteenth century, for example, French inventor Renee and Juan Fechol
Speaker 1: del Remuer used transparent hives to do some really groundbreaking
Speaker 1: work about bee reproduction and the way that bees used
Speaker 1: their bodies to regulate the hive's temperature. In the late
Speaker 1: eighteenth century, Swiss entomologist and naturalist Francois huber took this
Speaker 1: bee observation one step forward with what he called a
Speaker 1: leaf hive. This was a beehive shaped almost like a book,
Speaker 1: with each comb in its own wooden frame and the
Speaker 1: frames on hinges so that you could move from one
Speaker 1: page to the next. Hubert used this hive in his
Speaker 1: extensive study of bees, which he undertook with the help
Speaker 1: of his wife, his son, and his assistant Francois Bernan,
Speaker 1: who helped record visual observations since Hubert was blind. This
Speaker 1: leaf hive was enormously beneficial to scientific study, but it
Speaker 1: was certainly not practical for everyday beekeeping. But it was
Speaker 1: developed in the middle of a two hundred year effort
Speaker 1: to create a practical, affordable, modular bee hive for European
Speaker 1: honeybees that would allow easy removal and extraction of the
Speaker 1: honeycombs with as little disruption to the lives of the
Speaker 1: bees as possible. And there were a lot of different
Speaker 1: people who put in the work on this between the
Speaker 1: sixteen hundreds and the eighteen hundreds. Most of them were
Speaker 1: in England, France, and other parts of Western Europe. As
Speaker 1: we noted earlier, there were a whole lot of bees
Speaker 1: in the Americans with this introduction of bees through colonialism,
Speaker 1: but American bee keepers weren't really involved in this until
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds because before that point there was just
Speaker 1: so much forage available for bees. It was very easy
Speaker 1: to keep bees. In a lot of parts of North America,
Speaker 1: they had been more focused on controlling wax moths that
Speaker 1: could really destroy the hives. The person who is typically
Speaker 1: credited for developing the modern beehive is the Reverend Lorenzo
Speaker 1: Lorraine Langstross, who was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and studied
Speaker 1: and built on those earlier centuries of improvements. Langstross based
Speaker 1: a lot of his work on a high developed by
Speaker 1: August Munn in eighteen thirty four, which used hanging frames
Speaker 1: with space between each frame and around each edge. Langstroth
Speaker 1: was also inspired by Huber's leaf hive, since it showed
Speaker 1: that the frames could be moved without angering the bees
Speaker 1: too badly, and Langstrot's view the ideal hive had a
Speaker 1: lot of requirements It had to allow the beekeeper to
Speaker 1: perform every necessary function of beekeeping, including the collecting honey,
Speaker 1: without killing or injuring any bees. The beekeeper had to
Speaker 1: be able to remove combs from the hive without angering
Speaker 1: the bees or damaging the combs. The hive had to
Speaker 1: protect the bees from the elements with adequate ventilation and
Speaker 1: a removable bottom to allow for the removal of dead
Speaker 1: bees or other debris. The hive had to allow the
Speaker 1: bees to build and just to live without being required
Speaker 1: to do any extra work. And it also had to
Speaker 1: accommodate colonies of different sizes. And all of the parts
Speaker 1: of this hive that he had in mind needed to
Speaker 1: be interchangeable, so that a beekeeper could use the same
Speaker 1: parts with different hives as needed. And then, on top
Speaker 1: of all that and assorted other details, Langstroth's ideal hive
Speaker 1: needed to be combined into one cheap, simple form. Langstroth
Speaker 1: introduced his hive in eighteen fifty one. It used hanging
Speaker 1: frames with a one centimeter gap between each frame and
Speaker 1: between the edge of the frame and the interior of
Speaker 1: the hive itself. This amount of space is also described
Speaker 1: as somewhere between a quarter and three eighths of an inch.
Speaker 1: Langstroth called this small gap the bee space. Bees needed
Speaker 1: to move around the hive, but they won't build their
Speaker 1: combes in the space. The hives frames hung in a
Speaker 1: durable box of the lid made by cabinet maker Henry Burkham.
Speaker 1: The whole thing made it much easier and more efficient
Speaker 1: for beekeepers to check on their beeves and to harvest
Speaker 1: their hives. Langstroth patented his hive in eighteen fifty two,
Speaker 1: and he published a book about it and about beekeeping
Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty three. The Langstroth hive and similar hives
Speaker 1: that were patterned after it, made bee keeping a lot
Speaker 1: more accessible with a much larger possible honey yield, although
Speaker 1: getting started with one did require some initial investment. It
Speaker 1: also became a lot easier for people to use Western
Speaker 1: honeybees as crop pollinators. At the same time, though, it
Speaker 1: became much easier for diseases and mites to spread through
Speaker 1: densely populated apiaries. When colony collapse disorders started making headlines
Speaker 1: in the late nineteen nineties and early two thousands, people
Speaker 1: wondered about whether the proliferation of farmed Western honeybees was
Speaker 1: part of the problem. The spread of European honeybees also
Speaker 1: led to more competition with native bees for forage. There
Speaker 1: is some conflicting data about this today. Whether domesticated European
Speaker 1: honeybees are harmful to native bees can depend on the
Speaker 1: conditions in a particular area, like exactly how many domesticated
Speaker 1: bees there are, how much forage is available, and exactly
Speaker 1: what kind of forage it is. Another result of the
Speaker 1: introduction of the Langstroth hive and the surge of beekeeping
Speaker 1: that followed was an expansion of beekeeping as a field.
Speaker 1: People started forming beekeeping associations, they established beekeeping journals and
Speaker 1: other periodicals, and they started beekeeping guilds. This was a
Speaker 1: lot different from previous eras when most people who wrote
Speaker 1: about bees were naturalists or philosophers or entomologists, rather than
Speaker 1: people who were specializing just in bees and beekeeping. Although
Speaker 1: the Langstroth hive has become standard beekeeping equipment in many
Speaker 1: parts of the world, beekeeping continues to develop. This episode
Speaker 1: has been about social bees that store honey, but starting
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties, people in the United States and
Speaker 1: Japan figured out how to domesticate solitary leaf cutting bees
Speaker 1: to pollinate alfalfa plants. Not all of the developments have
Speaker 1: been positive, though. In nineteen fifty six, Brazilian agricultural worker
Speaker 1: Warwick Estevam Kerr and others were looking for a breed
Speaker 1: of bee that might be better suited to the American
Speaker 1: tropics than European honeybees were. They imported almost fifty bee
Speaker 1: queens from Africa, which he helped to breed with European
Speaker 1: honeybee drones. Their goal was to try to create a
Speaker 1: breed that had a more docile temperament like European bees do,
Speaker 1: but was more physically adapted to life in the tropical
Speaker 1: climate like African bees. The details are not entirely clear,
Speaker 1: but in nineteen fifty seven, the queen excluders were removed
Speaker 1: from the hives that Kerr was using, something that may
Speaker 1: have been accidental, or it may have been someone trying
Speaker 1: to be helpful. Several of the hives swarmed and the
Speaker 1: bees escaped into the surrounding forests. This was the origin
Speaker 1: of what came to be known as Africanized honeybees, which
Speaker 1: tend to be more aggressive and territorial than their Western counterpart.
Speaker 1: They have since spread northward and southward through most of
Speaker 1: South America, through Central America, and into the southwestern and
Speaker 1: southern United States. There are so many other things that
Speaker 1: we could have discussed in this episode, like b mythology
Speaker 1: and religious symbolism, and how the scientific understanding of bee
Speaker 1: society evolved, and how mail order package bees came to
Speaker 1: be and other modern beehive designs, and various writers through
Speaker 1: history who thought the queen bee was really a king,
Speaker 1: and how gender roles have varied among beekeepers across global societies. Really,
Speaker 1: somebody could have a whole entire podcast that was only
Speaker 1: about beekeeping history. It is a lot and if you
Speaker 1: want a lot more detail about exactly which cultures were
Speaker 1: doing what a different types of hives and all of that,
Speaker 1: try to get your hands on a copy of the
Speaker 1: World History of Beekeeping and honey Hunting. Your most likely
Speaker 1: source to find it is in a university library. It
Speaker 1: is a textbook. It is more than seven hundred pages long,
Speaker 1: and because it's a textbook, the writing is very spare
Speaker 1: in its style. Those are seven hundred plus pages of
Speaker 1: detail about bees without a lot of extraneous side. So
Speaker 1: that's our brief history of beekeeping. Thanks so much for
Speaker 1: joining us on this Saturday. Since this episode is out
Speaker 1: of the archive, if you heard an email address or
Speaker 1: a Facebook RL or something similar over the course of
Speaker 1: the show, that could be obsolete now. Our current email
Speaker 1: address is History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can
Speaker 1: find us all over social media at missed in History,
Speaker 1: and you can subscribe to our show on Apple podcasts,
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