Advances In Beekeeping

Advances In Beekeeeping

Beekeeping changed most between 1500 and 1851. Until then, hives were plundered by their keepers without an understanding of the life cycle of the bee or the structure of the hive. In the fall the bees were killed and the contents of the hive were strained to remove the honey. Only a few hives were kept over winter to repopulate the apiary in the spring
The first revolutionary discovery involved understanding the life cycle of the bee. In 1586, Luis Méndez de Torres first described the queen bee as a female that laid eggs. In 1609, Charles Butler in Feminine Monarchie identified the drones as male bees and in 1637, Richard Remnant in Discourse or Historie of Bees recognized that the worker bees were females. The understanding of the life cycle helped beekeepers care for their colonies.
The next advancement was needed to allow beekeepers to remove the honey, while doing the least amount of damage to the hive and bees. Sometimes, basket hives could be combined by driving the bees from one hive into the other. Honey could be harvested from the empty basket hive and the workers driven into the new hive would be accepted although their queen would be killed. Other approaches involved adding jars or caps as extensions to the top of the hive for honey storage. The extensions could be removed without disturbing the brood.
The understanding of the life cycle and the ability to harvet honey without disturbing the hive made beekeeping easier. However, for 200 years hives could not be managed because it was impossible to observe what was going on inside. Various kinds of frames and hive box were developed, but one problem remained. The bees would always build comb between the frame and the hive so that the comb could only be removed by cutting it out.
The first step toward a movable frame hive was the use of hives which resemble Top-Bar-Hives . These consisted of baskets or boxes with slats or bars across the top and a sloped container to serve as the hive. The bees did not attach comb to the sides of the hive and the beekeeper could remove each frame and examine the brood, comb and honey stores without bothering the bees.
In 1851, the American Lorenzo Langstroth designed the movable frame hive most commonly used today which carries his name. His design has four-sided frames which hang inside a hive box allowing a 3/8 inch space between the frames and the box. This distance, known as bee-space is the width of a path wide enough for a bee to pass through, but too wide to be filled with wax or propolis. The hive is made of units or "supers" that may vary in height, but with identical outside dimensions so they may be stacked. This hive design greatly facilitated hive management and beekeeping entered a new era.
The European honey bee had been brought to North America from England in 1622, but was not introduced to the west coast until brought to California in the early 1850's. From there bees were taken to Oregon and Canada.
Beekeeping in the early part of this century was widespread in America and was part of a rural lifestyle. Since then it has become an industry with a remarkably small number of operations. The USDA reports that there are approximately 2,000 commercial beekeeping operiations in the United States. However, only 1% of all beekeepers are classified as commercial.
The number of bee colonies in the United States peaked in 1947 at over 5.9 million hives. Recent estimates indicate that today in the United States there are over 210,000 beekeepers with more than 3 million hives. If you want to join our ranks, watch for our annual Beginning Beekeeping Workshop.

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Last modified 15 may 1998