Historical beekeeping

[ANMAW]

Does anyone have any good suggestions for books, articles etc on historical beekeeping in the U.K. pre the 19th century? How, where, who by, etc just the fairly basic stuff but more detail than the standard ‘We know bees have been kept for hundreds of years. In the 19th century...’ Is there anything out there? Sorry if this has been asked before!

 

[rolande]

As a start, you could search out Malcolm Fraser's History of Beekeeping in Britain.

Edit: I see that it has now been reprinted and is available from Northern Bee Books.

 

[Murox]

Up until around 1800, bee colonies, whether wild or under human control, built combs entirely according to their own design in whatever cavity they could find or was provided by the beekeeper.

Swiss - François Huber – 1831 may have been the first to describe the constant distances between combs.
Ukrainian - Petro Prokopovych – 1814 the first moveable frame beehive & later a rudimentary queen excluder.
Polish - Jan Dzierżon -1845 described the correct distance between combs.
US - Lorenzo Langstroth 1852, (two years after the death of Petro Prokopovych) the Patent Office gave patent number 9300A to the clergyman for a moveable-frame beehive.

 

[B+.]

Does anyone have any good suggestions for books, articles etc on historical beekeeping in the U.K. pre the 19th century? How, where, who by, etc just the fairly basic stuff but more detail than the standard ‘We know bees have been kept for hundreds of years. In the 19th century...’ Is there anything out there? Sorry if this has been asked before!

Have you tried Eva Cranes' books?

 

[ANMAW]

Thanks, looks like there’s some good stuff there and I’ll probably be able to follow the references! The reason I asked is I was doing some local history research and found a field name called Honey Pins (pens) and this name was referenced all the way back to the 13th century. This has really peaked my interest. Everyone knows monks kept bees but outside of this what do we actually no from history and archaeology?

Cheers everyone

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

Thanks, looks like there’s some good stuff there and I’ll probably be able to follow the references! The reason I asked is I was doing some local history research and found a field name called Honey Pins (pens) and this name was referenced all the way back to the 13th century. This has really peaked my interest. Everyone knows monks kept bees but outside of this what do we actually no from history and archaeology?

Cheers everyone

The laws of Hywel Dda (last King of the Britons - one of my ancestors) were written in the tenth century and had a whole section on bees, beekeepers and mead makers even listing the value of a caught swarm, established colonies etc. plenty of references to that online

 

[Adam Bourne]

Would definitely go with Eva Crane's stuff - so informative. Thankfully I got mine at a library, bit expensive if you want to buy it unfortunately!

 

[Murox]

Would definitely go with Eva Crane's stuff - so informative. Thankfully I got mine at a library, bit expensive if you want to buy it unfortunately!

Prof.Crane wrote a lot of papers and books - this one “Bees and Beekeeping: Science, Practice, and World Resources“ 1990 E. Crane is a weighty scholarly tome and should be available at the library.

 

[jenkinsbrynmair]

It is thanks in part to Eva Crane's studies that we have the Kenyan Top Bar Hive and variations thereof

 

[Jimmy]

The laws of Hywel Dda (last King of the Britons - one of my ancestors)

And me!

The village i used to live was listed in the Doomsday Book as paying 1 sextary (= 6 gallons apparently!) of honey per year. That's a lot of skeps.

 

[Newbeeneil]

This was a great lecture at the NHS last year if Langstroth interests you.
https://youtu.be/ZGz_zq5e4ic

 

[Antipodes]

This was a great lecture at the NHS last year if Langstroth interests you.
https://youtu.be/ZGz_zq5e4ic

Thanks Newbeeneil. Good one. Even some description of the transportation of honey bees down under.