Medieval Beekeeping

[freethorpe bees]

Am I right in thinking that beekeepers in days past didn't over winter their bees but killed the colony at the end of the season? If that is right how did they then start again next year? Someone must have kept queens and if so how? Am I being daft and missing something obvious?

 

[Erichalfbee]

I think some colonies were kept going over winter.

 

[Poly Hive]

Ok.

They started with an over wintered colony. Mind we are talking skeps here.

Skep swarms. Swarm caught and "skepped" .

Remember no swarm control and no comb inspection as we know it.

Virgin emerges and cast takes off. "Skepped"

Virgin emerges and cast takes off.... "Skepped"

Another one? Possibly depending on skep volume and swarminess of the strain.

One of the casts will be kept as the over winter unit, the rest either drummed out to boost another unit or killed.

I suspect much less killing went on than we think as after all our fore fathers were canny bee men, like ourselves, much more like us than possibly we like to think.

PH

 

[Vergilius]

Some colonies were kept for breeding... Some were destroyed for honey harvest...

Honeybee nest raider in a cave painting from spain (c.6000 BC)...

View attachment 3302 View attachment 3303


Ben P

 

[nonstandard]

It's strange though, back then tendency to swarm was a desirable quality which the bees were probably selected for; a genetic trait that most of us are now desperately trying to breed out of our bees.

 

[Poly Hive]

Precisely.

Thousands of years of breeding FOR swarminess will not be over come in a couple of hundred years.

PH

 

[mbc]

I suspect much less killing went on than we think as after all our fore fathers were canny bee men, like ourselves, much more like us than possibly we like to think.

Totally agree ! Why kill when other options included partial harvesting or uniting or sometimes keeping them for a better year ? No doubt sometimes killing a proportion would be the prefered option but I go along with PH in that most of our successful ancestors would have been smart operators ( just like me ! )

 

[simon kerr]

Bees have obviously got smaller over the years, or is it just mine?

Just like Cadburys Creme eggs this year.

 

[blackbrood]

After just about finished reading bee boles and bee houses by AM Foster as recommended by HP. Apparantly the heaviest skeps were emptied and harvested for honey because they had the most honey in them, light weight skeps were emptied because they were not worth over wintering as either few bees or little honey so bad strain and skeps inbetween were overwintered.

BB

 

[tberni]

Thats very good Rosti. That should be on the homepage.

 

[tonybloke]

but, most of the interest was in the wax, for candle making, honey was a side line.

(the first taxes were on candles)

 

[Poly Hive]

You sure....

No sugar remember..

PH

 

[tonybloke]

it's why church ceilings are still clean, after yrs of candle usage, innit?

and why a lot of medieval beekeepers were based in religious places

 

[tonybloke]

all those manuscripts to copy......................

 

[Poly Hive]

Monks kept bees for one reason apart from wax and honey and that was religious.

Others did their own thing.

PH

 

[drstitson]

no copyright issues in those days (and free translation thrown in sometimes).

imagine the conversation at local hostelry over a flagon of mead " you like buy latest book of kells? proper copy; no audience noise"

 

[blackbrood]

the bee boles book also mentions that wax was a very important commodity with a far higher value than today because of the candles needed for churches. I think it implied that wax was more important than the honey. Annoyingley I cannot find the paragraph in the book that mentions it, as I wanted a direct quote.