GREENWICH, N.Y. — Throughout the spring and summer, you likely see them buzzing to and fro from flower to flower. The busy honeybee plays an important role as a pollinator, and the honey they make is enjoyed by many as a natural sweetener. The art of beekeeping has been around for centuries and is still widely practiced today.
The earliest evidence of interactions with bees was in the form of “honey hunting.” Peoples would find existing hives in trees or caves and remove the honey from them. A cave in Spain called Cuevas de la Araña, or Spider Caves, features prehistoric cave drawings. One of the drawings in this cave shows a person climbing a tree or cave to collect honey while bees fly around. This painting which is believed to be around 8,000 years old is the oldest evidence of honey hunting.
The practice of beekeeping for the purpose of collecting honey is believed to have begun with the ancient Egyptians. Using hollow trees or logs as spaces for bees to form their hives. These hives would be moved to follow warm weather and blossoming plants throughout the year. The honey collected was considered a luxury good and jars of honey have been found among the treasures of Egyptian tombs.
Later the Ancient Greeks and Romans practiced beekeeping, and later still it became a regular agricultural activity in Medieval Europe. During the Middle Ages beekeepers developed the recognizable skep which was a basket-like object with an opening at the bottom which allowed bees to build a honeycomb and come and go doing their work. Other methods included cutting holes into trees so that hives could form in them and easier collection of honey. They also developed early versions of bee suits. Beekeeping took place in other parts of the world too such as China and the Mayan people in South America.
Honeybees are not native to North America so it is believed that they were introduced by English settlers in the colony of Virginia in 1622. In the following years bees were introduced in Massachusetts and spread to other parts of the original thirteen colonies. From here beekeeping slowly spread westward. In the 1850s bees were shipped to California and from there they likely spread to other states on the west coast.
From the introduction of beekeeping in the 1600s to the early 1800s honey production was a local endeavor. Farmers and townsfolk alike kept a few hives for personal honey production or to sell to neighbors. Bees were also used for beeswax which was used to make items like candles, soap, creams, and more. The first instance of commercial beekeeping in the U.S. was a business run by a man named Moses Quinby in New York.
Bee colonies are a society comprised of three classes: the queen, workers, and drones. The queen rules the hive and lays eggs. Drones are male bees whose only job is to mate with queens. Workers protect the hive, collect nectar, and make honey. Honey is made entirely by the bees. Bees collect nectar from various flowers filling their “honey stomach” which helps turn the nectar into honey.
Once returning to the hive, one bee will vomit the honey into another worker bee’s mouth and this process will continue through a chain of bees. This process is important to the honey making process. The honey is then deposited into a section of honey comb where bees beat their wings to thicken it. It is then sealed with a beeswax cap. When collecting, beekeepers will scrape the entire honeycomb from a hive. The wax is then strained out leaving behind the honey.
During American beekeeping’s early years bees were kept in a variety of hives. The straw skep was used most often, along with wooden boxes and pieces of pottery. Another option was “bee gums.” Gums were parts of trees or cut tree trunks that contained bee hives. Apiarists would sometimes build doors over these parts of trees to keep the honeycombs from getting damaged and allow them easier access. However, the problem that existed with these early kinds of hives was that the honeycombs could not be inspected or removed while the bees lived there. When it came time to harvest the honey, farmers had to kill the bee colony which was usually done by burning sulfur within the hive.
This changed though thanks to the efforts of a man named Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth. Originally from Philadelphia, Langstroth was a Congregational minister living in Massachusetts when he took up beekeeping as a hobby to help him deal with depression. In the 1750s a Swiss naturalist named Francois Huber invented a “movable frame” hive which contained combs that could be flipped like pages in a book. Drawing on this model Langstroth began building hives of his own to try and improve this design.
In his experimentation Langstroth uncovered the concept of “bee space.” Bees will not make honeycombs in a space that is 1 cm or smaller. They will instead fill these small spaces with propolis, a substance used to build their hives. In spaces larger than 1 cm bees will build honeycombs. With this new found knowledge Langstroth designed a box hive that contained removable frames spaced 1 cm apart from the walls of the box and one another. This design enabled bees to build honeycombs and produce honey, and for the frames to be removed for honey collection without harming the bees.
Langstroth’s upgrades to the beehive were quickly adopted by other beekeepers and it became the most popular form of beehives in the U.S. Today’s modern beehives are based on Langstroth’s designs and removable frames are now required by law. Due to the legacy of his work Lorenzo Langstroth is referred to as “The Father of American Beekeeping.”
In the 1860s Charles Dadant of France brought another innovation to the beehive by making them bigger. Dadant recognized that queen bees did not like to climb stacked skeps but remain in a single box. By making the hives bigger queens could lay more eggs, making for more workers and eventually more honey.
With the hive developments made by Langstroth and Dadant beekeeping was able to be more efficient and grow in the United States. However, it remained on a local scale. In the 1920s as transportation improved bee businesses were able to have a further reach.
Another important development in the bee business was raising bees for pollinating. Bees were first recognized as pollinators in the 1750s. Beginning in the 20th century beekeepers used their bees as pollinators and not just for honey production. Bees could be rented by farms for pollinating fruit trees and other crops.
Beekeeping remains an active industry in the U.S. today. According to data from 2021 there are anywhere from 115,000 to 125,000 beekeepers in the U.S. who manage 2.71 million colonies. The income from honeybee pollination exceeds that of honey and other product sales showing the importance of these busy insects to certain parts of the agriculture industry.
Chandler Hansen grew up and lives in Easton, NY. He is a graduate of Gordon College where he earned a bachelor’s degree in History. He serves as a writer and editor for Morning Ag Clips.