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Chapter 3: Before Bee Space 1801-1860
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65 Before Bee Space, 1801–1860 Chapter 3 BEFORE BEE SPACE 1801–1860 The Indians with surprise found the mouldering trees of their forests suddenly teeming with ambrosial sweets, and nothing , I am told, can exceed the greedy relish with which they banquet for the first time upon this unbought luxury of the wilderness. —Washington Irving, A Tour on the Prairies American beekeeping history is generally divided into two periods: before and after Lorenzo Langstroth. Before Langstroth little was known about how the bee colony functioned. American beekeepers were at the mercy of two phenomena: a disease known as foulbrood and the bees’ natural instinct to swarm. Once Langstroth invented a hive that was compatible with how bees built wax combs, however, beekeepers could take better care of and profit from their hives. Because his discovery happened in 1851, a chronological division has been convenient for historians to use as a demarcation point when discussing bee history. The interracial and international social networks that existed between immigrants , pioneers, and Indians before Langstroth’s research has been over- 66 Bees in America looked because of how quickly the bee industry developed once the concept of bee space was invented. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, America seemed an unlikely place for the beekeeping innovations that would revolutionize the world by the end of the century. The smoker had yet to be invented, so many beekeepers used sulfur to kill bees before taking honey. Furthermore , American foulbrood destroyed many bee colonies. Although foulbrood was serious (the spores can remain dormant for eighty years), it was not the only threat to bees. The Boston Patriot published an account of wax moth for the first time in 1806. Although there are two kinds of wax moth, greater and lesser, this chapter refers to the greater wax moth, which has been a pest for a longer time. To paraphrase Roger Morse, wax moth larvae destroy honeycombs by boring through the wax in search of food.1 Strong colonies can withstand wax moth by evicting the larvae, but especially in the South, bees are almost always dealing with this pest. The German black bees, which could survive the colder temperatures in New England, were very susceptible to wax moth. Since a beekeeper could not check colonies for moths when bees were kept in straw skeps or bee gums, very little could be done to prevent the spread of moths. In the words of current Bee Culture editor Kim Flottum, “Wax moth is like a bad cold. [Contemporary] Beekeepers will always have to deal with it, but it is not especially disastrous if proper steps are taken beforehand to keep it from getting out of control.”2 However, during the early nineteenth century, beekeepers had very little control because hives that they could open on a systematic basis had not been developed at this point. In fact, historian Wyatt Mangum suggests that wax moth might have been a problem much earlier as a result of the method used to ship bees across the Atlantic. Because straw skeps were placed in large crates, the chance that moths would be nested in the hives would have been not only possible, but probable.3 In any event, within two years of the 1806 Boston Patriot article, four-fifths of all apiaries in the Boston vicinity were abandoned.4 Meanwhile, the beekeeping community in Europe was rapidly unlocking the secrets of the hive. Or so it seemed. A Swiss scientist, Francois Huber, designed an observation hive in spite of being blind. With the help of his wife and another assistant, Huber recorded his insights in his [54.224.52.210] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 07:16 GMT) 67 Before Bee Space, 1801–1860 Letters, which was distributed among beekeepers everywhere, including America. Furthermore, Johann Dzierzon, a pastor in Silesia (now Poland ), was also developing his own theories about beehive construction. Elaborate hives and skeps were constructed. Glass jars placed on the tops of skeps were really the first types of observation hives.5 Threestory octagonal hives—first designed in the seventeenth century—underwent major innovations in the nineteenth century so that they produced more honey. According to Gene Kritsky, beekeepers wanted to build hives that worked with the bees’ natural rhythms. So, using an eighteenth-century beekeeper named John Thorley as his source, Kritsky explains, “The use of the octagonal shape was thought to be the closest to a circle that could be produced from flat pieces of wood...