Long ago (about 1975), there was an amazing beekeeper, now a legend, in northeast Saskatchewan. He consistently had 300-pound/hive crops. This was Dr. Don Peer (PhD, 1955, U Wisconsin). Peer once told us “If I were king of the world, I’d make a law that every beekeeper had to own one more super for each hive of bees“.
This photo, taken in Wisconsin by my brother David, shows the extreme production from well-managed colonies. Unfortunately, the picture shows neither Dr Peer, who did much to promote expert beekeeping in Wisconsin, nor my brother. Maybe another day for that.
The point, of course, should be lost on no one – it takes supers to make big honey crops.
Don Peer kept about 1000 colonies in a remarkable honey domain. Bees could collect 30 pounds of cured honey in a single day. That required a lot of open comb space to deposit the nectar that was being reduced. Peer quit using 2-queen colonies after a few years because it was impossible to stack the supers high enough. His crew tried parking flatbed trucks close to the colonies so lids could be pried off and heavy honey boxes replaced with empties. Handling monstrous 2-queeners wasn’t efficient, so it was back to single-queen colonies.
But the key message – lots of supers on the hive – remains the same. We all do that out here on the Canadian prairies. Most years are an embarrassment of riches.
This table shows records from my western Canadian scale-hive. A lot of honey can be stored in just a few days. For this example, from July 10 (24 pounds net gain) to July 16 (27 pounds net gain) the hive averaged 20 pounds/day. It takes about a super to hold the nectar that becomes 20 pounds of honey each day.
Knowing that it takes many supers to make honey, I was stunned to learn that China and southeast Asia produce over a billion pounds of honey each year without using supers. Everything is operated in single-storey colonies. At harvest time, a single box serves as brood chamber and honey box. The result is a mess. The bees are shaken from all the combs (even the ones with brood) and then reinserted into the singles. This video shows a typical beekeeping set up. Around the three-minute mark, you can see that the entire brood nest is extracted, including frames with brood. :-(
Here in Canada, we caution hobby beekeepers to never extract brood frames. Spinning in an extractor can’t be good for brood. And, during the flow, a lot of the stuff flying out of the combs is raw nectar, which can easily lead to fermentation if it isn’t dried out. These days, the accumulation of hive chemicals that are applied in brood chambers increases contamination risk when brood combs are spun. So, please don’t extract brood frames.
Keeping bees in singles and removing honey comb-by-comb may have a role in some systems. In the 1940s, my father spent a year working for Al Winn in Petaluma, California. Winn was mostly a queen breeder, but during pollination gigs and off-season (when the bees were taken to the mountains), the singles would sometimes fill up. This restricted the expansion of brood and made colonies heavy to haul around. The solution was to remove frames 1, 2, 9, and 10 (the edge frames), extract them, split the tight brood nest between frames 5 and 6, then insert four empty combs in the centre of the nest. Al Winn and crew avoided extracting the brood. Even if a bit of nectar was encountered, the California climate was hot and dry. Wet honey (nectar) wasn’t a problem. This system of opening the brood nest to make space kept hives from swarming and allowed brood expansion, resulting in good colonies for building mating nucs.
I have long wondered why Asian beekeeping continues to shake all the bees out of the single box and extract every comb, brood and all. Why not use the California system, described above, or simply use supers and stack ’em high? I think the use of single-storeys is a matter of inertia and some convenience. Colonies are frequently moved (by hand) and singles are lighter. Supers don’t have to be owned and then stored off-season. Finally, there is the Apis cerana legacy. Commercial Asian beekeepers almost exclusively use the western honey (Apis mellifera), but their grandparents used cerana. These bees build smaller nests and reside comfortably in singles. Grandpa used singles, so . . .
But things are changing. Supers have arrived in China! Here’s a fascinating video that you must watch. Why does China stick to the path of common prosperity? was produced by the Chinese government. I imagine that there is a series of these videos dedicated to agricultural modernization. With the CCP advocating supers on hives, it might be just a decade or so before China’s eight million colonies are operated using western methods. Chairman Xi is not “king of the world” (to borrow Dr. Peer’s phrase), but if Xi suggests stacking ’em high, it will likely happen.
Get some popcorn, enjoy the film, and contemplate the future.
Chief Lee Crowchild and I have been asked to present at the Calgary Science Centre for an upcoming Indigenous Science Night. Attendance will be up to about 1700 people and the event is just a few weeks away, so I thought that I would reach out to readers for a little help.
The way the science program works, a ‘mainstream western scientist’ (me) is teamed up with an Elder (a Knowledge Keeper) from a nearby Nation. Fortunately, I was able to select my own presentation partner, Chief Crowchild, whom I have worked with for years – and who is a beekeeper on Tsuut’ina Nation. (We have taught courses together and we hang out every few weeks.)
The organizers have chosen the topic of “Wavelength and Frequency” as the evening’s theme. Our part of the presentation lasts about one hour and deals with bees. The Chief will decide how his portion will overlap with my discussion of wavelength and frequency, as related to bees. I am in the process of selecting my subject lines.
Here’s what I have in mind so far.
The organizers suggested bee vs human eyesight with a discussion of the light spectrum. Bees see ultraviolet, which appears white to humans; humans see red, which appears black to bees.
Wing-beat frequency varies with the angry buzz of disturbed bees to the gentle pitch of a humming happy hive.
The speed of a scout’s dance loop (frequency – loops per minute) as it relates to distance of flower patch from hive.
I would love to hear ideas from readers. We will have plenty of time to include more than these three examples, slides and images, and corresponding indigenous observations. Our focus will be on native bees, but knowledgeable honey bee keepers may have some ideas that transfer to some species of native bee.
Almost every time I teach a beginning beekeeping course, a student or two comes forward to whisper: “If I move my bees to a patch of cannabis, will I get weedy honey?” I tell them that cannabis buds don’t secrete nectar. Then their balloons of enthusiasm deflate. “But the weed store. . . it sells weed-infused honey.”
There’s a big difference between nectar that carries psychedelics and psychedelics carried by honey. I direct my beginning beekeeping students to one of the many webpages that tells how to dry, crush, and infuse – such as here, here, and here. By the way, I was really impressed with the beautiful white honey being infused in the video in the last link.
In the ancient myths, honey was glorified as a super-food, taken by wise guys, such as the Greeks who visited mountainside oracles two-thousand years ago and then spun outrageous tales of odysseys. They believed that the nectar of the gods held power. Where did the super-food idea come from? Some say it was because, until the 1700s, people thought that honey was sent by God in a mist that descended on flowers from above. A pioneering bee book, The Feminine Monarchie (the first English-language book to note that the biggest bee in the colony is a queen, not a king), also endorsed the specious nectar-from-thin-air notion. Despite his enlightenment, the author, Reverend Charles Butler, declared in 1609:
“The greatest plenty of purest nectar cometh from above; which Almighty God doth miraculously distil out of the air . . . which thence doth descend into the earth in a dew or small drizzling rain.”
So, for some of our ancestors, honey was linked to God’s scattering of nectar onto flowers. However, I think that honey’s magic is mostly rooted in its innate sweetness and its potential intoxicating power. When early humans discovered honey mixed with rainwater on abandoned, exposed combs, they had an extra treat. In the right situation, early people would have felt the unprecedented effects of intoxication by way of fermented honey. Honey, likely the first source to alter mental states, was magical. Dr Eva Crane, in her tome, The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting, pages 594-595, speculated:
“A further apparently miraculous property of honey was that, mixed with water and left for a few days, it was transformed into a liquid which endowed the consumer with an apparently magical euphoria . . .”
But, let’s return to the theme of nectar sources (sorry, not available from cannabis) that yield ‘hallucinogenic’ honey. Most notable is the wild honey of Nepal, produced by native bees which have been visiting native flowers.
Also called “mad honey”, this special mountain honey is produced by bees feasting on some species of rhododendron found in Nepal, Tibet, Turkey, and a few other places where rhododendron is abundant. The honey contains grayanotoxins (neurotoxins) that can cause hallucinations, vomiting, loss of consciousness, impotence, and seizures. Not my idea of fun, but to each their own.
Like anything in excess, it will kill you. It’s not possible to know what dosage of mad honey can cause these effects because the honey varies madly from place to place. Spring honey, from rhododendron nectar, is poisonous and may be hallucinogenic. Other honey, produced by the same bees at the same location but later in the year, may be entirely lacking grayanotoxic effects.
I have just finished reading This is Your Mind on Plants, by Michael Pollan. It’s an exploration of society’s relationship with mind-altering flora. Broadly, the book is divided into poppies, coffee beans, and cacti, which respectively deliver pain-killing sedatives, energy boosts, and hallucinations. Although rhododendron honey is not mentioned, I found the book to be an enchanting overview of illicit drugs and medicine plants as well as a provocative discourse on what things are considered illegal in light of the illogic of cultural norms.
I’ve never used illegal drugs. I was afraid of “the man” coming to lock me up, even though I knew that a lot of what is declared illegal is the result of vested interests, corporate overlords, and self-righteous Karens. Nevertheless, my mild consumption of alcohol, past adventures with a few strong cigars, current use of tea and coffee, rare post-surgery narcotics, and deep inner-directed meditation (Vipassana flavour, often) have acquainted me with things that can mildly alter conscious awareness.
Mr. Pollan is a well-informed, engaging, curious sort of person. I am happy to hear his comments on a wide range of subjects. Although I rarely listen to Joe Rogan (Who among us has time to eaves-drop on three-hour-long conversations?), I did listen to a Rogan Podcast when I knew that Pollan would appear. They talked about his book and about psychedelics in general.
Near the end, Rogan and Pollan briefly drifted over to the mysterious hallucinogenic Himalayan honey. Neither had a clue of what they were talking about, though Michael Pollan was grounded to reality better than Joe Rogan. They (especially Rogan) pondered the style of comb that bees foraging on Himalayan honey would design. Rogan knew the Himalayan comb was odd, compared to the comb built by American honey bees. Maybe these were the sort of combs that hallucinating bees generate. Strange and wonderful. On mad honey, could bees with a receptive creative mind (even if the brain weighs just 2 milligrams) build something sort of, well . . . mind blowing?
Pollan didn’t know enough about Himalayan bees to correct Rogan’s idea that the huge flat, unusual comb of Apis dorsata was caused by the evolutionary twists and turns of a species quite different from our western honey bee, Apis mellifera. Pollan is excused – Asian bees are not his strong suit. Rogan was just speculating about something he knew very little about. His podcast is entertainment, with a few bits of verifiable information cementing some of the blocks together. I encourage food experimenters to listen to the podcast here. (You will need a Spotify account.) Listen, but please don’t buy this type of honey – it has become so expensive and over-harvested that the bees that make it and the people that harvest it are in trouble. If the demand for the ultimate Joe Rogan experience accelerates, A. dorsata may become extirpated (locally extinct). That would be both a natural and a cultural disaster.
*Please note that mad honey and cannabis-infused honey is illegal in nanny states. It can present serious health risks for children and adults. Finally, sit down with your medical provider to discuss if natural grayanotoxic rhododendron honey is right for you.
My badbeekeeping blog has largely avoided the topic of global climate change. It’s contentious. Some insist it’s happening; other insist that it ain’t. I have purposefully tried to limit my conversation on the topic because I didn’t want to alienate any readers who have deep convictions on the subject. But opinions – and deep convictions – sometimes change. Especially when facts are staring at us.
Should a beekeeping blog discuss climate change? Of course it should. If climate change is really happening, it can have an enormous effect on our honey bees’ survival, production, and pollination. A good beekeeper, especially one who leads a boy scout troop, is always prepared. Be ready for strange weather is going to help you stay in the bees.
A bit of my backstory may help before I continue. Most readers know that I owned and operated small commercial honey farms, chronologically, in Pennsylvania, Florida, Wisconsin, Saskatchewan, and Alberta. Dust, drought, and boredom pushed me out of my business in Saskatchewan thirty years ago. Looking for income for my growing family, I dropped by the University of Saskatchewan, and four years later came away with a high honours degree in geophysics. (Geophysics is a typical career move for bored commercial beekeepers.) That was 1991. The geophysics credentials led me to Calgary, the oil-centre of Canada and the place where nearly all geologists and geophysicists in the country ended up at that time. I was hired by the world’s largest oil company and worked there for five years.
During my years at Exxon, I learned that climate change is real and is man-made. I learned this from the scientists, engineers, and economists working for Exxon in the 1990s. As one example, our Arctic exploration team knew that high-water, low-ice scenarios would impact exploration of the Arctic Ocean during climate change. Exxon fully understood that anthropogenic heating was coming. As our boss’s boss’s boss, Rex Tillerson (who became Donald Trump’s first defense secretary) once said, “Climate change is real and it’s partly man-made.” But Tillerson was confident that we could engineer our way out of the problems fossils fuels were causing. (By the way, although we understood that fossil fuels caused climate change, Exxon’s message to the public was a bit different.)
I told my Exxon experience to a family member. He told me that he disagreed. He liked to do his own research, he said. And his research led him to the opinion that climate change is a hoax, created by governments as a way to control us. I was surprised that his research led him to different conclusions than what the men and women at Exxon had discovered. I told him that I appreciated that he was interested enough to do his own research and I respect him for that.
So, let’s assume that climate change isn’t happening. Let’s assume that burning eight billion tonnes of coal and nine billion tonnes of oil each year has no climate effect. We can at least agree that the pollution is real. When I lived in Pennsylvania, many years ago, acid rain from industrial burning of high-sulfur coal was killing lakes and forests around the Great Lakes near our home. When the Canadian and American governments put an end to that dirty fuel, the lakes recovered and the forests grew back. Pollution is a killer. When men worked the coal mines of West Virginia, they died young from black lung disease. The dust wasn’t confined to the mines, it travelled across the country in open train cars. And cities from London to L.A. had dangerously unsafe air for generations, due to fumes from vehicles. Changes to car emissions has improved that pollution problem enormously. Cutting back on coal and oil saves lives. For that alone, we need to move away from the fossils.
2023 was smoky in Calgary.
This is my son, Daniel, trying to enjoy a few moments outdoors.
The smoke was from huge forest fires that are consuming western Canadian trees. These unprecedented fires are due to a combination of poor forestry management, drought, and heat.
Let’s now assume that the climate is heating up because of fossil fuel use, something that the world’s largest oil company knew. In addition to the indisputable health issues caused by exhaust ingestion, what if the recent strange disruptive weather is due to man-made global changes in weather patterns?
We may argue that changes in climate are nothing new. Changes are cyclical. That’s true. But that’s like telling folks on the Titanic that other ships have been sunk by icebergs and it’s natural. Stuff happens. If you are on the sinking ship, it matters to you. Earth has gone through “Snowball” periods and hot phases many times in the past. These can be partly explained and predicted by models built from astronomical data. The models, using the Earth’s obliquity (tilt), eccentricity (orbit), precession (wobble), and Milankovitch cycles, help explain past climate conditions and predict that the Earth should now be entering another ice age. Imagine how hot the globe would be if we were headed into one of those hot phases right now. But astronomic forces are pushing us toward another ice age. We don’t feel that way because we hit the gas – literally and figuratively. It’s heating up instead.
We have left now 2023, the hottest year on record. We can hope that this was an anomaly and things will soon chill. However, such hope is akin to a retirement plan based on someday winning the Lotto. Recent climate changes have been more dramatic than the folks at Exxon predicted, and perhaps not reversible. When we should have been saving for our future, we were banking on some celestial lottery. Now, we are old and almost penniless.
Variation of Earth’s global average temperature, past 2,000 years. These data are normalized on the 30-year average temperature for the period 1961-1990. Note that from the year 1000 to about 1850, temperatures were about 0.5 °C below the 1970s period. But by 2019, the temperatures were about 1.3 °C above pre-industrial values.
To put these small numbers of degrees in perspective, in 2020, the Earth was only 5 °C warmer than it was during the last Ice Ages. It doesn’t take much to knock us off balance.
I didn’t intend for my first blog posting of 2024 to be nihilistic. But last night, at midnight, when the neighbours were merrily popping their fireworks on our front lawn, I could hear heavy rainfall. It was plus 6 °C and raining! Rain and mild temperatures on New Year’s Eve is rare as hen’s teeth in Calgary. It should be cold here. This is a kilometre-high city, hours north of Great Falls, Montana. The weird New Year’s Eve weather made me want to write about the cheerless topic of climate disaster. Sure, my house and yard are a single data point, at a single time, at a single place, so as it’s not to be confused with proof of global climate change. Nor is the fact that Calgary just now experienced its warmest December ever recorded. Nor even the fact that Canada had its warmest year ever recorded. But when a million global data points, from oceans to mountains and continents to islands, average out to being the warmest ten years we’ve ever know, we should pay attention.
I’m not going to tell anyone to use less energy. I don’t have to. Energy costs money – money that’s burned and gone. It causes pollution. It changes the climate. Becoming more efficient and using fewer resources is simply logical and even self-serving. You don’t have to be an altruistic do-gooder: even psychopaths watch their coins.
As beekeepers, we need to think about how climate change will affect our bees. That’s a topic for another screed, which I will reserve for the near future. Meanwhile, beekeepers can derive some assuaging of their conscience by knowing that the production of honey is perhaps the most energy-smart food-making activity we can do. Sunshine and plants give nectar that honey bees gather and turn into energy that we can eat by the spoonful. Calories consumed by the hot bee smoker, the metal extractor, the honey-shop electricity, transportation, and human muscle power is recovered a dozen times over by the honey we produce. We will do better, I think, but we have a rough patch ahead.
If you’re inclined to do your own research, NASA has the raw data online, for free. Meanwhile, make the best of what you’ve got. And good luck to everyone in 2024.
I’ve been posting this piece nearly every Christmas for a while. If you’ve read it before, read it again. Or not. Christmas Day is L.L. Langstroth’s birthday. He’d be 213 years old, if he hadn’t been struck down in his 85th year from complications of elderliness. Langstroth’s movable frames and his brilliant beekeeping book, The Hive and the Honey Bee, were his gifts to you.
LL Langstroth 1810-1895
He invented the modern beehive, making it easier, more productive, and less stressful for bees. However, Langstroth earned nothing from his invention and suffered severely from self-doubt, melancholy, and clinical depression. Yet, he changed beekeeping to its core. On his birthday anniversary), we give homage to the most important beekeeper America ever produced.
Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth Langstroth was born December 25, 1810. That was some Christmas gift to the world, wasn’t it? His childhood seems to have been typical for a kid who spent a lot of time on his hands and knees on the streets of Philadelphia, trapping bugs and ants with table scraps. “I was once whipped because I had worn holes in my pants by too much kneeling on the gravel walkways in my eagerness to learn all that I could about ant life,” Langstroth wrote.
He built paper traps for beetles and flies, leading to a traumatic experience when his grammar school teacher – fed up with six-year-old Lorenzo’s ‘wasted’ bug time – smashed his paper cages and freed his flies. Lorenzo was sent to cry himself to sleep inside a dark cupboard at the school. The teacher’s reform strategy worked. Langstroth gave up his passion for insects and became a preacher instead.
Langstroth studied theology at Yale. At 25, he was offered a job as pastor at the South Church in Andover, Massachusetts (left). Even in Langstroth’s day, it was an old prestigious church. In 2011 it celebrated its 300th anniversary. The plum assignment as pastor at South Church was a recognition of the young man’s considerable abilities.
While visiting a parish member, Langstroth noticed a bowl of comb honey. He said that it was the most beautiful food he had ever seen. He asked to visit his new friend’s bees. Langstroth was led to the fellow’s attic where the hives were arranged near an open window. “In a moment,” Langstroth remembered, “the enthusiasm of my boyish days seemed, like a pent-up fire, to burst out in full flame. Before I went home I bought two stocks of bees in common box hives, and thus my apiarian career began.” Langstroth had been infected by the bee bug.
Head troubles
Throughout his lifetime, Langstroth suffered badly from manic-depression. In the mid-nineteenth century, there was little anyone could do to help a person afflicted with mental illness. The only solace was temporary and usually came to Langstroth when he was with his bees.
The young minister felt that he wasn’t an effective parson because of his recurring dark days, so he quit preaching and became principal of a women’s school instead. By all accounts, he was a empathetic minister and a dedicated teacher, but bouts of depression forced him to cancel sermons and classes. He needed a change. Bees were the only thing he knew that could give him peace, comfort, and meaningful work while fitting into a life disrupted by debilitating illness. But sometimes not even bees could stop what he called his “head trouble” when darkness crept upon him.
He built an apiary and hoped to make his living from bees. But during his first beekeeping summer, severe depression returned and lasted for weeks. He sold all his colonies in the fall. Then he started with the bees again. His life would turn over again and again with periods of manic enthusiasm and productivity followed by gloomy months of despondency. During his depressed phases, Langstroth took shelter in a bed in a dark room. He would remain there, immobile, for days. “I asked that my books be hidden from my sight. Even the letter “B” would remind me of my bees and instill a deep sadness that wouldn’t leave.”
When he was finally able to return to his bees, Langstroth made great strives at increasing efficiency in his apiary. He made his tasks more effective. He never knew when depression would return, so he worked day and night during productive manic periods.
Eureka!
The major inefficiency in his apiary was the design of the boxes which held his bees. The boxes were usually simple wooden crates with solid walls and small holes which the bees used as entrances. During harvest of a hive, the lid was lifted from the crate. Attached to the lid were wax combs that the bees had built in haphazard jumbles. The combs cracked and broke during the beekeeper’s excavation, causing a sticky mess and disturbing the excited bees. It was a messy, nasty way to inspect bees and harvest honey.
Langstroth noticed that bees often left a small space around the edge of their combs. Sometimes, upon lifting the lids, he would find wax attached to both the lid and the walls inside the hive, while at other times the hanging combs were not stuck to the hive walls at all. Langstroth’s brilliant insight (his Eureka! moment) was noticing that the space was about 3/8 of an inch when the combs hung freely. If a comb were closer than that to a wall, the bees would attach it to the walls. But at 3/8 inch (actually, between 6.35 and 9.53 mm), the bees always left a space. He had discovered “bee space”.
Langstroth’s next step was brilliant. He made wooden frames that held the wax combs, designing them so they dangled within the hive’s box with their wooden edges always 3/8 of an inch from anything that might touch them: the lid, the interior box walls, the box bottom, other frames. Positioned like this, the bees neither waxed the frames together nor stuck them to the sides or bottom of the hive. The result was a beehive with movable frames. Combs could be lifted, examined, and manipulated. It was 1851 and modern beekeeping had begun.
Colonies could be handled more gently. Frames could be inspected for disease, queen quality, and honey and pollen reserves. Movable frames meant queen bees could be produced and strong hives split (by sharing frames between two or more new hives), thus increasing colony numbers while preventing swarming. It was a new era in beekeeping. The next few decades were “The Golden Age of Beekeeping“.
This picture of a frame, as designed by Langstroth, is from the May 1902American Bee Journal!
Easy to use, easy to make, easy to copy
L.L. Langstroth was not alone in figuring out bee space and inventing applications for it. About the same time, some European beekeepers (Huber, in Switzerland and Dzierzon in Poland/Germany, Prokopovich in the Ukraine) had made similar discoveries. But Langstroth created a simpler hive. His Langstroth beehive was a fine example of North American utilitarian craftsmanship. Efficient, practical, and cheap.
Langstroth’s invention was so simple and inexpensive that his patent was readily violated. Minor modifications were touted as significant improvements to Langstroth’s original design, circumventing the patent. Langstroth began a number of lawsuits against the more flagrant violators, but when the court cases began, his “head troubles” returned.
He dropped the litigation when he realized he could not win and when his illness prevented a spirited defense. Realistically, it was impossible to stop imitations and adaptations. Beekeepers – who were often handy farmers and carpenters – quickly built one or two hives with frames for themselves. Langstroth sought one dollar to license each box, which was a huge price in those days. But his real discovery was “bee space” which could not be patented. His position was like trying to patent sails for ships after discovering wind. Even Langstroth’s supporters wrote that Langstroth should have simply allowed the idea to flourish in the public domain. Trying to enforce the patent was expensive. It left Langstroth nearly bankrupt.
With a plethora of modifications and similar boxes being designed in Europe, Langstroth’s great contribution may have entered the world anyway and without credit to him. But the retired minister had one other major contribution to society. It earned him much-deserved praise and even a bit of money. In one feverish six-month manic spell, Langstroth wrote the greatest beekeeping book ever published.
Hive and Honey Bee
In 1852, working for six hectic months with almost no sleep, Langstroth wrote The Hive and the Honey-Bee. This book, revised and expanded in more than 40 subsequent editions, is still a reliable source for beekeepers. When Langstroth wrote it, there were other good bee primers on the market, but his book moved to the top spot. You may read the original 1853 book on-line. I’ve read and re-read my 1859 copy with its 409 pages of fading text protected by orange hardboard covers. It earned its place in my library. Within the book are chapters such as Loss of the Queen (and what to do), Swarming, Feeding, Wintering, and Enemies of the Bees. It’s a very practical guide to keeping bees and much of it is still relevant today.
Langstroth never found lasting peace from his cycles of manic depression, though in his 60s he travelled to Mexico and discovered that the stimulation and change of scenery gave him an unexpected respite from depression. The illness returned when he returned to his home, but he remembered the break from head troubles with great appreciation. He lived long enough (85 years!) to see his work appreciated, his name honored, and his book sell hundreds of thousands of copies. Despite his life-long disability, he had a long, full life, three children, and interesting work. And he made a phenomenal contribution to beekeeping.
Merry Christmas & Happy Birthday! to Lorenzo Loraine Langstroth
Mid-70s is too young to pass over to the other side. But that was the fate for Kim Flottum, 76, who passed away Sunday, December 10, 2023, after a short battle with cancer. The bright and adventurous bee master, editor, and author was based in Medina, Ohio. Kim was the editor of Bee Culture magazine for 33 years, retiring in 2019. He was originally from central Wisconsin. It followed easily that he would earn his bachelor’s degree in horticulture from the University of Wisconsin. Following graduation, he worked as a researcher at the USDA Honey Bee Research Lab in Madison. His work focused on pesticide issues, crop pollination, and nectar-producing plants, especially for the home gardener.
Most of us knew him as editor of Bee Culture magazine – a job that kept him engaged and knowledgeable about bees and beekeepers. But earlier, his career took him to Connecticut where he was elected president of the Connecticut Beekeepers’ Association. Later, as Publications Manager for Bee Culture, he created a new magazine, Beekeeping: Your First Three Years. This new magazine helped Kim educate new beekeepers at the time that beekeeping was rapidly expanding as a hobby. Over the years, Kim served as the Chairman of the Eastern Apicultural Society, president of the Ohio State Beekeepers’ Association and president of the Medina County Beekeepers Association. Kim retired in 2019 but continued keeping backyard bee colonies, writing beekeeping books and articles, and co-hosting podcasts.
I first met Kim in Ireland at Apimondia-2005 where I gave him my deep thanks for the kind accolades that he gave my Bad Beekeeping book. He said that I’d written a classic (and he repeated that claim in Bee Culture magazine – comments that touched me, considering the source) – but it was he who was the master of writing. I own several of the books that Kim Flottum wrote or co-wrote, including The Backyard Beekeeper; In Business with Bees; The Backyard Beekeeper’s Honey Handbook; First Time Beekeeping; Better Beekeeping: The Ultimate Guide to Keeping Stronger Colonies and Healthier; More Productive Bees; Honey Connoisseur (written with Marina Marchese); Beekeeping for Dummies (by Howland Blackiston with the Foreword by Kim Flottum); Common Sense Natural Beekeeping (with Stéphanie Bruneau); The New Starting Right With Bees (with Kathy Summers); and, Honey Bee Pests, Predators, and Diseases (with Roger A. Morse). I recommend all of these books as good, informative reads and treats.
My last meeting with Kim was in August 2023 when he and Jeff Ott interviewed Etienne Tardiff and me for the Beekeeping Today Podcast. I had no idea that he was ill. I don’t think anyone would have guessed that he’d be gone in a few months. Jeff has posted a heart-felt tribute to Kim and Kim’s association with Jeff and the podcast – you can read it here.
A few days ago, I sat down with the folks at Beekeeping Today Podcast to talk about how our non-native honey bees may affect native bees. Jeff Ott and Becky Masterman were informed, sympathetic interviewers. I had a great time talking to them. Their notes for the episode are below. These notes capture our discussion really well. I hope you have a chance to listen to the podcast. We cover a lot of information, especially regarding my research at the University of Calgary.
In this episode, we talk with Ron Miksha, a former commercial beekeeper now living in Calgary, Alberta. Ron was on the podcast back in August of this year talking about the Western Apiculture Society conference with Étienne Tardiff. At the time, he mentioned his research on the impact of the non-native honey bee on native bees and floral sources. This topic deserved its own space so we invited him back today.
The debate over the impact of honey bees on native bees, pollinators, and floral sources is a complex and multifaceted issue, touching upon ecology, conservation, and agriculture. At the heart of this debate lies the honey bee, a non-native species in many parts of the world.
One major concern is the competition honey bees may pose to native bee populations. By sheer numbers, honey bees can dominate floral resources in an area, potentially outcompeting native bees for nectar and pollen. This competition can be particularly significant in areas with limited floral abundance. Some studies suggest that the presence of honey bees in resource-constrained areas can lead to a decrease in the diversity and abundance of native bees.
Honey bees are renowned for their pollination services, crucial for many agricultural crops. However, their dominance in certain ecosystems may alter pollination dynamics. While they contribute significantly to the pollination of a wide range of crops, their presence may affect the pollination efficiency of native plants, which have evolved alongside native pollinators.
Honey bees not only compete with native bees for existing resources but can also influence the abundance and distribution of floral resources themselves. Their foraging patterns can affect the flowering plants’ reproductive success, potentially leading to changes in plant community composition over time.
The debate extends to conservation and beekeeping practices. There is a growing call for responsible beekeeping that minimizes the impact on native bee populations and ecosystems. This includes managing hive numbers, especially in ecologically sensitive areas, and supporting habitat restoration and conservation efforts to bolster both native and non-native pollinator populations.
The challenge lies in balancing the agricultural benefits of honey bees with the ecological needs of native pollinators and plants. This involves a nuanced understanding of local ecosystems, the role of different pollinators, and the impact of human activities.
The debate over the impact of honey bees on native bees and ecosystems is an ongoing one, requiring continued research, informed policy-making, and collaborative conservation efforts. Thoughtful consideration and continued research are needed. Listen to our conversation with Ron as he shares his research and observations on this topic.
He died 20 years ago. But Richard Taylor is interesting enough to remember, at least every November 5th when a small part of the world stands to salute the practical beekeeper and philosopher. Here’s my tribute, dusted off for today’s post.
As I continue to plod along with a myriad of misadventures, I feel obligated to apologize for the infrequency of these bad beekeeping posts. Sorry. But I’m not going to apologize for occasionally repeating a posting from the past – especially this one, which celebrates the great commercial beekeeper, writer, and philosophy professor, Richard Taylor. He would have been 104 years old this November 5th. I first published a Richard Taylor tribute a few years ago. I wonder what he’d think of our messed-up world if he were alive and philosophizing today…
Today is the anniversary of the birth of our beekeeper-hero,Professor Richard Taylor. A commercial beekeeper with just 300 hives, he was an early champion of plastic bee equipment and the round comb honey system. He was also a philosopher who “wrote the book” on metaphysics. He really wrote the book on metaphysics – for decades, his college text Metaphysics introduced first-year philosophy students to the most fundamental aspect of reality – the nature of cosmology and the existence of all things.
Although his vocation of philosophy was speculative, unprovable, and abstract to the highest degree, Richard Taylor was as common and down-to-earth as it’s possible to become – with some minor tinges of eccentric behaviour added to the mix. I will write about his philosophy and how it shaped his politics, but first, let’s celebrate his beekeeping.
Richard Taylor and his twin brother were born November 5th, 1919. It was shortly after their father had died. That left a widowed mother to raise an impoverished family during the Great American Depression. Richard was fourteen when he got his first hive of bees in 1934 – the year that a quarter of Americans were unemployed and soup lines leading to Salvation Army kitchens stretched for blocks. He began beekeeping that year, and except for submarine duty as an officer during World War II, he was never far from bees. He respected honest hard work and the value of a penny, but as a young man, he nevertheless drifted unfocussed, trying college, then quitting, and then taking various uninspiring jobs.
In the US Navy, he spent evenings on his bunk in a sub, descending into the gloomy passages of Arthur Schopenhauer. Somehow the nihilistic philosopher appealed to Taylor and ironically gave him an interest in life. This led Taylor back to school. He became a philosopher himself.
Richard Taylor earned his PhD at Brown University, then taught at Brown, Columbia, and finally Rochester, from which he retired in 1985 after twenty years. He also held court as a visiting lecturer at Cornell, Hamilton, Hartwick, Hobart and William Smith College, Ohio State, and Princeton. His best years were at Rochester where he philosophized while his trusted German shepherd Vannie curled under his desk. Richard Taylor sipped tea and told his undergrads about the ancient philosophers – Plato, Epicurus, Aristotle, Xeno, and Thales. In the earlier days, he often drew on a cigar while he illuminated his flock of philosophy students. Those who attended his classes remarked on his simple, unpretentious language. They also noted that he was usually dressed in bee garb – khakis and boots. As soon as the lecture ended and the last student withdrew from the hall, he and Vannie quickly disappeared to the apiaries.
Taylor, the hippie beekeeper
It may be unfair to describe Dr Richard Taylor as a hippie beekeeper, but perhaps he was exactly that. As a beekeeper, he was reclusive. He refused to hire help. Rather than deal with customers, he set up a roadside stand where people took honey and left money without ever meeting him. In his shop or out among his bees, Taylor disdained big noisy equipment. He sometimes took a lawn chair and a thermos of tea to his apiaries so he could relax and listen to the insects work, but I doubt that he did this much. Through the pages of American Bee Journal, Bee Culture, and several beekeeping books, he described best beekeeping practices as he saw them – and those practices required hard work and self-discipline more than relaxed lawn-chair introspection.
Running 300 colonies alone while holding a full-time job and writing a book every second year demands focus. His bees were well-cared for, each producing about a hundred pounds every year in an area where such crops are rare. By 1958, he was switching from extracting, which he disliked, to comb honey production, which he loved. Comb honey takes a more skilled beekeeper and better attention to details, but in return it requires less equipment, a smaller truck, and no settling tanks, honey pumps, whirling extractors, or 600-pound drums. “Just a pocket knife for cleaning the combs,” he said.
To me, it’s surprising that Richard Taylor embraced the round comb honey equipment called Cobanas. The surprising thing is that the equipment is plastic. Reading Taylor’s books, one realizes his affinity for simple tools and old-fashioned ways. In that context, plastic seems wrong. But it’s not.
In the past, comb honey sections were square-shaped and made from wood. The wood had to be light-weight and soft enough to bend into boxes without breaking. The wood that suited this need in the eastern USA was basswood (also called linden, Tilia spp.). Early in the twentieth century, over a million comb honey sections were produced each year – leading to the destruction of forests of the stately nectar-producing trees. Plastic is light-weight, durable, and ultimately very practical for bee equipment. It can be recycled, a tangible benefit to a person as frugal as Richard Taylor. He was sure that Cobana equipment, invented by a Michigan physician in the 1950s, would lead to a simple practical way of beekeeping. Taylor was so enthused that in 1958, living in Connecticut, he wrote his first beekeeping article about the new plastic equipment for the American Bee Journal. Here’s the photo that accompanied his story.
Richard Taylor’s son, Randy, packing round comb honey, 1958. (Photo from ABJ).
His comb honey project worked. Richard Taylor, the beekeeper, was financially successful. In today’s dollars, his comb honey bee farm returned about $75,000 profit each year – a tidy sum for a hobby and more than enough spare change to indulge his habit of frequenting farmer’s auctions where he’d delight in carrying home a stack of empty used hive bodies that could be had for a dollar.
Taylor, the teacher
Richard Taylor immensely enjoyed teaching and lamented what he called “grantsmanship” which arose in America while he was a professor. Grantsmanship is the skill of securing funding for one’s projects while possibly ignoring the fundamental duties of teaching. Unethical grantsmanship, of course, can lead to big dollars flowing to researchers who are willing to claim that sugar, for example, does not contribute to obesity and cigarette smoke does little more than sharpen one’s senses. Richard Taylor saw the compromised atmosphere. He also regretted the demise of good faculty instructors replaced “largely by graduate students, some from abroad with limited ability to speak English. Lecturers who simply read in a monotone from notes are not uncommon,” he wrote.
Meanwhile, the (sometimes unethical) pursuit of grants was accompanied by the rise of the “publish or perish” syndrome. In his own field, Taylor pointed out that academic philosophers engaged in “a kind of intellectual drunkenness, much of which ends up as articles in academic journals, thereby swelling the authors’ lists of publications.” Taylor wrote extensively on this in 1989, saying that there were 93 (!) academic philosophy journals published in the USA alone that year – seldom read, seldom good, but filling mailboxes with material to secure a professor’s promotions.
This was not the academic world that Richard Taylor sought when he began his career in the 1950s, but it was the world he eventually left. Although he wrote 17 books – mostly philosophical essays but also several rather good beekeeping manuals – he didn’t publish many academic papers. He spent more time in the lecture halls and with his bees than he did “contemplating the existential reality of golden mountains and writing papers about them”, as he put it.
Taylor, the philosopher
I am only going to give this one short passage about Richard Taylor, the philosopher. He studied and taught metaphysics and ethics. His essays on free will and fatalism are renowned and influential, even today. I’ve never taken a philosophy course, so anything I say about the subject will probably end with me embarrassing myself. However, a few years ago, during a winter trip to Florida, a copy of Richard Taylor’s Metaphysics travelled with me. I read every word and I think that I understood it at the time. For me, most of it was transparent common sense. Since it was well-crafted and interesting, Taylor may have lulled me into believing that I understood his metaphysical description of the universe, even with just this cursory introduction. At any rate, I felt that what he wrote wasn’t different than what I’d come to discover on my own, although it was much more elegantly presented than I could ever manage.
Taylor, the Republican
When I saw Richard Taylor – just once, at a beekeepers’ meeting – I indeed thought that he was a hippie, a common enough form of beekeeper in the 1970s. His belt was baler twine and a broad-rimmed hat hid his face, though a scraggy beard protruded. I was surprised to later discover that Richard Taylor identified as a conservative and voted Republican. But he was also an atheist, advocated for women’s rights, and late in life (though proud of his military service) he became a pacifist, “coming late to the wisdom,” he said. He valued hard work, self-sufficiency, and independence. He disliked Nixon, but gladly voted for Reagan. He even wrote a New York Times editorial praising Reagan’s inaugural address while offering insight on what it means to be an introspective conservative in the 1980s.
At age 62, still a professor of philosophy at the University of Rochester, and the recent author of the book Freedom, Anarchy, and the Law, he penned that widely-circulated New York Times opinion piece. Taylor wrote that in Reagan’s inaugural address, the new president reminded us that “our government is supposed to be one of limited powers, not one that tries to determine for free citizens what is best for them and to deliver them from all manner of evil.” Richard Taylor then goes on to warn that “political subversion . . . is the attempt to subordinate the Constitution to some other philosophy or creed, believed by its adherents to be nobler, wiser, or better.”
Taylor warned of anti-constitutional subversion in American politics, “if anyone were to try to replace the Constitution with, say, the Koran, then no one could doubt that this would be an act of subversion . . . Similarly, anyone subordinating the principles embodied in the Constitution to those of the Bible, or to those of one of the various churches or creeds claiming scripture as its source, is committing political subversion.”
Taylor tells us that conservative spokesmen of Reagan’s era – he mentions Jerry Fallwell and others – are right saying that “it is not the government’s function to pour blessings upon us in the form of art, health, and education, however desirable these things may be.” Nor, Taylor said, is it constitutional for “the Government to convert schoolrooms into places for prayer meetings, or to compel impoverished and unmarried girls, or anyone else, to bear misbegotten children, to make pronouncements on evolution, to instruct citizens on family values, or to determine which books can and cannot be put in our libraries or placed within reach of our children. . . it can never, in the eyes of the genuine conservative, be the role of Government to force such claims upon us. The Constitution explicitly denies the Government any such power.”
I think that Richard Taylor would be politically frustrated today. The Republicans have drifted ever-further from small government and have expanded their reach into personal affairs while the Democrats have pushed forward extensive safety nets. A true libertarian party, or one balancing fiscal conservatism with social liberalism, such as Taylor seems to wish for, gathers little support in America today.
I hope that my summary of Richard Taylor’s political philosophy has not offended his most ardent followers. I’ve tried to distill what Taylor thought about good government – I agree with much of it, but disagree with some. It is presented as just one facet of his personality. Taylor was complicated. His last book, written in his 80s while he was dying from lung cancer, is about marriage – yet his own marriages had heartbreaks.
He showed other complicated and unexpected quirks. For example, he was an avowed humanist, yet showed a spiritual nature. In his office, he mounted a certificate which honored him as a laureate of the International Academy of Humanism, one of the few people chosen over the years. Others included Carl Sagan, Christopher Hitchens, Isaac Asimov, Richard Dawkins, Richard Leakey, Steven Pinker, Salman Rushdie, E.O. Wilson, Elena Bonner, and Karl Popper. He was in extremely elevated intellectual company. Taylor belonged there among the other atheists, even if he once metaphorically wrote in his most popular bee book, “the ways of man are sometimes, like the ways of God, wondrous indeed.”
Taylorisms in the bee yard
Richard Taylor was complicated for a simple man. It is said that he could not stand complacency, vanity or narcissistic behavior, yet he seemed to get along well in gatherings of beekeepers where such attitudes are often on display. He had a love of paradox and Socratic whimsy, yet he was disciplined and direct as a writer. He delighted in the pessimism of Schopenhauer, yet he was not a pessimist himself. Instead, he was quite a puzzle.
I will end this little essay with wisdom from Richard Taylor, the beekeeper. Taylor’s finest bee book, The Joys of Beekeeping, is replete with homey truisms that every aspiring beekeeper should acknowledge and embrace. The book itself is slim, entertaining, personal, and very instructive of the art of keeping bees. Or, as Taylor himself calls beekeeping, “living with the bees. They keep themselves.”
Here, then, are some select Taylorisms:
Beekeeping success demands “a certain demeanor. It is not so much slow motion that is wanted, but a controlled approach.”
“…no man’s back is unbreakable and even beekeepers grow older. When full, a mere shallow super is heavy, weighing forty pounds or more. Deep supers, when filled, are ponderous beyond practical limit.”
“Some beekeepers dismantle every hive and scrape every frame, which is pointless as the bees soon glue everything back the way it was.”
“There are a few rules of thumb that are useful guides. One is that when you are confronted with some problem in the apiary and you do not know what to do, then do nothing. Matters are seldom made worse by doing nothing and are often made much worse by inept intervention.”
. . . and my own favourites . . .
“Woe to the beekeeper who has not followed the example of his bees by keeping in tune with imperceptibly changing nature, having his equipment at hand the day before it is going to be needed rather than the day after. Bees do not put things off until the season is upon them. They would not survive that season if they did, so they anticipate. The beekeeper who is out of step will sacrifice serenity for anxious last-minute preparation, and that crop of honey will not materialize. Nature does not wait.”
“Sometimes the world seems on the verge of insanity, and one wonders what limit there can be to greed, aggression, deception, and the thirst for power or fame. When reflections of this sort threaten one’s serenity, one can be glad for the bees…” – The Joys of Beekeeping
We’ve had unusually mild weather for September and October in Calgary. The heat gave us a chance to clean up some odd bits of beeswax – and turn them into ducks.
I bought this melter, built by Uncle Lee’s Bees in Calgary, a couple of years ago. It quickly builds a high temperature. It is easy to load and clean. Very light to move. Easy to store over winter. I find it hard to believe that it was designed, produced, and sold for just a few hundred dollars. (You can buy one from Worker and Hive in Calgary.) On the other hand, it would take a hobby beekeeper a few years of wax sales to earn the $335CAN ($260US) that it cost. But that’s not the point. Producing nice-quality wax and doing it cleanly, efficiently, using the sun’s energy – and not on the kitchen stove! – is the real point. We found that this melter took the pressure off the kitchen, kept bowls and cutlery from being destroyed, and saved on our electric bill.
It can be expensive running an electric or steam-powered wax melter – and frankly, a waste of energy and money. Of course, there is some energy input in the manufacture and delivery of this unit (glass, insulation, metal, plastics, delivery trucks) but there are equivalent costs in any melter. At most, I would make a wide guess that after labour and profit to the manufacturer and retailer, there might be $40 in actual energy expenses building and delivering this solar wax melter. That’s a couple dollars a year over the lifetime of this melter. All the other energy needs are supplied by the sun.
This melter won’t be for everyone. Nothing ever is. And if we all loved the same thing, we’d all be married to my grandmother, as my grandfather was. But if you are looking for a way to turn cappings into ducks, this is it.
Susan Cormier, author: “Advice to a new beekeeper” (credit: CBC)
“Do not keep bees. . .
“Keep cattle, or chickens or dogs. Their emotions are recognizable, their ailments familiar. Their speech, though foreign, is in a language we understand.”
Thus begins Susan Cormier’s seasoned advice to beekeeping wanna-bees. There are sufficient reasons to refrain from beekeeping, but I hadn’t thought of the communication gap – the bees’ foreign speech. We relish the knowledge (with a bit of pride) that a human among us was able to decipher the code, the language, of scout bees who tell forager bees the distance and direction to fly to visit a meadow of sweetly scented nectar-bearing flowers. That human, Karl von Frisch, sat at a glass-covered colony of honey bees and watched their strange little dances. A bow to the right and a quick wiggle to the left told the other bees to fly two kilometres at a right angle from the sun’s position. The human who interpreted this language was given a Nobel Prize by suitably impressed other humans.
But our communication ends there. It’s a one-way path, from bee to human, and coveys little news of interest to us. Of course, bees communicate other signals to each other (odours when annoyed, brisk movements when defensive) and an astute beekeeper learns to hear this language, too. But we have no real conversation with the bees.
We humans have a much more nuanced intraspecies vocabulary to convey our thoughts and feelings. The CBC Nonfiction award-winner, Ms Cormier, exemplifies this with her light treatise on the gulf between the bee and human species. And she has advice.
“Do not fear deaths, or stings. Both of these happen frequently. Fear fire, drought, dusty parched earth and scorched, wilting flowers. Fear fire, yet carry one with you, waving smoke like fairy dust, like a priest’s incense-filled thurible, quietly chanting blessings and calm.
“Do not fear stings, or the possibility of them. Carry in your arms a box housing 50,000, and think nothing of it. Place your bare hand softly on 200 moving bodies at once and know only warmth.
“Fear tiny mites, the spread of spores and viruses — watch for twisted wings, spasming bodies, the rotting stench of dying brood.
“Fear animals with paws, and hornets. When a small midnight shadow scurries across your lawn, throw rocks, apples, anything at hand. Hiss and growl. Set up traps and hope for the best.”
There is more to Susan Cormier’s story. Her lyrical style should be read for comfort, not for a beekeeper’s enlightenment. To enjoy more passages from her work, read this piece from CBC’s Literary Prize committee; To learn about Susan’s story, see this.
Learn the language of bees. There is no lexicon, no dictionary. They speak in song and scent and secrets and dance. The closest similar language is that of a school of fish, or octopi, or trees.
Learn the smell of anger, sharp and thin like spilled bleach. Learn the sweet air and low, soothing hum of a balanced colony.
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