Mime-Version: |
1.0 |
Content-Type: |
text/plain; charset="UTF-8" |
Date: |
Sat, 22 Aug 2020 18:10:37 -0400 |
Reply-To: |
|
Subject: |
|
Content-Transfer-Encoding: |
quoted-printable |
Message-ID: |
|
Sender: |
|
From: |
|
Parts/Attachments: |
|
|
I found this in a journal published in 1877:
> A new school of apiculture has arisen in the interim which openly teaches retrogression: the big straw skep, the boxes from the grocer's shop, and the "noli-me-tangere" system of bee-management are pronounced the acme of perfection.
Noli-me-tangere is Latin for "touch me not," equivalent to the "let-alone beekeeping" of days gone by, or not gone at all. The author also battles against the prevailing error that queens will mate inside a hive:
> I really thought the merest tyro in bee-keeping was aware that for this very purpose the queen bee invariably mates without the hive.
The idea of in-hive mating was a hot topic at the time:
> Procure a wire-cloth dish cover nine or ten inches in diameter—(they only cost from thirty to fifty cents each); fasten a piece of thin board in the bottom (a wide shingle is just the thing); make a door in the board large enough to put in your hand, and you have all the “fixings” needed. If no dish covers are to be had, make a cage of wire-cloth twelve or fourteen inches long, and six or eight inches in diameter.
> Now, then, on the morning of the day a queen is to leave her hive, put her with four or five selected drones into the fertilizer. The drones should be caught as they are about to leave the hive—those returning from a trip won't answer, as they are most always, as a general thing, too fatigued.
> Lay the fertilizer when fixed (so that the warm air can get into it) over the frames of the hive to which the young queen belongs—Leave her there thirty-six or forty-eight hours—a shorter time usually answers. At the end of that time, if a dead drone is found, release her and she goes down into the hive and commences to lay in a few days.
PLB
***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html
|
|
|