Clay said:
> Not much has changed in the last 100 or so years
> as far as basic bee management (more or less).
I could not disagree more emphatically.
Most any beekeeping book from the 1800s through the 1980s
can illustrate why I disagree. Each will provide multiple
specific examples of naive thinking and mistaken assumptions
presented as "fact", unsupported by scientific proof.
I like old books so much that I have nearly run out of walls
for additional bookcases. I have a good number of old
beekeeping books, among them early editions of both "The Hive
and The Honey Bee" (Dadant) and "ABC & XYZ of Bee Culture"
(AI Root). Having three or four editions of each is very
instructive, but not in the way you might suspect.
Right off the bat, one notices that both of these
basic references got much thicker over time. If one
compares sections in different editions that address
the same subjects, one finds more extensive information,
more statements that are backed up by citations to
published papers and other scholarly works, and one
notes that the language becomes less "vague" and more
"specific and practical".
> To say that these books are obsolete because they
> don't talk about today's chemical trends seems rather
> wrong to me.
While older books may be interesting and entertaining,
they are mostly useless from a practical standpoint,
and the lack of coverage of "chemicals" has nothing to
do with the scope or the depth of the uselessness.
More has "changed" in the past few decades than the
spread of exotic invasive diseases, parasites, and pests.
Much more has been learned than how to use chemicals.
As an extreme example, the old wife's tale about banging
on a pan to "bring down a swarm" is often mentioned in old
beekeeping books as if it were a reliable approach to
catching a swarm. More recent books, if they even mention
this, cite it only as a humorous aside. Only the more recent
books can mention the use of pheremone lures and the research
that has shown the minimum size criteria that bees apparently
use when judging the merits of a cavity for a new hive.
Yes, one might be able to keep bees in exactly the same
manner as they were kept 100 years ago, and one might even
have moderate success for a season or two if one is very
lucky. But this is due more to the adaptability of bees
than to any other factor. Bees are very tolerant of a
wide range of outright abuse, and old beekeeping books
can show one just how many different types of abuse were
perpetrated against bees over the years.
Here's a good rule of thumb. If the author is dead, so
is his book. If alive, he can publish an updated edition.
Also, living authors can answer questions. :)
Beekeeping has progressed in a manner very similar to the
progress in harvesting grain. Change has come slowly, and
has been adopted only grudgingly by those accustomed to the
"old ways":
Straight knives used to cut grain date back to 9000 BC.
Evidence of use of the curved "sickle" exists from about
2000 BC.
http://www.renegadejuggling.jp/equipment/pic/sickle.jpg
It was not until the 9th Century AD that someone
worked out that by putting a longer handle on a sickle, they
could avoid all the bending and stooping over to cut grain.
This was the "scythe". It was revolutionary. One man could
suddenly do the work of many.
http://www.m-w.com/mw/art/scythe.gif
Nothing much changed until the 1790s when an unknown farmer
in the USA added long projecting fingers to his scythe which
allowed him to deposit the cut grain in neat rows at one side
of the swath he made, reducing the labor required to pick up
the cut grain. This was the "cradle scythe".
http://www.rosenet.org/metc/IMAGES/scythe.jpg
The next improvement was the mechanical horse-drawn
harvesters of the 1800s, capital equipment many orders
of magnitude more expensive than the existing technology
of scythes, but allowing much larger crops to be harvested
with less labor than was required for the smaller field.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/lincolns/nation/images/gal_technology_reaperlg.jpg
Then came "self-propelled" harvesting equipment, first
steam powered, and then internal combustion. Again,
speed and efficiency was increased. Modern equipment
harvests, threshes, and winnows as it rolls across the
field. Modern harvesters cost well over $150,000 US.
A hand sickle can still be bought for about $10 US.
You get what you pay for.
Please note that a book on scythe sharpening would be of
no use to someone who needed to fix a hydraulic leak on
their John Deer 9550.
http://www.deere.com/en_US/ProductCatalog/FR/media/images/photogallery/9650_4067
5_G.jpg
Beekeeping has had a similar history. The improvements
in production and efficiency gained by the discovery of
"bee space" were as dramatic as the improvement gained
with the development of the scythe. But additional
knowledge beyond mere "bee space" has allowed us to
abandon many of the misleading and false beliefs that
have been long held by beekeepers.
Horace Greeley, who was the editor of the "New York Tribune"
in the 1850s, is said to have been touring France, where
he came upon a large group of people harvesting grain with
hand sickles in a very smallish field. He asked:
"Why don't you use scythes?
You could cut twice as much."
The reply was:
"We haven't got twice as much to cut."
And that's the whole point. A basic decision faces every
farmer and beekeeper, often yearly:
Fail to keep up with new knowledge, and you can be
trapped in a self-imposed, self-fulfilling prophesy,
where you will be sure to NEVER be able to produce
"twice as much".
Trusting older beekeeping books, failing to read the periodicals,
and neglecting to keep an eye on forums like Bee-L is certain to
keep you stagnant, and limit your efficiency and production.
The future "improvements" in beekeeping will likely be "expensive".
The cost differential may be as extreme as the difference in
cost delta between scythes and the first mechanical harvesters.
The "improvements" may not even work very well at first, much
like the initial offerings in mechanical harvesters.
But the history of agriculture is full of wise men, who distrusted
"newfangled" ways, laughed at the initial failures of new technology,
and later provided the additional acreage that could be farmed by
those who invested time and money in "newfangled" ways. Sadly, the
transfer of land was often accomplished via the bankruptcy auction.
Beekeepers, like gardeners, can stubbornly use whatever techniques
and tools they wish for as long as they wish. They can even persist
in whatever fantasies about bees they please. The bees likely won't
notice, and will adapt to whatever conditions are imposed upon them.
They might even thrive some years, leading the beekeeper to (most
often, mistakenly) think that his techniques had something to do with it.
But science has much to teach us, and I plan to listen very carefully.
jim (Who keeps bees just as his father does,
but only because they share notebooks!)
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