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From:
Adrian Wenner <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Informed Discussion of Beekeeping Issues and Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 7 Feb 2002 15:48:08 -0800
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   We have now had a great deal of input about the first arrival of
European honey bees in North America.  Unfortunately, some individuals
published heresay during the 1700s and 1800s, statements that later came to
be viewed as fact.

   For instance, a Rev. Belknap had claimed that Columbus had brought over
the first Apis mellifera colonies.  Gould and Gould, picked up that notion
in their book, THE HONEY BEE.  However, in 1793 Benjamin Smith Barton (not
the Barton Smith we know) published a scholarly refutation of that idea in
Volume 3 of the TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY (Those
interested can find the full reference on p. 19 of the January 1968 issue
of the AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL).

   The foremost researcher of these issues, Dr. Eva Crane, covered the
topic in her books (A BOOK OF HONEY and THE ARCHEOLOGY OF BEEKEEPING).  In
the latter volume she wrote (p. 33):

"Like Australia, the Americas have no native honeybees (Apis), but some of
the tropical areas are rich in the social stingless bees or Meliponini
(Fig. 2).  These bees, especially species of Trigona and Melipona, have
been widely hunted for their honey and also kept in hives.  There is a
comprehensive book on them [by H.F. Schwartz].  North America has many rock
paintings (pictographs) and petroglyphs, and Wellmann published a
comprehensive study of them [in 1979], but there are no clear indications
of any relationship with [European honey bees]."

.... "Hives of European honeybees were shipped to North America from 1621
onwards.  The bees prospered, and gradually colonised North America except
for the far north [and West], a process that was speeded by the many
nesting sites for wild colonies in hollow trees of the wooded areas, and in
the later nineteenth century by direct shipments to the west coast.  In
British Columbia the bees spread rapidly through the forested regions."

   As far as I can recall from my readings, the first Apis bees to arrive
in the United States was at the Virginia Colony in 1622, as evidenced by a
ship's manifest.

   The American Indians knew of the honey bee as "the White Man's fly," in
that the appearance of honey bees in their region meant that settlers would
not be far behind.  Such a term also indicates that the Indians knew
nothing about Apis before that time.

   None of the above covers the POSSIBILITY that the Spaniards could have
ALSO shipped bees to central Mexico and that the padres could have then
transported them along one or another of the chains of Missions.  Quite
clearly, though, such bees had not reached California by the 1800s (as
indicated in my earlier posting on this list).

   Another interesting point:  Eva Crane also wrote in her archeology book
(p. 63):  "Probably the Yucatecan hives, and their positioning, were
developed on the peninsula by stages that we shall never know.  But
accumulated evidence shows that there must have been contact between the
Mediteranean and America in very early times, and it is worth raising the
possibility that the Yucatecan system could have originated in some early
traveller's imperfect description (or a description imperfectly remembered)
of stacked horizontal cyclinder hives in Egypt or elsewhere."

                                                        Adrian


Adrian M. Wenner                    (805) 963-8508 (home phone)
967 Garcia Road                     (805) 893-8062  (UCSB FAX)
Santa Barbara, CA  93106  [http://www.beesource.com/pov/wenner/index.htm]

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*
*    "We not only believe what we see:
*  to some extent we see what we believe."
*
*                           Richard Gregory (1970)
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