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From:
Rimantas Zujus <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Discussion of Bee Biology <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Mon, 8 Dec 1997 20:43:19 +0200
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Dear Beekeepers
Some Bee L members are interested in Lithuania's beekeeping.
 
>Hello Rimantas.  I saw your message and was wondering if you would like to
share a bit about your hobby with me...
>Regards, Joel Govostes, Freeville, NY   
 
With a kind permission of a professor Mr. William J. Morrison I scanned his article in BEE CULTURE , August 1995, pg. 447.
 
Excuse me for my scanners mistakes I missed.
 
Yours
Rimantas Zujus
Kaunas
LITHUANIA
 
e-mail : [log in to unmask]
 
 
 
Lithuania's Museum Of Ancient Beekeeping
 
"They take you back in time, and you find their development was very similar, and very different than ours."
 
William J. Morrison
 
        A travel poster that I saw at a hotel in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, read in English: "Visit Lithuania, a country of a peculiar culture." I recall chuckling at that mistranslation: surely they had meant to say "unique culture." I have made several trips to Lithuania both before and after it became the first Soviet republic to gain independence. On one of these trips, as a guest of the Lithuanian Institute of Ecology, I had the pleasure of being taken by my hosts for a visit to a rather imaginative museum, the Museum of Ancient Beekeeping. It was there that my prior impression that bees and beekeeping played a significant role in the culture of my Lithuanian ancestors was reinforced.
The museum is located in the National Park of Lithuania in the northeastern part of the country, where the idyllic landscapes, with lakes nestled among low hills, are very pleasing to the eye. Many of the lakes are connected by slow-moving streams, and the park map shows the routes and campsites canoeists might use for weekend excursions. The park does not attempt to preserve a pristine wilderness the way many national parks in the United States do; instead. it consists of a mix of natural and managed forests, farmland, inhabited villages and old homesteads. One can find old ,log barns with doors. nails and hinges made entirely of wood. But in spite of the somewhat developed character of the park. the howls of wolves can still be heard at night.
        Europe has many museums devoted wholly or partly to beekeeping. This one seems to be only one of three that existed in the former Soviet Union. A tiny, rustic cottage, the headquarters of the museum, contains displays of old and modern beehives and beekeeping tools. Across the yard from the cottage is a typical log granary or storehouse with a large front room furnished with rustic tables and benches arranged to seat lecture audiences. Toward the end of my visit, this is where we sat and sampled the local honey from miniature paper cups.
        The most fascinating part of the museum is the quarter-mile-long trail which takes the visitor back in time to when bees were kept in the forest. The guide who escorted me, an off-duty teacher, developed and ran the museum. Through various exhibits set up along the trail, the creators of the museum intended to demonstrate the stages in the development of beekeeping in this part of Europe. Some of the displays included life-size wooden figures, carved by folk artists, which depicted beekeepers, bears and even a bee god.
The first stage of beekeeping represented was a step removed from wild bee hunting. Instead of simply finding and chopping down a bee tree, a rectangular opening was hewn into the part of the hollow tree in which the bees had their nest, and the tree was left standing. The opening was fitted with a narrow, wooden door which permitted access to the combs. The beekeeper would chop his personal mark on the trunk of the tree to indicate his legal right to the colony within it. Just off the trail was a tree prepared in this manner. The guide explained to me that existing cavities too small to accommodate a colony of bees were sometimes enlarged by the beekeeper.
        As we strolled further along the trail through the forest, we came to another tree into which had been hoisted a section of hollow log. The ends of the log were closed off with wood, and its side was fitted with the same type of door previously seen in the hollow tree. The log was tied firmly to the trunk of the tree in a vertical position quite high off the ground, perhaps 20 feet. This was the second stage in ancient beekeeping; if nature did not provide a sufficient number of hollow trees in the beekeeper's territory, then he could put up this movable kind of primitive hive.
        I asked my guide why bees were kept so high up in the trees in these log hives and not on the ground. After all, forest beekeeping was extremely dangerous work. Hoisting oneself into a tree on ropes while putting up with bee stings is no picnic. I expected that the guide's response to my question would have been that the honey-laden hives would have been safer from attacks by bears. In fact, the next two displays depicted some rather barbaric anti-bear devices. One of these was a huge, spiked club hung like a pendulum in front of the bee entrance. The theory was that if the bear swatted the club to get it out of his way, it would swing back and jab him. A bear, being an irritable creature, would swat all the harder and possibly be knocked to the ground where sharpened, upward-pointing skewers awaited him. Scientific research shows that honey bees do tend to choose nest sites high up in trees as opposed to near the ground, a behavior trait no doubt favored by natural selection. But the guide's response to my question about this had nothing to do with the bears or natural selection. His ready answer, which I found startling, was that Lithuanian beekeepers of old felt that the bees preferred to be located high up where they would be close to their gods. Hold it, I thought! Close to their gods?
        A consideration of Lithuanian history and mythology might clarify my guide's odd explanation. Lithuania was the last European nation to be officially converted to Christianity; it did so in the year 1385. The folk culture remained extremely rich in customs, beliefs and superstitions well into the 20th century. Linguists regard Lithuanian, a Baltic tongue, to be the most conserved of all the living Indo-European languages.
        Folklore experts think that Lithuanians used to recognize at least two bee deities or spirits. One of these, the god Babilas, was depicted by the large woodcarving mentioned earlier. He was a corpulent, gluttonous, over-sexed, hairy, buzzing spirit whose model may have been the drone bee. A second and, I think, more appealing bee deity is the goddess Austeja, a fertility goddess and protectress, not only of bees, but of women, especially pregnant women. Her name is connected with the word austyti which today means to repetitiously open and close a door or to go back and forth repeatedly and is also related to a word meaning to weave. Bees were sometimes thought of as weaving their combs inside the hive, an image analogous to women weaving cloth. Collectors of Lithuanian folklore have recorded riddles like this one: "There sits a maid in a dark chamber weaving without a loom or a heddle" (What is it? A bee!) Of course, there is also a connection with the constant coming and going of foraging worker bees. Both Babilas and Austeja are thought to have been air deities as opposed to those associated with the earth. When a Lithuanian bride used to toss mead from her cup upward toward the ceiling during the festivities following a wedding, perhaps she was paying her respects to Austeja. So, the reasoning on the part of Lithuanian forest beekeepers may have been that if the bees' god and goddess are air deities, then they should be up in the air near them. It's all very consistent and logical.
        As we strolled back toward the cottage, the guide further explained to me that the Lithuanian beekeepers centuries ago were members of a kind of brotherhood. Evidence of this is a curious word in everyday use by Lithuanians that links the Lithuanian culture and language with bees and beekeeping. This is the word biciulis, pronounced bitch -ull -iss, with the ull as in "pull". Derived from the two-syllable Lithuanian word for bee, bite (bit-eh), it was originally used among beekeepers. A beekeeper was a bicius (bitch-uss with the uss as in puss). Biciulis is a diminutive and it literally means " dear fellow beekeeper". Beekeepers kept bees as common property and had close relationships among themselves that were almost as close as blood relationships. It is said that there was a strong moral code among them. As in other cultures, the Lithuanians saw the bee as a fiercely moral creature. She stung dishonest people, for example. This carried over to human life. Someone who was adept enough and morally good enough to handle bees, as you were, clearly would make a trustworthy friend. It is said that bees were never bought and sold among biciuliai. Nowadays, Lithuanians commonly use the delightful word biciulis simply to mean "friend" or "pal".
        Toward the end of my tour, we took time to examine the log beehives that were set up in the yard next to the cottage. These hives were of the type widely used up to the time of the introduction of movable frame hives, and there was little difference between them and those shown in the displays of forest beekeeping. Some of the hives were capped with fanciful cone-shaped roofs made of wood and bark. On the peak of each roof was a decorative iron finial in the form of a stylized sun. Such traditional blacksmith art. which is said to be a holdover from pre-Christian times, is commonly seen on Lithuanian wayside crosses and miniature chapels.
        In a recent article in the newspaper Lithuanian Weekly, it was stated that Lithuanian apiculture is undergoing a period of transition. The former large collective and state farms used to have apiary divisions, some of which have fallen into disarray. On the other hand, with independence and new laws permitting free enterprise, private beekeepers have been able to expand their operations. At the present time, there are an estimated 300,000 colonies in Lithuania. Equipment such as hives, extractors and smokers is manufactured primarily by a wood processing firm in the town of Ukmerge. During Lithuania's between-the wars period of independence, honey was one of the country's exports, and especially noteworthy was the delicious linden blossom honey. I have tasted some of the excellent meads and other, stronger honey-based beverages produced by one of the country's oldest breweries located in the village of Stakliskes. These products are packaged in attractive bottles on which a honeycomb motif is embossed. It is often said that the former socialist bloc countries don't make anything marketable in the West. It struck me that here was an attractive line of products, worthy of export, that carries a mystique rooted in an ancient, and perhaps slightly peculiar, culture in which bees played a significant role.
 
        William J. Morrison is a Professor of Biology at Shippensburg University in Shippensburg, PA.

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