In a routine inspection a couple years ago I ran into a bee that caught my eye. Normally I’m looking for mites, general age of the bees, signs of mites such as deformed wings, etc. Fortunately I had a camera with me (the bee in the bottom left corner of the picture). She seemed to be little bigger than the abdomen of all the other workers, but otherwise seemed completely normal. I have no idea where the origin of the queen was (though apparently the swarm she came from was Italian), and by this time she had been dispatched a few weeks earlier and replaced with a NWC queen. I have seen one other worker in my inspections this past weekend that was equally as small, but this time she was a NWC worker. Do these small workers have as productive a life as their larger counterparts, or are they considered a runt to be kicked out? It didn’t appear they were being treated any differently, but I couldn’t really watch the normal hive activity without disrupting it.  Not a terribly useful observation, though I did find it interesting.

There is a debate that honeybees have been made artificialy large in the effort to increase honey production and that ‘small cell’ beekeeping is the answer to many ills.  I have not tried it myself, and have only read the arguments for and against by strong proponents of each.  I suspect that if there is something to it, the mites will adapt just as they have to everything else we have thrown at them.  I still think the long term answer is in the breeding, though that will be a long time in coming in a well rounded bee that is still gentle and productive.

It is surprising to me how much in beekeeping really hasn’t changed in spite of all the new gadgets and gizmos on the market.  It’s also equally as surprising how many topics heard at beekeeping  association meetings discussed as if it were something new; topics such as hive ventilation and the longevity of a queen.

I recently read an 1858 book ‘Phelps Bee-Keeper’s Chart‘.  The book is obviously horribly out of date and out of print (though it is available on-line).  Though it is interesting none-the-less for several reasons.  While it does cover a lot about honey bees, much of it is for the purpose of promoting the authors patented ‘Ohio Combination Bee-Hive‘ saying that he expects it to ‘ supersede all others’. The book also describes  Sadly, while it apparently claimed honors at the Ohio and other state fairs, his book was published 6 years after Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth’s book ‘The Hive and the Honey Bee’, which details the bee hive most of us use today in the US and in other parts of the world.
(The ‘Ohio Combination Bee-Hive’ is shown to the right.  It has removable compartments to facilitate removing honey from the hive and a glass window so inspect the hive)

But what is probably more interesting, is the number of details that are identical to the topics (and jokes) that are asked to day in many meetings I’ve been to, in many cases with the same answer:

• Life Span of a Queen.
• Hive Ventilation.
• Beekeeper’s opinions:  The running joke is that if you ask 5 beekeepers in a room a question, you will receive 6 different answers.  Apparently this is one of the oldest beekeeping jokes on record.  Phelps wrote nearly 150 year ago that ‘there is scarcely any subject on which such a diversity of opinion exists, as on the form and size of bee-hives, and the general management of bees.’


Other old books point out similar ‘new’ facts brought up at meetings, such as rotating old brood comb (1859, Domestic and rural affairs. Elliot Storke)  and many other topics that are often hotly debated.