#apiculture

Beehive headboard with folk art painting depicting animals leading the funeral procession of a hunter, Carniola (present-day Slovenia), 19th century

Bee-yond Sweetness: World Bee Day! 🐝

World Bee Day is celebrated each year on May 20th. The United Nations established this day to raise awareness about the importance of bees and other pollinators for our ecosystem, biodiversity, and food production. The date was chosen to honor Anton Janša, a pioneer of apiculture (beekeeping), who was born on May 20, 1734.

To celebrate the day, we are showing The Battle of the Bees and Other Stories by Carl Ewald (1856-1908), translated and adapted from the Danish by Margaret Sperry, with illustrations by Lily R. Phillips (1921-2022). It was published in 1977 by Crane, Russak & Company, a small independent publishing establishment founded in 1973 in New York City.

Carl Ewald (1856-1908) was a Danish novelist renowned for his fairy tales. In his youth, he studied to become a forester, but an illness prevented him from completing his studies. His deep concern for ecology was almost prophetic, illustrated through these stories that offer engaging lessons about the importance of maintaining balance in nature.

Margaret Sperry is a talented author who has written a variety of works, including children's books, novels, plays, and poetry. Originally from Chicago, she completed her degree at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Lily R. Phillips (1921-2022) is renowned for being one of the first women in the comic book industry. She started her career in the 1940s, a time recognized as the Golden Age of Comics. She fled Vienna, which was under Nazi occupation, and eventually made her way to New York City. There, she secured a position as a penciller and inker at the comic book publisher, Fiction House.

This year’s celebration highlights the vital role of bees and other pollinators in global food security and nutrition, reminding us of their importance to the health of our planet!

-View previous World Bee Day posts.

CRAFTS — 190/262 — Beekeeping

During the Middle Ages, beekeeping was distinguished by how the honey was obtained, as either forest or domestic. The domestic beekeeper kept bees in hollow trees or in straw skeps (wickerwork hives) and were not subject to any regulation. Conversely, the forest beekeeper, called ‘brtník’, kept hives ‘in the wild’ in hollowed-out trees. The forest beekeepers formed a fellowship similar to a guild and paid a fee to the owners of the woodland for each hive they managed. Beeswax was the main raw material for the production of candles up until the discovery of artificial wax (paraffin wax). Honey was used as a sweetener, and fermented to make mead.

TRIVIA

— If a catastrophe struck a particular beekeeper, he might have found himself turning to an ancient remedy to make up for the bee loss — bugonia. One of the most enduring ancient beliefs was bugonia, a belief that bees could be generated from the carcass of a dead ox. The Greek βουγονία (bougoníā) comes from βοῦς (boûs), meaning 'ox', and γονή (gonḗ), meaning 'progeny'. The ancients would sometimes simply call honey bees βουγενής ('ox-born').

The phenomenon is documented and described fairly well by ancient authors, most famously Virgil in his Georgics, where he recounts a ritual used to restore lost hives: a bull is slain, its body enclosed, and after a set period, swarms of bees are said to arise from the decaying flesh. Similar accounts appear in the writings of Aristotle and later authors such as Varro and Columella, meaning the belief was fairly widespread and accepted.

Such accounts were not understood as metaphorical, but as observations consistent with the broader theory of spontaneous generation — the belief that living creatures could arise from non-living matter. The belief likely arose from misinterpreted natural observations, as certain insects resembling bees (such as drone flies) lay their larvae in carcasses, giving the impression that bees were being "born" from the corpse itself. Different variations of the ritual were recorded; such as one variation stating that use of the rumen alone is sufficient. According to the ancient Greek writer Antigonus of Carystus, in Egypt the ox would be buried with its horns projecting above the surface of the ground, and when severed, bees would emerge from the base of the horns.

Quoting Ovid's Metamorphoses, Florentinus of the Geoponica reports the process as a proven and obvious fact:

If any further evidence is necessary to enhance the faith in things already proved, you may behold that carcases, decaying from the effect of time and tepid moisture, change into small animals. Go, and bury slaughtered oxen – the fact is known from experience – the rotten entrails produce flower-sucking bees, who, like their parents, roam over pastures, bent upon work, and hopeful of the future. A buried warhorse produces the hornet.

Bee logo design - line style 🐝