Busy bees

What's in the box?

While it's not a typical crop, beekeeping is an extremely old form of agriculture. The honeybee was first cultivated in Egypt, and later in Rome and Greece. This ancient art and science included artificial hives (known as skeps), smokers, and even using them to boost vegetable yields. This was the major source of sweetener in the ancient world, along with dates. Honey was considered to be the superior sweetener, and was reserved to many of the wealthy.

Skeps were ancient baskets that were used for artificial hives, (believe it or not, that advanced basket-weaving class was essential back then). Unfortunately, in retrieving the honey, the skep would be destroyed, so that advanced basket weaving would be needed more than the final exam. Skeps could also be made out of mud or clay, (see that's your pottery class too). Smoking the hive was discovered to sedate the bees, making honey retrieval less treacherous.

In today's beekeeping, the hive has changed, but the concepts have stayed the same. Today's hives are in the form of boxes, which contain frames, which encourage uniform combing, which makes it possible to extract honey without destroying the hive. A complete anatomy of a modern beehive can be found here.

Above, the wooden frames can be seen resting inside the box hive structure.

The honeybee is a unique crop, not just because it's an insect crop, but the crop is self-managed. Honeybees are controlled by a queen bee. This queen is in charge of laying all the eggs, called brood. The queen emits an array of pheromones, which keeps the workers in check. The workers are all female, and live about 6 weeks, compared to the 2 year lifespan of the queen. This short lifespan of the workers is attributed to the exhaustive work of collecting nectar. Then there's the guys of the hive, the drones, who's sole purpose is to mate with the queen, not a bad life...until wintertime. In the winter, the drones are ousted, why feed the deadbeat boyfriend when you can make more next season?

While it may seem like a dangerous crop to manage, the hive really isn't as dangerous as you'd think. Between the smokers and the protective equipment, beekeeping is a fairly low-maintenance (and safe) crop to manage. For more information, there's a really good book available at Amazon or at your local library. In the coming weeks, look for an additional post looking at commercial beekeeping and honey extraction!