The Beekeepers Club Inc.

The History of Beekeeping

Mankind has been keeping bees since the beginning of recorded history. Old biblical texts refer to a land of milk and honey. Samples of honey have been found buried in the tombs of the Pharaohs. Many ancient societies put a high value on honey, reserving it for the use of the elite at the top of the society and trading it for other rare products. The reasons for the high value of honey are hard to see in our modern world where production of honey is relatively easy. But it wasn’t always that way. The means of managing bees and getting their honey was primitive and cruel to the bees before we developed our skills in the last hundred years. Before then beekeepers destroyed the bee colony, killing all the bees in it, in order to get at the honey. Only swarms, if they were strong, were allowed to live to provide the hives for the next season. This meant that honey production was uncertain and not easy to increase, making it a sought-after food.

Honeybees Apis mellifera were first introduced to Australia in 1810 by Samuel Marsden who imported a number of colonies from England. These, however, failed to establish and eventually died out. A second introduction in 1822 to mainland Australia was successful and further introductions to other parts of the continent over the next 50-60 years introduced other races and apiaries were established in each state. However, honeybees were probably not widespread until about 1930 when beekeepers were able to travel more easily; from then the honeybee industry grew steadily. For example, the average yearly production of honey in Australia from 1921-25 was 3,200 tonnes but by 1949- 54 there were some 442,000 commercially managed hives producing about 12,500 tonnes of honey annually. By 1971-72 524,000 hives in Australia produced 22,000 tonnes of honey per annum and in the 1980s approximately 546,000 hives produced 25,400 tonnes of honey annually. Thus since the 1920s honey production has increased eight-fold despite further and substantial clearance of native vegetation.

MODERN BEEKEEPING
The application of a more scientific approach to beekeeping led to the invention of the removable frame by Langstroth in 1852, which was later modified by Hoffman to be self-spacing. For the first time the frames allowed beekeepers to move honey and brood around in the hive, while allowing the bee space that Langstroth discovered was essential to the efficient workings of the bees in the hive. For the first time honey could be removed from the hive without destroying it and the waxed frames returned for cleaning and refill. This was a huge step forward and it is still the method of hive management used today. Over the years, since this discovery, many additional techniques such as swarm control, honey extraction, queen breeding etc. have been added to our growing fund of knowledge about hive management.