Foreword 
It is hardly necessary to remind the reader that this is an encyclopedia on 
bees. It should not therefore be read consecutively,- but taken up subject by. 
subject in the order indicated later. A preliminary statement should first be 
made in order that the beginner, at least, may be able to form at the very outset 
some idea of the scope and character of the industry which he is to study. 
Bees have been kept from time almost immemorial. References to bees and 
“honey in the honeycomb” appear all thru ancient history. Honey, aside from 
the sugar in fruit, was the only sweet then known, and hence was always highly 
prized. Bees were kept in caves, earthen jars, old logs, straw baskets or skeps. 
When man contrived the art of making boards out of trees he constructed rude 
boxes which were called gums or hives. The skeps were made of braided straw, 
and these are still used'to a considerable extent in Europe among the peasant 
classes who cannot afford modern equipments, and who lack, even more, the 
mental capacity to put into effect modern methods. Bee “Skeps.” 
The keeping of bees in the old days was but little more than an avocation 
or sideline in connection with some other business or profession. While the 
great majority of the beekeepers of today are probably amateurs or backlot- 
ters, those who keep a few bees for pleasure and profit, there are now thousands 
upon thousands who make beekeeping a vocation or business. Their colonies 
are numbered by the hundreds and even thousands, and their annual produc¬ 
tion of honey is measured by the ton and carload. While there were a few, 
both in Europe and America, who had as many as two or three hundred colo¬ 
nies, and produced honey by the ton, beekeeping as a specialty and as an ex¬ 
clusive business was scarcely known until after the advent of the movable- 
frame hive of Langstroth and the honey-extractor of Hruschka. (See “Hives” 
and “Extractors.”) These inventions revolutionized the industry to such an 
extent that it is now possible for the beekeeper to produce tons where he could 
produce only pounds before. 
In addition to the specialist class of beekeepers there are many hundreds 
of thousands who keep a few colonies in the back yard in cities and towns. There 
is also another large class, the farmer beekeepers, who keep a few colonies on 
the farm, not only for the purpose of pollinating their fruit trees, the clovers, 
and buckwheat, but to supply the family table with honey, the purest and best 
sweet in the world. 
The time was when Moses Quinby, in the 50’s, and that was before the 
invention of the movable-frame hive by Langstroth, sent a canalboat-load of 
honey to the city of New York. This was more than the metropolis had ever 
seen before—so much honey,, indeed, that it “broke down the market,” and the 
honey went begging for a customer. In these latter days that same market 
is able to dispose of hundreds and hundreds of carloads of honey that have been 
shipped in from all over the United States, but mainly from the irrigated 
regions of the West. 
A conservative estimate of the total number of persons who keep bees, 
either as a vocation or as an avocation, is 1,000,000 beekeepers in the United 
States alone. 
On a very conservative estimate, based on United States statistics and on 
the records of sales of the largest bee-supply factories in the United States, 
1 
