Reading list

[Michael Bush]

"We're trying to ensure the failure of modern beekeeping by focusing too much on single traits; by ignoring the elements of Wildness; and by constantly treating the bees. The biggest mistake of all is to continue viewing mites and other "pests" as enemies that must be destroyed, instead of allies and teachers that are trying to show us a path to a better future. The more virulent a parasite is, the more powerful a tool it can be for improving stocks and practice in the future. All the boring and soul-destroying work of counting mites on sticky boards, killing brood with liquid nitrogen, watching bees groom each other, and measuring brood hormone levels---all done in thousands of replications---will someday be seen as a colossal waste of time when we finally learn to let the Varroa mites do these things for us. My own methods of propagating, selecting and breeding bees, worked out through many years of trial and error, are really just an attempt to establish and utilize Horizontal breeding with honeybees---to create a productive system that preserves and enhances the elements of Wildness. My results are not perfect, but they have enabled me to continue making a living from bees without much stress, and have a positive outlook for the future. I have no doubt that many other beekeepers could easily achieve these same results, and then surpass them."--Kirk Webster, What's missing from the current discussion and work related to bees that's preventing us from making good progress.

https://kirkwebster.com/index.php/whats-missing-from-the-current-discussion-and-work-related-to-bees-thats-preventing-us-from-making-good-progress

[The15thMember]

So I'm confused about something in this book I'm reading, which I'm still loving by the way.  The authors are discussing their typical hive arrangement and they say this: " . . . we prefer the use of the western shallow box, a variation on the Langstroth hive with a 6 5/8 in. box height."  Isn't that a medium, not a shallow?  Does the fact that they are saying "western" mean something different?   

[Michael Bush]

Box Depths by name and size:
    Jumbo, Dadant Deep: 11 5/8"
    Deep, Langstroth Deep: 9 5/8"
    Western Bee Supply, sometimes Western (ambiguous): 7 5/8"
    Medium, Illinois, 3/4, sometimes Western (ambiguous), in Australia Manley: 6 5/8"
    Shallow: 5 3/4" or 5 11/16"
    Extra Shallow, 1/2 super: 4 3/4" or 4 11/16"

[The15thMember]

I finished "Raising Resilient Bees" yesterday, and I am going to qualify my previous gushing somewhat, but I still would highly recommend this book.  The thing that I liked so much about it was it interlocks beekeeping into the regenerative biodynamic permaculture homestead philosophy in a way that was very inspiring and helpful to me on a broad level.  It's in a sense a treatise on a better more sustainable way to keep bees in the modern world, and I found the author's personal goals and philosophy to very much align with my own, which made all the information applicable to me, even though I'm a hobbyist and not a commercial beekeeper. 

That being said, some of the standards set by the authors were unrealistically high.  For example, they were so concerned about their bee products being 100% organic that they don't use paint on their hives for fear a chip of paint might accidentally enter the honey or propolis.  While I applaud their integrity, I'm not anywhere near that concerned about something so minor, but as a beekeeper who has her feet under her already, I could easily weed out what was important to me and what was not from a management perspective.  For this reason though, I wouldn't recommend this book to a beginner, because it would have the potential to make it sound like keeping healthy bees and harvesting quality products from your hives is unattainably difficult, due to the incredibly high standards the authors set for themselves. 

Speaking of which, I really liked how the authors understood their audience and tailored the information toward more experienced beekeepers.  This book is not a "how to" introduction for newbees, and the authors deliberately didn't retread ground they assumed a beekeeping audience already understood, which made the information succinct and straightforward, while still being personal, conversational, and easily readable.  The book also contained some really good up-to-date information on things like the medicinal value of bee products.  And of course, since it's from Chelsea Green, the book is well set up, well bound, and contains lots of great photographs. 

My only other complaints would be the aforementioned confusion about what box size the authors are actually using, because I'm still not sure, and they displayed a contempt toward crystallized honey that was startling to me at times, calling it "ruined" and "foul" in two separate instances.  I understand that commercial honey producers don't like to see crystallized honey, but for a book so interested in natural hive products, this was an out-of-place opinion to be disseminated so strongly.

All that to say, I give it a 5/5, and I'm thinking about implementing some of the authors' suggestions this upcoming season.  For any late-beginner to experienced beekeeper, I would highly recommend it.     

[Occam]

Good perspective and info Reagan. I have that book in my cart on Amazon currently. I hadn't looked closely enough to see that it was a Chelsea Green book, I do appreciate the way their books are laid out and designed. I have two at home currently I received recently for my birthday, Farming the Woods, and The Resilient Farm and Homestead. I'm looking forward to them and Raising Resilient Bees as well when I pick it up soon.

[The15thMember]

My next book is Bumble Bees of North America by Paul Williams, Robbin Thorp, Leif Richardson, and Sheila Colla.  I wanted to brush up on my bumbles before my bumble bee atlas season begins, so I'm going to read it cover to cover. 

[Michael Bush]

This is the book on all bees:
https://www.amazon.com/Bees-World-Charles-D-Michener/dp/0801885736/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1479CVUXLIO0O&keywords=bees+of+the+world+michener&qid=1707411869&sprefix=bees+of+the+world+michne%2Caps%2C280&sr=8-1

I'm glad I bought mine before the price was this high...

[The15thMember]

I just finished my bumble bee guide.  It was exceedingly dry as a cover to cover read, but that's really my fault I guess (although I've read guidebooks before and didn't find them so boring). I learned one interesting fact: Bombus griseocollis (brown-belted bumble bee) males will perch on high structures to get a good view of the surrounding area to search for mates, but they take this to the extreme in urban environments where they will sometimes perch on top of skyscrapers.  Males of this species have been found 102 stories up on the Empire State Building!  I just wish that the Xerces Society would take a page from Audubon and try a little harder to make publications like this accessible to the layman.  I basically consider myself to be an amateur naturalist, so I was able to understand the book and how to use it, but if you were new to bees or entomology, you wouldn't even be able to make heads or tails of the information or use it in any efficient manner.  The lack of knowledge we have about bumble bee life history is partially to blame, but the flip side to that is I know it's possible to make this accessible and engaging because The Bees in Your Backyard did it.  As a guidebook, it's certainly thorough, but the materials I got as a member of my regional bumble bee atlas are far more user friendly, so I will probably continue to use those and only use this as a backup if I'm confused about something.  I gave the book a 3/5.  I'll probably move on to Huber next.   

[The15thMember]

I just started the second section of the Huber book, and I'm enjoying it so much.  Huber's attention to detail is remarkable, especially considering his personal limitations and the limitations of his equipment.  His passion is irrepressible and his writing style is charming and easily readable, at least to someone like me who regularly reads old literature.  The woodcuts are amazing as well, and Michael, I'm finding your occasional transcriber notes, along with Dadant's translator comments, to be helpful in clarifying the few times Huber drew an incorrect conclusion about something. 

Now a small rant.  I was listening to a podcast a month or so ago, unfortunately I'm not sure which one it was.  I think it was the Xerces Society's podcast Bug Banter, but it could also have been Pollination or 2 Million Blossoms.  Someone on the podcast mentioned Huber and all these things that he discovered, and then said something to the tune of "Well, except he didn't really discover it all, since he was blind, it was actually his servant, and Huber just took all the credit and never mentioned him, which is really quite unfair".  It made me so mad, and it made me even more angry when I read Huber's introduction to his second volume of work.  Huber mentions his servant Burnens by name frequently, and describes their close relationship in detail several times.  In the introduction to Volume I, Huber explicitly thanks Burnens for his service, and says how there were times where Huber had designed experiments that required Burnens to observe colonies for days on end without rest, to examine each bee in a colony individually inevitably getting stung, and how Burnens himself was just as passionate about the work they were doing and would gladly volunteer his assistance, even when Huber wouldn't have asked him to.  Then in the introduction to Volume II, Huber describes how in the time between the publishing of the first volume and this one, Burnens had died, and how the loss of both his loyal servant and another scientist friend of his in a close span of time had left him grieving to the point that he didn't want to continue his work without them.  At no point does Huber try to obscure either his blindness or Burnens's invaluable assistance, and later his wife's, from the historical record, in fact he gratefully and deliberately makes their presence known to the viewer at every opportunity.  He even uses "we" and not "I" in almost every instance when describing the observations of an experiment.  Clearly the speaker on this podcast had never even read Huber, because otherwise they would have known these things, and it's unconscionably shameful to go around spreading lies based only on assumptions that say otherwise.   

Sorry, I just had to get that out there.   

[beesnweeds]

Sorry, I just had to get that out there. 

Well said!  Better than I could have, never listened to bug banter or pollination.  Fell asleep during a 2MB episode, wasn't for me.

[The15thMember]

Thanks.    I just started listening to Bug Banter, and so far it's not my favorite, but I haven't heard an episode yet with a genuinely interesting guest.  Pollination is a favorite of mine.  I absolutely loved 2 Million Blossoms as a magazine, but Dr. Traynor did get sucked into some political nonsense in 2020, and honestly I think that's part of what did the magazine in.  Her perspective affects the podcast negatively sometimes too, but she's a really good host, and often has some really interesting guests.     

[Michael Bush]

> Someone on the podcast mentioned Huber and all these things that he discovered, and then said something to the tune of "Well, except he didn't really discover it all, since he was blind, it was actually his servant, and Huber just took all the credit and never mentioned him, which is really quite unfair".

People hear something and never check it out to see if it's true.  Huber gives a lot of credit to a lot of people especially in the second volume, including Francis Burnens (his servant); Pierre Huber (his son); Maria Aim?e Lullin Huber (his wife); Jean Senebier (chemist); Charles Bonnet (naturalist); Christine Jurine (naturlist, microscopist, expert at dissection, expert at making plates of what she sees in the dissections); John Hunter (naturalist).  Not to mention all the mentions of Remuer, Swammerdam, Shirrach etc.

Quote from Huber's New Observations on Bees, Preface to Volume II:

"Twenty years have elapsed since the publication of the first volume of this work; however, I have not remained idle.  But before bringing to light new observations, I wanted time to verify the truths which I believe I established.  I had hoped that better trained naturalists would desire to ascertain for themselves the correctness of the results obtained by me, and I thought that, by repeating my experiments, they might ascertain facts which escaped my notice.  But no other attempt has since then been made to penetrate further into the history of those insects, and yet it is far from exhausted.
Although I was deceived in this expectation, I flatter myself with having obtained the confidence of my readers, my observations appear to have given light on several phenomena that had not yet been explained; the authors of several works upon the economy of bees have commented upon them; most of the cultivators have adopted entirely, as the basis of their practice, the principles which I discovered; and the naturalists themselves have taken interest in my efforts to pierce the double veil which shrouds for me, the natural sciences. (Huber here alludes evidently to the fact that he was blind?Translator)  Their assent should have emboldened me sooner to edit the facts contained in this second volume, had not the loss of several persons dear to me disturbed the quietude which such occupations require.
The profound, indulgent and amiable philosopher, whose benevolence encouraged me to come forward, in spite of the disadvantages of my position, Mr. Charles Bonnet, died, and discouragement took possession of me.  Sciences lost, in losing him, one of the genii sent from heaven to make science lovable; who, by linking them with the most natural sentiments of man, and by giving to each the rank and degree of interest due to it, bound the heart as well as the mind, and charmed our imagination without misleading it through delusions.

"I found in the friendship and enlightenment of Mr. Senebier, some relief for the privations imposed upon me.  A continued correspondence with this great physiologist, while enlightening me upon the course to follow, revived my exist-ence in some manner; but his death surrendered me to fresh sorrows.  Lastly, I was also to be deprived of the use of those eyes which had taken the place of my own, of the skill and devotedness which I had had at my bidding during 15 years.  Burnens, the faithful observer, whose services I will always gladly recall, was called back into the bosom of his own people and, being appreciated as he deserved to be, he become one of the first magistrates of a considerable district.

"This last separation which was not the least painful one, since it deprived me of the means of diverting my mind from those which I had already suffered, was nevertheless softened by the satisfaction which I found in observing nature through the organs of the being who is the dearest to me, and with whom I could enter into more elevated considerations.  (Huber?s wife?Translator)

"But that which most especially connected me again with natural history, was the taste my son manifested for this study.  I communicated my observations to him:  he expressed sorrow in leaving, buried in a notebook, work that would seem likely to interest naturalists:  he noticed the concealed reluctance which I felt in classifying the materials gathered, and offered to edit them himself.  I accepted his offer; the reader will not be astonished therefore, if this work is found to differ in its two component parts.  The first volume contains my correspondence with Mr. Bonnet; the second presents a set of memoirs:  in the one, we had limited ourselves to the simple expos? of facts; in the other the point was to describe difficult matters, and in order to diminish the dullness, we have sometimes freely made such comments as the subject suggested.  Moreover, when giving my notes to my son, I also transmitted my ideas to him; we have blended our thoughts and our opinions; I felt the need of giving him possession of a subject in which I had acquired some experience."

Later in Volume II Chapter 10:
"Miss Jurine

"There was but one way to discover whether there was any ground for my suspicions, it was to dissect these bees with particular care.  I had no one near me nor in my family with enough experience in the difficult art of dissection to fulfill my views; such researches required extensive knowledge and great dexterity:  but I remembered with gratitude what I already owed to the friendship and complaisance of a young lady who was alike distinguished by the combination of rare qualities, of striking virtue, of superior talent, who directing her ability in a manner corresponding with the tastes of a beloved father (Louis Jurine) to whom several sciences are indebted, had devoted to natural history her leisure and all the gifts which she had received from nature; she was an expert in painting the picture of insects and of their most delicate parts, as to discover the secrets of their organs; being at the same time a rival of Lyonnet and of M?rian:  such was the one whom we were to lose so soon, such was she whose loss natural history was to regret for so many reasons, and who, shortly before that fatal time displayed her talent through discoveries that had escaped Swammerdam and R?aumur.  It was to Miss Jurine (Christine Jurine) that I entrusted the important research in which so many anatomists had failed, the finding of organs that were to furnish evidence of a still unknown truth.

"The first point was to discover whether the defective bees exhibited in their structure any differences from the common workers; Miss Jurine proceeded upon this research with her peculiar sagacity."

Obviously the words of someone hogging all the credit.  These are but a few examples...