Essay by Timothy N. Osment
History M.A.
WCU 2008
The practice of bee keeping entered Appalachia with the earliest European settlers, and honey was a prized sweetener long before granulated sugar was available. As late as the mid-20th century, most mountain farmers kept hives and practiced the skills of bee keeping. Honey was eaten at home, given to friends, and sold at roadside stands. Since the 1980s bee keeping has declined across the mountain region with the loss of small farms, the spread of hive diseases and fears of aggressive African bees. Still, bee keeping endures as a popular hobby and a well-organized cottage industry that provides the prize honeys of the mountains–tulip poplar, clover, and sourwood.
Though bee keeping has been present in Appalachia for centuries, the practice began many generations earlier. In fact, almost every society on earth has traditionally utilized honey. The earliest records of bee keeping and the harvesting of honey are European cave drawings that date back over 15,000 years. The Bible describes Israel as a land flowing with milk and honey. Ancient Romans paid their taxes in honey. The Hindu god of love strung his bow with a chain of bees, while his Roman counterpart dipped his arrows in honey. Today’s post-nuptial celebration originated with the Scandinavian custom of supplying the bride and groom with honeyed-wine (mead) every day for their first month together – thus the honey-moon.
However, the essence of bee keeping and honey production is far more practical. Not only is honey valuable both as a nutritious supplement and a profitable agricultural product, but honeybees are nature’s key pollinators – directly or indirectly related to a large percentage of our planet’s food production. Albert Einstein once remarked, quite seriously, “If bees vanished from the face of the earth, mankind would only exist for four more years. Without bees, there’s no pollinating, no grass, no animals, no people.”
Annually over two million dollars worth of honey is produced in North Carolina. Yet the greatest value of honeybees is their role as the frontline pollinator of the state’s crops. In North Carolina flies, moths, and other insects are also important pollinators of garden, orchard, and field crops. However, the honeybee contributes more to agricultural pollination than all other means combined. To recognize its value, in 1973 the N.C. General Assembly designated the honey bee as the official State Insect. Interestingly, since North Carolina’s adoption, sixteen additional states have awarded a similar title to the hard-working insect.
A wild honeybee colony contains about 20,000 bees while domestic colonies can house as many as 80,000. There are three different types of honeybees: the queen (one per hive), drones (several hundred per hive), and workers (thousands per hive). The queen’s primary purpose is to make more bees. She can produce over 1,500 eggs per day and usually lives between two and eight years. She is larger than the workers or drones. Her stinger is curved with no barbs on it, and she can use it many times. All drones are males and have stingers. They live about eight weeks. Only a few hundred are ever present in the hive. Their sole function is to mate with a queen. Any drones left at the end of the season are driven out of the hi
