April is the month when the craft of beekeeping takes off for the year. The bees are flying, the colony is growing, and honey production is in full swing. Dangers remain, however, especially in the conditions outside. A cold, wet, or windy April can be disastrous for a colony just restarting again, and the quantity of flowers available depends on just how harsh the winter had been.
April is the month when beekeepers need to check the hive and remove any debris or mess that might have occurred. The same was true in the sixteenth century. In this month’s seasonal advice, we turn to Thomas Hill and his A Profitable Instruction of the Perfect Ordering of Bees (1568). Hill has two pieces of advice specific to April. The first is how to clean the hive after winter. In providing this advice, we get a glimpse of the process required for cleaning a skep hive. The second piece of advice is about finding a swarm that might have escaped from the apiary in an early Spring swarm.
Cleaning the Hive
Thomas Hill’s advice about cleaning the hive in April appears in his sixteenth chapter. Here he suggests that the beekeeper should undertake cleaning duties around the eighth or tenth day of April but only if it be ‘a clear and warm day’. The aim is to:
“purge the hives of all such filth which be gathered in them all the winter before, like as spider webs, which ought especially to be wiped away, because they corrupt the combs” (Hill, 1568, ch. 16)
In making this suggestion Hill is aware of the danger of damaging the combs or hurting the bees. He therefore suggests that the beekeeper should avoid using their hands but instead deploy a goose wing which will more easily fit amongst the gaps between combs and be able to pick up the dust, webs, and debris.
Next, Hill suggests that the hive should be smoked with Ox or Cow dung and the combs checked for ‘the little worms, which some name maggots, that breed in the combs’ and which eventually become ‘butterflies’. Hill is referring to the wax moth, the well-known bane of beekeepers. Hill sensibly suggests that these should be killed and purged, although he doesn’t give any advice on how to do this.
Finally, he argues that the hive should also be smoked if any of the combs look infected or corrupted. For this, he suggests a special concoction of dried ox or cow dung mixed with bone marrow as the base for the smoke. He claims that:
“the savour may go up to them, which for that time will cure the weak combs, strengthen the Bees, and cause them to work the lustier afterward.” (Hill, 1568, ch. 16).
The reason for using dung for the smoke is not explained, but Hill several times suggests that the bees like the smell and gain health and energy from it. Most likely he is building on the idea (or myth), that Bees are often born out of the carcass of the ox and he therefore applies the obvious next step, that there is a medical benefit for the Bees from dung and marrow of the same animal.
Finding lost swarms
In chapter 21, Thomas Hill turned to the subject of swarms. In particular, he wanted to offer some advice to beekeepers if they are caught unawares and lose the swarm. This advice is good for any time of the year when swarming might occur, but Hill links it to April because this is the month which Palladius suggests that honeybees ‘haunt’ areas containing springs or running water as they require much water to quench the thirst of the hive as they rebuild their numbers.
Rather than quote the instructions for finding the bees, here I will offer them in the form of a numbered set of instructions.
Equipment
A rush to use as a brush
A shallow dish
Ochre or red lead (or chemicals that will make other colours)
Water
Some way to note down information (paper and pen)
Instructions
Take red lead or ochre and infuse it in water and place in a little shallow dish.
Go to nearby springs or spaces containing shallow water and sit down still.
When the bees arrive to drink, colour the bees with the ochre paint using a rush as a brush.
Observe when they return and the direction and note this down. If they return quickly then this suggests that their colony is nearby. If it takes longer then it will be more distant.
Follow the trajectory that the bees seem to be coming from to find the colony.
Sources
Hill, Thomas, A Profitable Instruction of the Perfect Ordering of Bees (London, 1668).