Beekeeping in China in the mid-20th century
Beekeeping went through a significant change at the start of the 20th century, when China imported new species of bees and began to use movable frame hives. They are now the largest exporter of honey.
In 1960, British beekeeper and historian, Eva Crane wrote a short essay in Bee World on what she had been able to find out about beekeeping in China. This was a particularly tricky moment in Chinese history. The establishment of the People’s Republic of China (sometimes called Maoist China or Red China) in 1949, had occurred out of the ashes of civil war and a war with Japan, both of which were proceeded by a century of similar foreign invasions and civil wars.
In 1949, the Communist party emerged victorious and Mao Zedong was formally proclaimed Chairman. During the 1950s China’s agricultural and industrial might grow significantly but was harmed by the Korean War and economically and politically altered by Mao’s increasing attempts to align China with the Marxist-Leninist agenda of Russia, who Mao saw as his closest ally.
Relations became strained, however, after Stalin’s death, and China’s specific form of socialist communism began to deviate from the Soviet model into what is called the “Great Leap Forward”. This proved disastrous. At the time when Eva Crane wrote her article, China was suffering widespread famine as the result of their policies, overwork, and due to unusual weather and natural disasters. In a few years time, Mao would launch his Cultural Revolution, which resulted in a deepening of secrecy and isolationism, amongst a massive purge of capitalist and traditional elements of Chinese society.
It is therefore, not all that surprising that Crane began her essay by stating that:
“It is very difficult to obtain detailed information about present-day beekeeping in China.”
Even her key sources were not from China, but had come to her via the Russian journal Pchelovodstvo. She was aware that Chinese beekeeping had, until recently, remained virtually unchanged from ancient times, but that recent importation of Italian and Russian bees, had resulted in the possibility for more profitable beekeeping methods to develop. From one of the Pchelovodstvo articles, Crane cited that:
“In the great improvements in beekeeping methods since 1949; Evsyukov gives some examples. In one farm in the province of Hupeh, the honey yield per colony rose from 25 kg to 150 kg and more. In one district in the province of Kwangtung, better methods of management of the Chinese bee have led to an increase in the average colony yield from 5 to 16.5 kg, and some hives give up to 80 kg. It is estimated that the average colony yield of marketable honey will rise from the present 10 kg to 30 kg by the end of the second five-year plan and that the average colony yield of wax will rise from 250g to 750g. It is considered that there are great possibilities in increasing the yields of honey and wax from Chinese bees by improving the methods of management.” (Crane, 1960, 6).
Detail about the precise improvements appear to have been beyond Crane’s knowledge. She knew that movable frame hives were now used but also knew that this was more a foundation for change, rather than proof that other methods and tools were in place.
She could say, though, that the price of honey remained artificially low in China, sometimes lower than the price of sugar, noting that ‘people who raise the price of honey excessively may be prosecuted’. Meanwhile, the number of colonies had increased massively, estimating around 2 million colonies across the country by 1962.
In general, Crane painted a picture of attempted advancement held back by artificially low prices in contrast to the cost of beekeeping itself. She also saw other challenges in the economic model. Beekeepers were only allowed to keep a portion of their honey for themselves (initially 30% but increased to 65%) and remuneration took two forms: a fixed wage and a bonus-payment based on quantity and quality of the work. Beekeepers were taxed unequally depending on region. There were also attempts to reduce or remove private beekeeping in China, by moving them into co-operatives, which would gradually be drawn into the larger agricultural co-operatives.
What do we know now?
Eva Crane concluded her report with an optimistic note: ‘The Chinese beekeeping journal Zhongguo yangfeng is now received regularly by the Bee Research Association, and it should be possible to publish further information in due course’ (Crane, 1960, 8). It’s unclear how long this lasted or whether anyone looked further into the topic at that time, however Eva Crane did demonstrate new knowledge about this era of Chinese beekeeping in her The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting (1999), noting that China increased its number of hives to about 6 million by 1968 (she had originally estimated 2 million in her previous article) and that China came to dominate the world market in honey around the same time (Crane, 1999, 441, 492).
Although Crane seemed to still only have fragments, much more information about this era has become known (although it is still difficult to find sources in English). An article by H. Zheng (et al.), published in 2018, explained that various species of honey producing bees were imported into China in the early 20th century, such as 300,000 colonies of A.m. liguistica from Japan in the late 1920s, and various other A. Mellifera subspecies after 1949. This massive programme of replacing the native A. Cerana with the more productive A. Mellifera provided the foundation for China’s metreotic rise in the honey business by the latter half of the 20th century.
Whilst it is probably true that most beekeeping focuses on maximising honey production, this is perhaps more true in China than it is for European and American beekeepers. Starting in the 1950s, this focus on production resulted in a ‘combs balanced to bees’ approach, which Zheng describes as a contrast to Western beekeeping:
“In contrast with most European and American beekeepers, who add or remove a hive body, a honey super, or sometimes even a few of the frames, Chinese beekeepers add or remove one or more frames each time. In most times of the year, only the absolute necessary number of frames is provided to the colony to ensure that each comb is covered by a layer of bees.” (Zheng et al., 2018, 134).
In addition to this recent summary, a detailed account came out of the Third International Conference on Apiculture in Tropical Climates (published as proceedings in 1985).
I’ve not been able to access this report, but I have seen a summary by Liu Xianshu, in the September 1985 newsletter for beekeepers in tropical and subtropical countries.
Here Xianshu explained that:
“Before the revolution, no apicultural research work was done in China, but in 1958 the national apicultural institute (Institute of Apicultural Research of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences) was established in Beijing.”
In the mid-1980s that Institute had a staff of over 120, including 70 university graduates doing research. It’s work included bee genetics and breeding, beekeeping technology, prevention and cure of bee diseases, and honey plants and bee products. It also produced a journal: Chinese Apiculture.
Xianshu also explains that while there are some large apiaries most are generally small, containing around 50 to 80 colonies. Migrationary beekeeping is also common (and has been since the 1950s), especially between the subtropical and tropical zones.
While Zheng suggested that by the 21st century the Chinese bee (A. Cerana) was nearly extinct this was certainly not true in the 1980s. Xianshu suggests that the Chinese bee is particularly common in south-western and southern China and that in Guangdong province, there are 220,000 colonies of Chinese bee in movable framed hives, producing some 15-20kg of honey per colony every year.
Conclusions
In the 21st century, China has become the predominant producer of honey in the world. It reached that position in the mid-20th century following a push to populate the country with Western-styled bees and to switch to movable-frame hives (to increase productivity) and by following strict and detailed beekeeping methods to increase efficiency.
In most ways the development of Chinese beekeeping from its simple traditional methods at the start of the 20th century into an industrial juggernaut, is a success story. Beekeeping is widespread and highly productive. However, it is not all positive. Like elsewhere in the world, the bees suffer from various threats including mites, changing climates, and pesticides. China is also accused of producing the most adulterated honey in the world, although this is partly due to the simple fact that it is also the largest producer of honey in the world.
While many of the barriers to learning about China’s beekeeping history have disappeared since Eva Crane wrote on the subject in the 1960s, there still remains a lack of research on the subject, at least in English.
Sources
Crane, Eva, ‘Beekeeping in the People’s Republic of China’, Bee World, 41:1 (1960), pp. 4-8.
Crane, Eva, The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting (Routledge, London, 1999).
Zheng, H., Cao, L., Huang, S., Neumann, P., Hu, F., ‘Current Status of the Beekeeping Industry in China’, in Asian Beekeeping in the 21st Century, by P. Chantawannakul, G. Williams, and P. Neumann (Springer: Singapore, 2018), pp. 129-158. DOI: 10.1007/978-981-10-8222-1_6
Xianshu, Liu, ‘Beekeeping in China’, Newsletter for beekeepers in tropical & subtropical countries, no. 7 by the International Bee Research Association (Sept., 1985).