Aug. 13, 2026
Plain Talk: Old Beekeeping Books (296)
On a quiet, rainy morning, Jim Tew opens a few fragile old beekeeping books and takes us on an unscripted trip through the practices, tools, and ideas of beekeepers who came before us. Jim explores techniques that once seemed perfectly practical but have largely disappeared from modern apiaries—from tobacco smoke and unusual comb-cutting tools to swarm-catching contraptions, division boards, and methods for transferring bees from box hives. Along the way, he considers old hive designs, the ingenuity attributed to honey bees, and some wonderfully obscure pieces of beekeeping equipment whose purposes aren’t always immediately obvious today.
But this episode isn’t really about returning to old-fashioned beekeeping. It’s about understanding where modern beekeeping came from.
As Jim puts it, he doesn’t want to live in the past, but he respects it. Today’s Langstroth equipment, hive tools, management techniques, and even our ideas about honey bee genetics represent only a snapshot in beekeeping’s continuing evolution. The way we keep bees 25 or 50 years from now may look just as different from today’s practices as today’s apiary looks compared with one from the nineteenth century.
Jim closes with Fifty Years Among the Bees by C. C. Miller and a reminder that old beekeeping books give us something valuable: a chance to visit another beekeeper’s time and place—and perhaps better appreciate our own.
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Thanks to Betterbee for sponsoring today's episode. Betterbee’s mission is to support every beekeeper with excellent customer service, continued education and quality equipment. From their colorful and informative catalog to their support of beekeeper educational activities, including this podcast series, Betterbee truly is Beekeepers Serving Beekeepers. See for yourself at www.betterbee.com
We’d like to thank Vita Bee Health for supporting the podcast. Vita provides proven tools for controlling Varroa—from Apistan and Apiguard to the new VarroxSan extended-release oxalic acid strips—helping beekeepers keep stronger, healthier colonies.
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Honey Bee Obscura is brought to you by Growing Planet Media, LLC, the home of Beekeeping Today Podcast.
Music: Heart & Soul by Gyom, All We Know by Midway Music; Christmas Avenue by Immersive Music; original guitar music by Jeffrey Ott
Cartoons by: John Martin (Beezwax Comics)
Copyright © 2026 by Growing Planet Media, LLC
WEBVTT
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Hey listeners, it's Jim.
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Again.
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Flying by the seat of my pants.
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Again.
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I frequently watch on YouTube some guy, this is not an endorsement, not just a conversation, some guy named Matt, who runs a heavy equipment company, unique vehicles.
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He goes out in the deserts into rough areas in the west and he retrieves any kind of vehicle, but mainly an off-road vehicle that's gotten in serious trouble or whatever, and he brings these things back
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He shows all the mechanisms and the wrecking and the four-wheeling and the whatever for getting them out.
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And this is all I want to tell you.
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He always starts his shows
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by giving the weather and the weather conditions.
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And I suppose it's supposed to have an effect on what the equipment's going to do.
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Well, I have that same tendency.
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Right now it is a classic
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morning.
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The rain is coming down straight.
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There's no wind velocity.
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There's occasional distant thunder that may or may not pick up
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You gotta be in the mood that I'm in.
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So I want to talk to you for a few minutes
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uh about old beekeeping techniques and procedures and as usual I want this to be a conversation because if I'm nothing I am not a historian an historian or a historian
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I'm not sure which.
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Let's talk about that here.
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I'm Jim Tew, and I come to you here pretty much once a week at Honey Bee Obscura, where I just try to talk about something, usually plain talk.
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Welcome.
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To Honey Bee Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today podcast.
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Join Jim Tew, your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and
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And the challenges of managing honey bees.
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Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honey bees.
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Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk.
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that'll delve into all things honey bees.
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To close the window just in case something happens with the rain or whatever that I'm not expecting.
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Do you remember Jason who helped me hide the crazy swarm with the vacuum and went through all that process?
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He's been on several times.
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He's a good beekeeper who doesn't keep bees.
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He's in his 40s and he's got a lot of life to live before he really settles down.
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And right now he has moved to Mexico permanently.
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So we may still talk to him sometime on the recording system here as he gets his feet under him and finds something to do with bees.
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But till then, my young friend Jason has left me.
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So now I've got to do all this ugly bee work by myself.
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As he was leaving, he kind of divvied up.
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He worked for our local library system here as the internet coordinator and the electronic maintenance person.
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And he loved books, so he had a lot of books.
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His mom is keeping them here for him.
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But he gave me OSB books
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I don't collect old books, but I respect old books.
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I've never had the money to buy a vast number of old books
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And then how I would love to get off of old books into the new world of artificial intelligence and what it knows, what it scans.
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I used to go to internet.
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org, I think it was called internet.
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org.
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Archive.
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org.
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Archive.
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org.
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This is the danger of having a casual conversation spontaneously.
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And if you dig through that, there's some full-blown, really readable old bee books that are stored there that are just as readable as they are anywhere.
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I used to enjoy doing that on days like this.
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I guess I'd like to say I don't want to live in the past.
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But I respect the past.
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Does that make sense?
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I've picked up these books, and this is going to really be clumsy.
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I don't know how I'm going to do this for sure without you hearing papers turn.
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And wanting to give you the flavor, when I open this, it says Ms.
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M.
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H.
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Burr.
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Union Ridge, Iowa, and the Spencerian script can only be described as spectacular.
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Did everybody write that way?
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And in 1862, it's just beautiful handwriting.
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And when you go through these old books, every one of them is coming all to pieces.
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What's my response or my responsibility, listeners?
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Am I supposed to get all these books rebound?
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Or do I just let them
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Disintegrate.
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When you open a bee book like this, it's a walk down somebody else's memory lane.
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I'm having to leave away lean away from the microphone.
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Because the book comes all to pieces if I try to lay it down.
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For instance, uh the use of tobacco smoke.
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Would you want to know about that?
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Let's see what they say about tobacco smoke for
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These are really fragile papers.
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Use of tobacco smoke.
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I would not do it for $50.
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The bees would sting me to death.
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Stop a moment if you've never tried the f the efficacy of tobacco smoke.
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You know nothing of a powerful agent.
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This is the grand secret of success.
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Without it, I admit that it would be somewhat hazardous, but with it.
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I have done it in time after time without receiving a single sting and no protection whatever for either hands or face.
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Well, we're not going to be using tobacco smoke
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But we are going to uh I got distracted because I looked across the page.
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This is what these old books do, listeners.
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Tools for cutting out comb
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And don't you know I have been looking for this all over because I want to I want to tell you almost as a warning, I gotta put a mark on this page.
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And I don't want the sticky paper to be stuck to the book.
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I'm going to tell you sometime without warning, I I've gotten interested in hive tools because they are so mundane.
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The hive tool that we use hasn't changed in almost a hundred years.
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And I can't tell which came first, hive tools or window openers, made by the Hyde Company and sold at Lowe's that look just like hive tools.
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Did beekeepers do it?
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So here is in this book, readily made from an old piece of scythe
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The other tool is for cutting off combs at the top or any other place.
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It's merely a rod of steel.
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Because see when you kept bees in box hives, you're gonna have to hear all this again.
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When you kept bees in box hives and skeps, you didn't need hive tools because there was no frames.
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So then used different knives, and I have never seen one.
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And don't you know Jason was a blacksmith, so before he left, he went out to his forge and a historical village and made me one of these tools to my specifications
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And I have looked all over for these tools.
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And while I was talking to you about the use of tobacco smoke in a book published in 1862, there's one of those hive tools that I've been looking for.
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I'm sorry.
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I enjoy doing this.
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Can I say it again?
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I don't want to live in the past, but I respect the past.
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And I increasingly, as I have grown old, I have a respect for those who went before and for the world that they lived in.
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And now we see our world as a snapshot of the way things will be.
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No.
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I would suggest with respect
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That it's just a snapshot of how things are right now.
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Whoever he used to go to all those video stores and stand there and check out videos.
00:09:06.579 --> 00:09:11.060
Well, it looked like at the moment that we'd be doing that for the rest of our lives.
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So I can use that as a quick example of how a snapshot in time, I can't blockbuster.
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I couldn't even think of the name of them for a while.
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I mean, at the time, Blockbuster, I suspect, thought they would be here forever.
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But technology always changes, and beekeeping reflects that.
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So the weird the beekeeping we're doing today will not be the beekeeping that we'll be doing 25, 50 years from now.
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Guaranteed.
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Guaranteed.
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I hope it'll be better.
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I suspect we're going to have other pests to deal with, but I hope that we keep developing tools to deal with that.
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Wow.
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Am I forever off the subject?
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Let me take a break and rewire my brain.
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00:10:31.700 --> 00:10:32.980
00:10:32.980 --> 00:10:35.780
Here's a little Beehard book.
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That I bought somewhere at a show.
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It's just called Beehives, Work Handbooks.
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And it tells you how to manufacture everything and it tells you how to build a lot of long-gone hives.
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And all these old books really like to have these automatic swarm catchers.
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So that we catch the swarm before they ever left.
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You know that I talked to you about that trap that goes on the front
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That a queen and drone trap that was supposed to capture the queen as she left, and then you'd once you had the queen, how you would see her, I don't know, because
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There would be a lot of drones in the trap and workers, and then you'd have to see the queen in there too.
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But then you'd move the entire trap over to wherever you wanted the swarm to land, and then the swarm would land on the queen.
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It uh now I'm off the subject again, Jim.
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Stay focused.
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That gadget did work, but it didn't work well enough.
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It was clumsy.
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You had to be
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You had to almost live with your hive to know when the swarm is issued and when the queen was in it and whatever.
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So here's another one.
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It's called the Bennett Self-Divider.
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And it's made from zinc queen excluders and a board, and all you do is you face a hive to the hive
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That's quite that's considering swarming.
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And you close off the entrances except for a tunnel, just literally a classic tunnel, board underneath, and then this queen excluder on top
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And then in theory, as the swarm issues, the queen, wanting to go, crazy to go, runs down this queen-excluded tunnel.
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to the empty hive.
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The other bees are following her.
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Any bee that wants to get out and leave can do it.
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But then the queen is successfully trapped, I said successfully
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in the new box and then all the bees flying around come back and find this queen.
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I didn't read all this.
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If you tried to read all this stuff, I mean you're just going backwards.
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I should be reading all the current bee magazines and listening to podcasts.
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And looking at the future instead of looking back so much.
00:12:53.620 --> 00:13:00.660
But I didn't take time to read all this, but I wonder immediately that queen is really capable of flying.
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What's going to keep her in there unless you immediately put a queen excluder material over the door so she can't get out?
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and attract the other bees to it.
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I don't know of anything that we're doing like this now.
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Here's another one called the Alley Self Hiver
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And it's the same principle except the column is set side by side, and there's a wire tunnel that connects two Queen Excluding device boxes on the front
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So again, in theory, the queen comes out, can't get through the queen excluder, goes down through the wire, and then enters the other empty box.
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And then she's followed supposedly
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by very happy bees that are chasing her down into the empty box.
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I have no idea if it works or not, but I love the little book.
00:13:52.199 --> 00:13:55.399
Here's a picture of something called Driving Irons
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And I'm going to read you what he says because this is the only reference to it.
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And I don't know what it means.
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If the driving irons are showed in figures 150 and 151, and they look like
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Hive staples, I guess.
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You know, and maybe that's it.
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It'd be advisable to make a great number of these sets as they are easily lost.
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They're made of wire near one quarter inch thick, the loops of which, shown in 150, had loops on either end.
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are nine inches apart, and the ends are about one and one half inches long, roughly pointed with a file.
00:14:38.880 --> 00:14:43.760
About twenty inches of wire are required to form these devices
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And two like that and one like figure fifty one form a complete set.
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And then it gives this requires about fifteen inches of wire.
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And then that's it.
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He moves on to why you should not make your own Bingham knife.
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So now I've got a puzzlement.
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I don't know what driving irons are in bees.
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I'm learning to use this system, artificial intelligence.
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I'll ask the world if anybody knows, but it you know, you learn some things and then you forget some things.
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Here's one thing called a comb cutter.
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And that's really interesting.
00:15:18.140 --> 00:15:29.980
If you're old enough to remember the old Dadant Duracomb and Duragilt, you remember there was a hole in the lower corner of each end of the comb, and it was to allow for
00:15:30.720 --> 00:15:33.920
Migration during the winter.
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Well, I respect the Dadant company.
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They're still a vibrant bee supply company, but I never thought that really made a lot of sense because if by the time
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The bee got down to the corner hole to get through.
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It might as well have just gone around the bottom of the frame.
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It didn't matter that much.
00:15:49.440 --> 00:16:04.160
So being a young, energetic, going to be a scientist kind of beekeeper, I thought it'd make much more sense just to cut these holes right in the middle of the comb, so the bees can freely move between combs back and forth.
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So I took an old-fashioned cork cutter and I cut a hole three-quarter inches thick right through the comb, right through the plastic center.
00:16:12.959 --> 00:16:19.839
And I had these five or six holes right down through the middle of the comb going horizontally.
00:16:19.839 --> 00:16:21.839
What what do you think happened
00:16:22.760 --> 00:16:24.120
Yeah, think for a minute.
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What do you think happened?
00:16:26.280 --> 00:16:31.080
In the spring months, the bees filled it all in with drone comb and plugged it all up
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I thought they would just relish the entrances between frames, but they didn't relish it at all.
00:16:38.080 --> 00:16:39.360
They covered them up.
00:16:39.360 --> 00:16:43.520
So here in this old book is how to make a comb cutter
00:16:43.980 --> 00:16:45.740
So you can cut combs.
00:16:45.740 --> 00:16:51.580
It's a simple tin plate cylinder about one inch in diameter and four or five inches long.
00:16:51.580 --> 00:16:56.940
And then there's this that you cut the combs and allow the bees access.
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shortcuts between these frames so they won't have to move the around like that.
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Here's a Cheshire transferring board.
00:17:05.900 --> 00:17:08.699
These old books spend a lot of time
00:17:09.140 --> 00:17:11.540
Telling you how to transfer bees.
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I've given you two or three episodes on this podcast because I think that I was in the
00:17:18.120 --> 00:17:28.040
The bottom of the ninth with two outs when I came along because I transferred these from box hives and there are no box hives now.
00:17:28.220 --> 00:17:33.340
But these old books gave a lot of information about how to transfer these bees.
00:17:33.340 --> 00:17:36.460
Every book I pick up is just coming all to pieces.
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I love some of the wording.
00:17:37.820 --> 00:17:41.100
Here's a chapter on the ingenuity of bees
00:17:42.340 --> 00:17:45.940
This subject defies description.
00:17:45.940 --> 00:17:52.340
To mention half of the instance of ingenuity seen in a large apary would fill a book
00:17:52.419 --> 00:17:58.900
And the buildings of combs and the formations of cells, design is strikingly evident.
00:17:58.900 --> 00:18:02.340
Honeycombs are made to dip to the bottom.
00:18:02.340 --> 00:18:06.900
If a piece of guide comb is put in wrong side up,
00:18:06.320 --> 00:18:13.920
The bees adopt it as commencement, but reverse the dip of the cells, so as to make them better shaped
00:18:14.120 --> 00:18:15.720
for holding honey.
00:18:15.720 --> 00:18:25.240
The stays and props that would be burr combs to you and me, frequently given to weak places and loose combs displace
00:18:25.919 --> 00:18:29.679
display great ingenuity.
00:18:29.679 --> 00:18:32.400
This book is just tearing all to pieces.
00:18:32.400 --> 00:18:34.799
I got to hold it with two hands.
00:18:35.419 --> 00:18:38.140
They get involved in nadiring.
00:18:38.140 --> 00:18:42.140
Nadiring may be sometimes used as artificial swarmers.
00:18:42.140 --> 00:18:43.740
Suppose a hive is nearby.
00:18:43.740 --> 00:18:44.780
Well, what's nadiring?
00:18:44.780 --> 00:18:46.539
I'm not going to read all this to you.
00:18:46.540 --> 00:18:48.380
Nadiring was when you didn't super.
00:18:48.380 --> 00:18:55.980
Instead of supering top to bottom, you could also bottom super, but nadiring was done to the side.
00:18:56.019 --> 00:19:03.139
So bees were allowed to move out of the wall of the of the original brood nest area into side walls.
00:19:03.139 --> 00:19:06.899
It's a little bit like a the peculiar long hive
00:19:07.780 --> 00:19:10.020
That would go from horizontally.
00:19:10.020 --> 00:19:12.100
So in theory, you wouldn't have to pick it up.
00:19:12.100 --> 00:19:15.140
Nadiring has really fallen from favor.
00:19:15.140 --> 00:19:16.820
So there was bottom supering.
00:19:16.820 --> 00:19:18.420
There was a name for that
00:19:19.000 --> 00:19:20.600
that I can't remember.
00:19:20.600 --> 00:19:24.760
But nadiring is discussed with these old techniques.
00:19:24.760 --> 00:19:29.720
I'm down I'm rushing because I know you probably
00:19:30.340 --> 00:19:34.100
tired of hearing this and it's just me who's really enjoying it.
00:19:34.100 --> 00:19:37.539
They've made actual division boards.
00:19:37.539 --> 00:19:42.980
And when I when I was a young beekeeper, I built actual division boards.
00:19:43.240 --> 00:19:50.280
On page 137 of Pettigrew's book, if I break it back, it'll crack all to pieces.
00:19:50.280 --> 00:19:52.120
Controlling Act of Congress.
00:19:52.120 --> 00:19:53.800
Where is the date?
00:19:53.800 --> 00:19:55.480
Don't rip the pages.
00:19:55.480 --> 00:19:57.960
1878.
00:19:57.820 --> 00:20:00.059
1878.
00:20:00.059 --> 00:20:01.500
A division board.
00:20:01.500 --> 00:20:05.980
A close-fitting division board for contracting the chamber.
00:20:05.980 --> 00:20:09.260
That's the brood chamber, is very important.
00:20:09.320 --> 00:20:16.840
And though unappreciated by many excellent apiarists, still no hive is complete without it
00:20:17.220 --> 00:20:22.260
I found it especially valuable in winter and spring, useful at all seasons.
00:20:22.260 --> 00:20:24.500
And then it tells you exactly how to make it.
00:20:24.500 --> 00:20:26.580
And then when I turn the page.
00:20:27.019 --> 00:20:32.779
It says that A. I. Root made us made a padded division board.
00:20:32.779 --> 00:20:38.779
And I'm putting you through all this because I wrote an article for some of the bee magazines and went to the next level.
00:20:38.560 --> 00:20:45.120
It was just a step away from making that gadget hollow and calling it a division board feeder.
00:20:45.120 --> 00:20:49.440
I now I'm too caught off guard because the very next step is the Huber hive.
00:20:49.440 --> 00:20:51.760
There's all of these hives
00:20:52.040 --> 00:20:59.480
If I just turn the pages and start looking, all of these hive designs, and and I would say that none are made anymore.
00:20:59.480 --> 00:21:03.240
Well that none are made, but I would say that it it's not different today.
00:21:03.440 --> 00:21:08.639
There's all these different styles and kinds of hives that are readily available to you.
00:21:08.639 --> 00:21:14.159
The Warre hive, the the Top Bar Hive, the Flow Hive.
00:21:14.440 --> 00:21:29.080
I mean I suspect, if I could be a historian at all, that we'll probably have as many hive variations today as as we've ever had, even in the old days, with these old hives that are now all on the junk heap.
00:21:28.980 --> 00:21:32.420
I'm sorry for putting you through this.
00:21:32.420 --> 00:21:35.860
It's entertaining to me because I held the book in my hand.
00:21:35.860 --> 00:21:42.420
I enjoy going back, I enjoy seeing the way things were, and it makes me appreciate even more
00:21:43.019 --> 00:21:46.779
the way things are now in my snapshot of beekeeping.
00:21:46.779 --> 00:21:56.059
I'm gonna finish on a book that just has been living in absolute fame for years, and it's Fifty Years Among the Bees by C.
00:21:56.059 --> 00:21:56.220
C.
00:21:56.380 --> 00:21:57.659
Miller.
00:21:57.679 --> 00:22:00.320
It's just a very readable book.
00:22:00.320 --> 00:22:09.840
This guy just seemed to have brought together at the time, culminating all of the aspects of modern beekeeping.
00:22:10.179 --> 00:22:16.899
No excluders under supers, correct bee space, risking in a good season.
00:22:16.899 --> 00:22:19.860
They do something called hive pruning.
00:22:19.919 --> 00:22:24.960
They wanted to get combs in Miller's book and other books.
00:22:24.960 --> 00:22:26.640
They wanted to get old combs out.
00:22:26.640 --> 00:22:28.160
Isn't that interesting?
00:22:28.340 --> 00:22:31.220
That these old guys were trying to recycle combs.
00:22:31.220 --> 00:22:33.220
And I don't really know why.
00:22:33.220 --> 00:22:38.580
I don't know if they were aware of the cells becoming smaller or or what.
00:22:38.620 --> 00:22:42.140
I gotta stop, but I gotta stop, but I keep wanting to say one more thing.
00:22:42.140 --> 00:22:46.780
Keep in mind we had some really hot bees back then with Apis mellifera mellifera.
00:22:46.780 --> 00:22:53.260
So when that guy was saying he was using tobacco smoke, he was probably working some really nasty bees.
00:22:53.019 --> 00:23:03.980
But then we also go through the advent of the Italian bee arriving and that bee taking over and the other strains that came in, the Caucasians and all the others.
00:23:03.840 --> 00:23:11.280
that we had for a while, and now we have our special bees that are specially bred instead of specific races of bees.
00:23:11.280 --> 00:23:15.200
This is our time. This is our place.
00:23:15.200 --> 00:23:18.559
This will not be the last time and the last place.
00:23:18.600 --> 00:23:25.320
And as long as these old books exist, we can go back and visit the time and place of other people.
00:23:25.320 --> 00:23:32.200
On this pleasant, rainy day, very consoling, very smooth, I just wanted to talk to you for a while.
00:23:32.200 --> 00:23:33.400
I really appreciate you.
00:23:34.640 --> 00:23:35.440
I'm Jim.
00:23:36.080 --> 00:23:36.720
Bye bye.
00:00:00.640 --> 00:00:03.360
Hey listeners, it's Jim.
00:00:03.360 --> 00:00:04.720
Again.
00:00:04.720 --> 00:00:07.360
Flying by the seat of my pants.
00:00:07.360 --> 00:00:08.640
Again.
00:00:08.620 --> 00:00:20.940
I frequently watch on YouTube some guy, this is not an endorsement, not just a conversation, some guy named Matt, who runs a heavy equipment company, unique vehicles.
00:00:21.020 --> 00:00:33.980
He goes out in the deserts into rough areas in the west and he retrieves any kind of vehicle, but mainly an off-road vehicle that's gotten in serious trouble or whatever, and he brings these things back
00:00:34.440 --> 00:00:40.840
He shows all the mechanisms and the wrecking and the four-wheeling and the whatever for getting them out.
00:00:40.840 --> 00:00:42.520
And this is all I want to tell you.
00:00:42.520 --> 00:00:45.400
He always starts his shows
00:00:45.620 --> 00:00:48.980
by giving the weather and the weather conditions.
00:00:48.980 --> 00:00:53.300
And I suppose it's supposed to have an effect on what the equipment's going to do.
00:00:53.300 --> 00:00:55.699
Well, I have that same tendency.
00:00:55.699 --> 00:00:58.820
Right now it is a classic
00:00:59.660 --> 00:01:01.019
morning.
00:01:01.019 --> 00:01:03.260
The rain is coming down straight.
00:01:03.260 --> 00:01:05.180
There's no wind velocity.
00:01:05.180 --> 00:01:10.700
There's occasional distant thunder that may or may not pick up
00:01:11.840 --> 00:01:16.640
You gotta be in the mood that I'm in.
00:01:16.640 --> 00:01:19.679
So I want to talk to you for a few minutes
00:01:19.840 --> 00:01:34.400
uh about old beekeeping techniques and procedures and as usual I want this to be a conversation because if I'm nothing I am not a historian an historian or a historian
00:01:35.640 --> 00:01:37.720
I'm not sure which.
00:01:37.720 --> 00:01:39.080
Let's talk about that here.
00:01:39.080 --> 00:01:48.759
I'm Jim Tew, and I come to you here pretty much once a week at Honey Bee Obscura, where I just try to talk about something, usually plain talk.
00:01:48.759 --> 00:01:49.479
Welcome.
00:01:49.760 --> 00:01:58.640
To Honey Bee Obscura, brought to you by Growing Planet Media, the producers of the Beekeeping Today podcast.
00:01:58.640 --> 00:02:04.240
Join Jim Tew, your guide through the complexities, the beauty, the fun, and
00:02:04.680 --> 00:02:07.560
And the challenges of managing honey bees.
00:02:07.560 --> 00:02:14.440
Jim hosts fun and interesting guests who take a deep dive into the intricate world of honey bees.
00:02:14.440 --> 00:02:19.480
Whether you're a seasoned beekeeper or just getting started, get ready for some plain talk.
00:02:19.760 --> 00:02:22.960
that'll delve into all things honey bees.
00:02:23.040 --> 00:02:29.520
To close the window just in case something happens with the rain or whatever that I'm not expecting.
00:02:31.080 --> 00:02:39.880
Do you remember Jason who helped me hide the crazy swarm with the vacuum and went through all that process?
00:02:39.880 --> 00:02:41.640
He's been on several times.
00:02:41.640 --> 00:02:45.160
He's a good beekeeper who doesn't keep bees.
00:02:45.340 --> 00:02:50.379
He's in his 40s and he's got a lot of life to live before he really settles down.
00:02:50.379 --> 00:02:55.900
And right now he has moved to Mexico permanently.
00:02:56.120 --> 00:03:04.920
So we may still talk to him sometime on the recording system here as he gets his feet under him and finds something to do with bees.
00:03:05.220 --> 00:03:10.340
But till then, my young friend Jason has left me.
00:03:10.340 --> 00:03:14.180
So now I've got to do all this ugly bee work by myself.
00:03:14.740 --> 00:03:17.060
As he was leaving, he kind of divvied up.
00:03:17.060 --> 00:03:25.700
He worked for our local library system here as the internet coordinator and the electronic maintenance person.
00:03:25.820 --> 00:03:28.300
And he loved books, so he had a lot of books.
00:03:28.300 --> 00:03:30.940
His mom is keeping them here for him.
00:03:30.940 --> 00:03:33.180
But he gave me OSB books
00:03:33.820 --> 00:03:37.500
I don't collect old books, but I respect old books.
00:03:37.980 --> 00:03:42.460
I've never had the money to buy a vast number of old books
00:03:43.379 --> 00:03:53.780
And then how I would love to get off of old books into the new world of artificial intelligence and what it knows, what it scans.
00:03:54.040 --> 00:03:56.040
I used to go to internet.
00:03:56.040 --> 00:03:58.120
org, I think it was called internet.
00:03:58.120 --> 00:03:59.000
org.
00:03:59.000 --> 00:03:59.720
Archive.
00:03:59.960 --> 00:04:00.600
org.
00:04:00.600 --> 00:04:01.400
Archive.
00:04:01.640 --> 00:04:02.120
org.
00:04:02.120 --> 00:04:07.480
This is the danger of having a casual conversation spontaneously.
00:04:07.440 --> 00:04:18.799
And if you dig through that, there's some full-blown, really readable old bee books that are stored there that are just as readable as they are anywhere.
00:04:19.180 --> 00:04:23.100
I used to enjoy doing that on days like this.
00:04:23.100 --> 00:04:27.020
I guess I'd like to say I don't want to live in the past.
00:04:27.280 --> 00:04:29.840
But I respect the past.
00:04:29.840 --> 00:04:31.840
Does that make sense?
00:04:32.159 --> 00:04:37.039
I've picked up these books, and this is going to really be clumsy.
00:04:37.039 --> 00:04:41.680
I don't know how I'm going to do this for sure without you hearing papers turn.
00:04:41.680 --> 00:04:47.120
And wanting to give you the flavor, when I open this, it says Ms.
00:04:47.120 --> 00:04:47.520
M.
00:04:47.759 --> 00:04:48.159
H.
00:04:48.400 --> 00:04:49.520
Burr.
00:04:50.060 --> 00:05:00.540
Union Ridge, Iowa, and the Spencerian script can only be described as spectacular.
00:05:00.540 --> 00:05:03.260
Did everybody write that way?
00:05:04.140 --> 00:05:09.500
And in 1862, it's just beautiful handwriting.
00:05:09.500 --> 00:05:15.580
And when you go through these old books, every one of them is coming all to pieces.
00:05:16.360 --> 00:05:19.720
What's my response or my responsibility, listeners?
00:05:20.039 --> 00:05:22.919
Am I supposed to get all these books rebound?
00:05:22.919 --> 00:05:24.759
Or do I just let them
00:05:25.960 --> 00:05:27.479
Disintegrate.
00:05:27.479 --> 00:05:34.199
When you open a bee book like this, it's a walk down somebody else's memory lane.
00:05:34.199 --> 00:05:37.400
I'm having to leave away lean away from the microphone.
00:05:37.260 --> 00:05:42.220
Because the book comes all to pieces if I try to lay it down.
00:05:42.220 --> 00:05:44.860
For instance, uh the use of tobacco smoke.
00:05:44.860 --> 00:05:46.220
Would you want to know about that?
00:05:46.220 --> 00:05:49.740
Let's see what they say about tobacco smoke for
00:05:52.100 --> 00:05:54.979
These are really fragile papers.
00:05:54.979 --> 00:05:57.540
Use of tobacco smoke.
00:05:57.540 --> 00:06:01.300
I would not do it for $50.
00:06:01.420 --> 00:06:04.140
The bees would sting me to death.
00:06:04.140 --> 00:06:09.660
Stop a moment if you've never tried the f the efficacy of tobacco smoke.
00:06:09.720 --> 00:06:12.440
You know nothing of a powerful agent.
00:06:12.440 --> 00:06:15.960
This is the grand secret of success.
00:06:15.960 --> 00:06:21.000
Without it, I admit that it would be somewhat hazardous, but with it.
00:06:21.840 --> 00:06:32.240
I have done it in time after time without receiving a single sting and no protection whatever for either hands or face.
00:06:32.240 --> 00:06:34.960
Well, we're not going to be using tobacco smoke
00:06:35.640 --> 00:06:41.240
But we are going to uh I got distracted because I looked across the page.
00:06:41.240 --> 00:06:43.720
This is what these old books do, listeners.
00:06:43.720 --> 00:06:45.480
Tools for cutting out comb
00:06:46.300 --> 00:06:57.660
And don't you know I have been looking for this all over because I want to I want to tell you almost as a warning, I gotta put a mark on this page.
00:06:57.539 --> 00:07:02.259
And I don't want the sticky paper to be stuck to the book.
00:07:02.259 --> 00:07:10.099
I'm going to tell you sometime without warning, I I've gotten interested in hive tools because they are so mundane.
00:07:10.139 --> 00:07:15.580
The hive tool that we use hasn't changed in almost a hundred years.
00:07:15.580 --> 00:07:24.860
And I can't tell which came first, hive tools or window openers, made by the Hyde Company and sold at Lowe's that look just like hive tools.
00:07:24.520 --> 00:07:26.840
Did beekeepers do it?
00:07:26.840 --> 00:07:31.960
So here is in this book, readily made from an old piece of scythe
00:07:32.260 --> 00:07:36.420
The other tool is for cutting off combs at the top or any other place.
00:07:36.420 --> 00:07:38.580
It's merely a rod of steel.
00:07:38.580 --> 00:07:43.380
Because see when you kept bees in box hives, you're gonna have to hear all this again.
00:07:43.260 --> 00:07:49.740
When you kept bees in box hives and skeps, you didn't need hive tools because there was no frames.
00:07:49.740 --> 00:07:53.900
So then used different knives, and I have never seen one.
00:07:54.240 --> 00:08:05.920
And don't you know Jason was a blacksmith, so before he left, he went out to his forge and a historical village and made me one of these tools to my specifications
00:08:06.340 --> 00:08:08.980
And I have looked all over for these tools.
00:08:08.980 --> 00:08:19.140
And while I was talking to you about the use of tobacco smoke in a book published in 1862, there's one of those hive tools that I've been looking for.
00:08:20.920 --> 00:08:22.040
I'm sorry.
00:08:22.360 --> 00:08:23.720
I enjoy doing this.
00:08:23.720 --> 00:08:25.320
Can I say it again?
00:08:25.560 --> 00:08:30.600
I don't want to live in the past, but I respect the past.
00:08:30.880 --> 00:08:42.960
And I increasingly, as I have grown old, I have a respect for those who went before and for the world that they lived in.
00:08:43.300 --> 00:08:52.260
And now we see our world as a snapshot of the way things will be.
00:08:52.260 --> 00:08:53.540
No.
00:08:53.540 --> 00:08:55.780
I would suggest with respect
00:08:56.579 --> 00:09:02.180
That it's just a snapshot of how things are right now.
00:09:02.180 --> 00:09:06.500
Whoever he used to go to all those video stores and stand there and check out videos.
00:09:06.579 --> 00:09:11.060
Well, it looked like at the moment that we'd be doing that for the rest of our lives.
00:09:10.820 --> 00:09:18.180
So I can use that as a quick example of how a snapshot in time, I can't blockbuster.
00:09:18.180 --> 00:09:20.740
I couldn't even think of the name of them for a while.
00:09:20.540 --> 00:09:24.540
I mean, at the time, Blockbuster, I suspect, thought they would be here forever.
00:09:24.540 --> 00:09:28.700
But technology always changes, and beekeeping reflects that.
00:09:28.839 --> 00:09:37.480
So the weird the beekeeping we're doing today will not be the beekeeping that we'll be doing 25, 50 years from now.
00:09:37.480 --> 00:09:38.759
Guaranteed.
00:09:38.759 --> 00:09:39.639
Guaranteed.
00:09:39.639 --> 00:09:41.560
I hope it'll be better.
00:09:41.720 --> 00:09:47.640
I suspect we're going to have other pests to deal with, but I hope that we keep developing tools to deal with that.
00:09:47.640 --> 00:09:48.600
Wow.
00:09:48.600 --> 00:09:50.440
Am I forever off the subject?
00:09:50.440 --> 00:09:53.160
Let me take a break and rewire my brain.
00:09:55.060 --> 00:10:00.900
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00:10:31.700 --> 00:10:32.980
00:10:32.980 --> 00:10:35.780
Here's a little Beehard book.
00:10:35.620 --> 00:10:40.660
That I bought somewhere at a show.
00:10:40.660 --> 00:10:44.580
It's just called Beehives, Work Handbooks.
00:10:44.440 --> 00:10:52.120
And it tells you how to manufacture everything and it tells you how to build a lot of long-gone hives.
00:10:52.120 --> 00:10:58.760
And all these old books really like to have these automatic swarm catchers.
00:10:58.920 --> 00:11:01.720
So that we catch the swarm before they ever left.
00:11:01.720 --> 00:11:05.720
You know that I talked to you about that trap that goes on the front
00:11:06.280 --> 00:11:13.880
That a queen and drone trap that was supposed to capture the queen as she left, and then you'd once you had the queen, how you would see her, I don't know, because
00:11:14.160 --> 00:11:19.360
There would be a lot of drones in the trap and workers, and then you'd have to see the queen in there too.
00:11:19.360 --> 00:11:27.040
But then you'd move the entire trap over to wherever you wanted the swarm to land, and then the swarm would land on the queen.
00:11:27.440 --> 00:11:31.040
It uh now I'm off the subject again, Jim.
00:11:31.040 --> 00:11:32.560
Stay focused.
00:11:32.560 --> 00:11:35.200
That gadget did work, but it didn't work well enough.
00:11:35.200 --> 00:11:36.000
It was clumsy.
00:11:36.000 --> 00:11:36.399
You had to be
00:11:36.640 --> 00:11:42.080
You had to almost live with your hive to know when the swarm is issued and when the queen was in it and whatever.
00:11:42.080 --> 00:11:43.040
So here's another one.
00:11:43.040 --> 00:11:47.040
It's called the Bennett Self-Divider.
00:11:47.480 --> 00:11:55.080
And it's made from zinc queen excluders and a board, and all you do is you face a hive to the hive
00:11:55.339 --> 00:11:58.060
That's quite that's considering swarming.
00:11:58.060 --> 00:12:07.579
And you close off the entrances except for a tunnel, just literally a classic tunnel, board underneath, and then this queen excluder on top
00:12:07.920 --> 00:12:22.560
And then in theory, as the swarm issues, the queen, wanting to go, crazy to go, runs down this queen-excluded tunnel.
00:12:21.920 --> 00:12:23.440
to the empty hive.
00:12:23.440 --> 00:12:26.000
The other bees are following her.
00:12:26.000 --> 00:12:29.920
Any bee that wants to get out and leave can do it.
00:12:29.920 --> 00:12:34.560
But then the queen is successfully trapped, I said successfully
00:12:35.020 --> 00:12:41.260
in the new box and then all the bees flying around come back and find this queen.
00:12:41.260 --> 00:12:42.780
I didn't read all this.
00:12:42.780 --> 00:12:45.980
If you tried to read all this stuff, I mean you're just going backwards.
00:12:45.980 --> 00:12:49.660
I should be reading all the current bee magazines and listening to podcasts.
00:12:49.940 --> 00:12:53.620
And looking at the future instead of looking back so much.
00:12:53.620 --> 00:13:00.660
But I didn't take time to read all this, but I wonder immediately that queen is really capable of flying.
00:13:01.120 --> 00:13:11.200
What's going to keep her in there unless you immediately put a queen excluder material over the door so she can't get out?
00:13:10.940 --> 00:13:12.940
and attract the other bees to it.
00:13:12.940 --> 00:13:15.420
I don't know of anything that we're doing like this now.
00:13:15.420 --> 00:13:18.620
Here's another one called the Alley Self Hiver
00:13:19.540 --> 00:13:29.700
And it's the same principle except the column is set side by side, and there's a wire tunnel that connects two Queen Excluding device boxes on the front
00:13:29.720 --> 00:13:40.120
So again, in theory, the queen comes out, can't get through the queen excluder, goes down through the wire, and then enters the other empty box.
00:13:40.120 --> 00:13:42.680
And then she's followed supposedly
00:13:42.920 --> 00:13:46.920
by very happy bees that are chasing her down into the empty box.
00:13:46.920 --> 00:13:52.199
I have no idea if it works or not, but I love the little book.
00:13:52.199 --> 00:13:55.399
Here's a picture of something called Driving Irons
00:13:56.940 --> 00:14:03.660
And I'm going to read you what he says because this is the only reference to it.
00:14:03.660 --> 00:14:05.580
And I don't know what it means.
00:14:05.580 --> 00:14:10.700
If the driving irons are showed in figures 150 and 151, and they look like
00:14:11.300 --> 00:14:14.020
Hive staples, I guess.
00:14:14.020 --> 00:14:15.940
You know, and maybe that's it.
00:14:15.940 --> 00:14:22.660
It'd be advisable to make a great number of these sets as they are easily lost.
00:14:22.640 --> 00:14:30.880
They're made of wire near one quarter inch thick, the loops of which, shown in 150, had loops on either end.
00:14:31.040 --> 00:14:38.880
are nine inches apart, and the ends are about one and one half inches long, roughly pointed with a file.
00:14:38.880 --> 00:14:43.760
About twenty inches of wire are required to form these devices
00:14:44.560 --> 00:14:49.680
And two like that and one like figure fifty one form a complete set.
00:14:49.680 --> 00:14:53.760
And then it gives this requires about fifteen inches of wire.
00:14:53.760 --> 00:14:54.800
And then that's it.
00:14:54.800 --> 00:14:58.960
He moves on to why you should not make your own Bingham knife.
00:14:58.759 --> 00:15:00.360
So now I've got a puzzlement.
00:15:00.360 --> 00:15:03.079
I don't know what driving irons are in bees.
00:15:03.079 --> 00:15:07.480
I'm learning to use this system, artificial intelligence.
00:15:07.540 --> 00:15:13.940
I'll ask the world if anybody knows, but it you know, you learn some things and then you forget some things.
00:15:13.940 --> 00:15:16.260
Here's one thing called a comb cutter.
00:15:16.620 --> 00:15:18.140
And that's really interesting.
00:15:18.140 --> 00:15:29.980
If you're old enough to remember the old Dadant Duracomb and Duragilt, you remember there was a hole in the lower corner of each end of the comb, and it was to allow for
00:15:30.720 --> 00:15:33.920
Migration during the winter.
00:15:33.920 --> 00:15:35.760
Well, I respect the Dadant company.
00:15:35.760 --> 00:15:41.280
They're still a vibrant bee supply company, but I never thought that really made a lot of sense because if by the time
00:15:41.640 --> 00:15:44.520
The bee got down to the corner hole to get through.
00:15:44.520 --> 00:15:46.920
It might as well have just gone around the bottom of the frame.
00:15:46.920 --> 00:15:49.560
It didn't matter that much.
00:15:49.440 --> 00:16:04.160
So being a young, energetic, going to be a scientist kind of beekeeper, I thought it'd make much more sense just to cut these holes right in the middle of the comb, so the bees can freely move between combs back and forth.
00:16:04.020 --> 00:16:13.140
So I took an old-fashioned cork cutter and I cut a hole three-quarter inches thick right through the comb, right through the plastic center.
00:16:12.959 --> 00:16:19.839
And I had these five or six holes right down through the middle of the comb going horizontally.
00:16:19.839 --> 00:16:21.839
What what do you think happened
00:16:22.760 --> 00:16:24.120
Yeah, think for a minute.
00:16:24.120 --> 00:16:26.280
What do you think happened?
00:16:26.280 --> 00:16:31.080
In the spring months, the bees filled it all in with drone comb and plugged it all up
00:16:31.600 --> 00:16:38.080
I thought they would just relish the entrances between frames, but they didn't relish it at all.
00:16:38.080 --> 00:16:39.360
They covered them up.
00:16:39.360 --> 00:16:43.520
So here in this old book is how to make a comb cutter
00:16:43.980 --> 00:16:45.740
So you can cut combs.
00:16:45.740 --> 00:16:51.580
It's a simple tin plate cylinder about one inch in diameter and four or five inches long.
00:16:51.580 --> 00:16:56.940
And then there's this that you cut the combs and allow the bees access.
00:16:57.180 --> 00:17:02.860
shortcuts between these frames so they won't have to move the around like that.
00:17:02.860 --> 00:17:05.900
Here's a Cheshire transferring board.
00:17:05.900 --> 00:17:08.699
These old books spend a lot of time
00:17:09.140 --> 00:17:11.540
Telling you how to transfer bees.
00:17:11.540 --> 00:17:17.700
I've given you two or three episodes on this podcast because I think that I was in the
00:17:18.120 --> 00:17:28.040
The bottom of the ninth with two outs when I came along because I transferred these from box hives and there are no box hives now.
00:17:28.220 --> 00:17:33.340
But these old books gave a lot of information about how to transfer these bees.
00:17:33.340 --> 00:17:36.460
Every book I pick up is just coming all to pieces.
00:17:36.460 --> 00:17:37.820
I love some of the wording.
00:17:37.820 --> 00:17:41.100
Here's a chapter on the ingenuity of bees
00:17:42.340 --> 00:17:45.940
This subject defies description.
00:17:45.940 --> 00:17:52.340
To mention half of the instance of ingenuity seen in a large apary would fill a book
00:17:52.419 --> 00:17:58.900
And the buildings of combs and the formations of cells, design is strikingly evident.
00:17:58.900 --> 00:18:02.340
Honeycombs are made to dip to the bottom.
00:18:02.340 --> 00:18:06.900
If a piece of guide comb is put in wrong side up,
00:18:06.320 --> 00:18:13.920
The bees adopt it as commencement, but reverse the dip of the cells, so as to make them better shaped
00:18:14.120 --> 00:18:15.720
for holding honey.
00:18:15.720 --> 00:18:25.240
The stays and props that would be burr combs to you and me, frequently given to weak places and loose combs displace
00:18:25.919 --> 00:18:29.679
display great ingenuity.
00:18:29.679 --> 00:18:32.400
This book is just tearing all to pieces.
00:18:32.400 --> 00:18:34.799
I got to hold it with two hands.
00:18:35.419 --> 00:18:38.140
They get involved in nadiring.
00:18:38.140 --> 00:18:42.140
Nadiring may be sometimes used as artificial swarmers.
00:18:42.140 --> 00:18:43.740
Suppose a hive is nearby.
00:18:43.740 --> 00:18:44.780
Well, what's nadiring?
00:18:44.780 --> 00:18:46.539
I'm not going to read all this to you.
00:18:46.540 --> 00:18:48.380
Nadiring was when you didn't super.
00:18:48.380 --> 00:18:55.980
Instead of supering top to bottom, you could also bottom super, but nadiring was done to the side.
00:18:56.019 --> 00:19:03.139
So bees were allowed to move out of the wall of the of the original brood nest area into side walls.
00:19:03.139 --> 00:19:06.899
It's a little bit like a the peculiar long hive
00:19:07.780 --> 00:19:10.020
That would go from horizontally.
00:19:10.020 --> 00:19:12.100
So in theory, you wouldn't have to pick it up.
00:19:12.100 --> 00:19:15.140
Nadiring has really fallen from favor.
00:19:15.140 --> 00:19:16.820
So there was bottom supering.
00:19:16.820 --> 00:19:18.420
There was a name for that
00:19:19.000 --> 00:19:20.600
that I can't remember.
00:19:20.600 --> 00:19:24.760
But nadiring is discussed with these old techniques.
00:19:24.760 --> 00:19:29.720
I'm down I'm rushing because I know you probably
00:19:30.340 --> 00:19:34.100
tired of hearing this and it's just me who's really enjoying it.
00:19:34.100 --> 00:19:37.539
They've made actual division boards.
00:19:37.539 --> 00:19:42.980
And when I when I was a young beekeeper, I built actual division boards.
00:19:43.240 --> 00:19:50.280
On page 137 of Pettigrew's book, if I break it back, it'll crack all to pieces.
00:19:50.280 --> 00:19:52.120
Controlling Act of Congress.
00:19:52.120 --> 00:19:53.800
Where is the date?
00:19:53.800 --> 00:19:55.480
Don't rip the pages.
00:19:55.480 --> 00:19:57.960
1878.
00:19:57.820 --> 00:20:00.059
1878.
00:20:00.059 --> 00:20:01.500
A division board.
00:20:01.500 --> 00:20:05.980
A close-fitting division board for contracting the chamber.
00:20:05.980 --> 00:20:09.260
That's the brood chamber, is very important.
00:20:09.320 --> 00:20:16.840
And though unappreciated by many excellent apiarists, still no hive is complete without it
00:20:17.220 --> 00:20:22.260
I found it especially valuable in winter and spring, useful at all seasons.
00:20:22.260 --> 00:20:24.500
And then it tells you exactly how to make it.
00:20:24.500 --> 00:20:26.580
And then when I turn the page.
00:20:27.019 --> 00:20:32.779
It says that A. I. Root made us made a padded division board.
00:20:32.779 --> 00:20:38.779
And I'm putting you through all this because I wrote an article for some of the bee magazines and went to the next level.
00:20:38.560 --> 00:20:45.120
It was just a step away from making that gadget hollow and calling it a division board feeder.
00:20:45.120 --> 00:20:49.440
I now I'm too caught off guard because the very next step is the Huber hive.
00:20:49.440 --> 00:20:51.760
There's all of these hives
00:20:52.040 --> 00:20:59.480
If I just turn the pages and start looking, all of these hive designs, and and I would say that none are made anymore.
00:20:59.480 --> 00:21:03.240
Well that none are made, but I would say that it it's not different today.
00:21:03.440 --> 00:21:08.639
There's all these different styles and kinds of hives that are readily available to you.
00:21:08.639 --> 00:21:14.159
The Warre hive, the the Top Bar Hive, the Flow Hive.
00:21:14.440 --> 00:21:29.080
I mean I suspect, if I could be a historian at all, that we'll probably have as many hive variations today as as we've ever had, even in the old days, with these old hives that are now all on the junk heap.
00:21:28.980 --> 00:21:32.420
I'm sorry for putting you through this.
00:21:32.420 --> 00:21:35.860
It's entertaining to me because I held the book in my hand.
00:21:35.860 --> 00:21:42.420
I enjoy going back, I enjoy seeing the way things were, and it makes me appreciate even more
00:21:43.019 --> 00:21:46.779
the way things are now in my snapshot of beekeeping.
00:21:46.779 --> 00:21:56.059
I'm gonna finish on a book that just has been living in absolute fame for years, and it's Fifty Years Among the Bees by C.
00:21:56.059 --> 00:21:56.220
C.
00:21:56.380 --> 00:21:57.659
Miller.
00:21:57.679 --> 00:22:00.320
It's just a very readable book.
00:22:00.320 --> 00:22:09.840
This guy just seemed to have brought together at the time, culminating all of the aspects of modern beekeeping.
00:22:10.179 --> 00:22:16.899
No excluders under supers, correct bee space, risking in a good season.
00:22:16.899 --> 00:22:19.860
They do something called hive pruning.
00:22:19.919 --> 00:22:24.960
They wanted to get combs in Miller's book and other books.
00:22:24.960 --> 00:22:26.640
They wanted to get old combs out.
00:22:26.640 --> 00:22:28.160
Isn't that interesting?
00:22:28.340 --> 00:22:31.220
That these old guys were trying to recycle combs.
00:22:31.220 --> 00:22:33.220
And I don't really know why.
00:22:33.220 --> 00:22:38.580
I don't know if they were aware of the cells becoming smaller or or what.
00:22:38.620 --> 00:22:42.140
I gotta stop, but I gotta stop, but I keep wanting to say one more thing.
00:22:42.140 --> 00:22:46.780
Keep in mind we had some really hot bees back then with Apis mellifera mellifera.
00:22:46.780 --> 00:22:53.260
So when that guy was saying he was using tobacco smoke, he was probably working some really nasty bees.
00:22:53.019 --> 00:23:03.980
But then we also go through the advent of the Italian bee arriving and that bee taking over and the other strains that came in, the Caucasians and all the others.
00:23:03.840 --> 00:23:11.280
that we had for a while, and now we have our special bees that are specially bred instead of specific races of bees.
00:23:11.280 --> 00:23:15.200
This is our time. This is our place.
00:23:15.200 --> 00:23:18.559
This will not be the last time and the last place.
00:23:18.600 --> 00:23:25.320
And as long as these old books exist, we can go back and visit the time and place of other people.
00:23:25.320 --> 00:23:32.200
On this pleasant, rainy day, very consoling, very smooth, I just wanted to talk to you for a while.
00:23:32.200 --> 00:23:33.400
I really appreciate you.
00:23:34.640 --> 00:23:35.440
I'm Jim.
00:23:36.080 --> 00:23:36.720
Bye bye.