Floating Apiaries in Egypt

Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.

The following sketch we copy from the Deutsche Illustrierte Bienen Zeitung for November, page 44. The engraving also from the same source we reproduce. The article was written by Mr. T. Kellen, of Luxemburg. W. P. Root, our proof-reader, translates as follows:

Not long ago I discovered in the city library of this place, Luxemburg:, a French work on bees, which for a century had been unremoved, leaves uncut, and was covered with venerable dust and finger-marks. In this work I found a very interesting notice in reference to portable apiaries of that period. The author of the above work, B. E. Manuel, procured some notes of a description of Egypt, and added a few concluding: observations of Reaumer thereto. From this and other histories of travels, as well as from Maillet's Description of Egypt, published in 1740, it appears that, in the last century, there were a great many colonies of bees kept in the land of the Pharaohs, and that a very lively business was maintained therein, quite unlike what we have in our own country. Dr. Westhau reports, in a description of a travel through Egypt, in 1702, the following: "In many places I found apiculture greatly hindered, notwithstanding the inhabitants manifest much interest in it. In the season of bloom they move with their bees, now here and now there, in order to fill their hives with honey."

In the last century there was found, with all of the ignorance and wildness of the inhabitants, an occasional trace to remind one of the previous luxury of a keen and diligent generation, long past. One of the most noticeable evidences of their activity was the annual sending of their bees to remote districts, that they might secure pasturage, which occasionally failed them at their own stands.

As Upper Egypt is hotter than Lower Egypt, and the land there is freer from the inundations of the Nile, the honey-plants there develop at least six weeks earlier. The inhabitants were fully aware of this fact, and availed themselves of it for the benefit of their bees. In Lower and Middle Egypt they placed a certain number of colonies of bees, which were often kept in jugs and bowls, and often in cylinders or baskets made of burnt clay, or made out of withes braided, and besmeared with Nile slime, made expressly for this purpose— forerunners of the portable bee-hives of Swabia. If the hives were required at the upper end of Egypt, they were transported thither, so the bees could visit the neighboring honey-plants and shrubs. When the crop in Upper Egypt was exhausted, they floated the skiffs a few miles down stream, and waited there as long as honey could be found in paying quantities.

At the beginning of the month of February they arrived at Lower Egypt, where they delivered the hives back to their owners. The latter then sold the entire product at wholesale in Cairo. The beekeepers from Upper Egypt, after they had disposed of their products in the region of the delta of the Nile, and had secured what honey they could there, returned again up stream to their homes.

Unfortunately, hitherto history has furnished us no details in regard to portable apiaries in this land of early antiquity, which are authentic; nevertheless, it is easy to conjecture that that inventive people, as the valley of the Nile bears them witness, will convert it, as they did a century ago, into the business of portable apiculture. One may easily believe that Egypt first suggested the same business to Greece and other lands. The Roman agricultural writer, Columella, writes (De Re Rustica), Book IX., chapter 14, in replying to Celsus, that in Achaia the bees from Attica and Eubcea, on all the Cycladian islands to the island of Skiros, and from the various Sicilian coasts to Hybla, were cultivated for honey. This custom was, in all probability, introduced from Egypt at the time of Solon, for the civilization of Egypt is unquestionably much older than that of Greece. Before Solon arose as reformer in Athens he traveled through Egypt, and learned there how to make many improvements which he afterward made useful to his native land.

But how stands bee culture now in Egypt? When even the fellahin and Copts conspire to drive out apiculture, no more will be read in modern histories of travels in Egypt in regard to movable apiaries; and no traveler will see any more the skiffs on the Nile, laden with hives. This is easy to be seen, when one reflects how downtrodden Egypt is under the foot of the Mohammedan.

I am sorry that the original manuscript did not give us more particulars. For instance, did that chap in the back of the boat have nothing to do but smoke his pipe? Were the bees fastened in the hives during the trip, or did they work along the shores and "catch up?" Will eight hives of bees, as shown in the cut, pay the expenses of the whole establishment, with two men to run it, letting one man smoke most of the time " to boot?'' If the bees are of the Egyptian "denomination," I should think the "house” in the stern might come quite handy.

Bibliography

T. Kellen,”Floating Apiaries in Egypt” in Gleanings in Bee Culture, trans. W. T. Root, vol. 17, series 3 (Medina, OH: A.I. Root Co., 1889).

T. Kellen

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