Strange Pre-Modern Apiculture in China
The practice of Beekeeping or Apiculture is practiced all over the world and even chimpanzees have done apiculture though not at the sophistication of modern civilizations. Wherever it is suitable for any honeybee to thrive, apiculture has followed with possible origins from Africa or Asia to then spread to Europe and America commonly by human migration. Many scholarly articles talking about apiculture are focused on European apiculture or recent honeybee events and there is a lack of scholarship on pre-modern apiculture in China. Ancient Chinese apiculture isn’t long as apiculture in civilizations like Egypt, but China still has many texts on apicultural practices. The lack of pre-modern Chinese apiculture scholarship is due to multiple factors such as the society, politics, and the general need to know about practices that prove irrelevant in modern apiculture.
David Pattinson is a scholar who claims in his article that pre-modern Chinese apiculture has not been studied as much as it could have and uses text at the time to show the lack of Scholarly work on ancient Chinese apiculture in any language including Chinese. He uses a 289-page Chinese book called A Brief History of Chinese apiculture, only has 24-pages on pre-modern apiculture which is kind of peculiar. He also states that Eva Crane’s 1999 book called, The World History on Beekeeping and Honey Hunting, which is at the time considered an authoritative view on apiculture had a reference chronology on apiculture on China from 2000 BCE to 1600 CE as considered by Pattinson, but he also says Eva Crane wasn’t able to study ancient Chinese apiculture more thoroughly due to her inability to read Chinese, thus she couldn’t study ancient texts on beekeeping herself. Texts that Pattinson use to show that there is ancient apicultural texts include a 1273 C.E. manual given out during the Mongol’s rule of China which was produced to encourage agriculture.
Eva Crane was a major bee researcher who was first a mathematician and is said to have become fascinated with bees because of a wedding gift she received in 1942, and she saw that she can contribute a lot to bee research and established the Bee Research Association which became the International Bee Research Association(IBRA). The organization promotes and funds bee research and Eva Crane has talked about bee research in China in a 1960 paper about furthering bee research. In the paper she states information gathered in China and most of the paper is on the current happenings of Chinese beekeeping with only a paragraph on how new bee hives could be created with boxes, however she does state that the paper is an interim report and research about ancient Chinese apiculture is developing. It seems to be a larger problem as during Eva Crane’s time there wasn’t a lot of research on bees in the first place.
Gene Kritsky is a scholar with a masters in entomology and puts forth in his paper titled, “Beekeeping in Antiquity Through the Middle Ages,” that beekeeping is Eurocentric. Apicultural Eurocentricity is most likely due to apiculture being practiced in the eastern Mediterranean for nearly 9000 years compared to 300 BCE in China and the oldest painting depicting apiculture dating back to 7000 and 8000. Other apiculture findings are that the oldest artificial beehives were found in
Some practices of Ancient Chinese apiculture are similar to European apiculture and can be discounted as the same which reduces the necessity for study. David Pattinson describes a method used in China which mirror some used in other places that are described in Eva Crane’s 1999 book such as the use of skeps which are straw hives. In Europe boles which are holes which skeps are stored in are described more but was not used in China. Apiculture developed independently from other countries except when the movable frame arrived in China, but they still developed similar apiculture methods such as the skep.
These lack of information on Pre-modern Chinese Apiculture may be attributed more to the lack of potential benefits from studying pre-modern apiculture so most research efforts are on the modern apicultural events in China. Eva Crane has a 1985 paper titled, “The World Pattern of Apicultural Research,” in which she states that it is hard to get funding for apicultural research and that the research on bees are funded when a noticeable event happens. Many articles pertain to current events Colony Collapse disorder and the more impending issues climate change and the effects of climate changes on apiculture such as their suitable habitats. China is the biggest honey exporter but knowing how Chinese beekeepers used to think bee queens were kings is not very helpful and can even be harmful.
Many of the texts Pattinson examines for apiculture have ideas that are harmful to bees and can misinform in modern beekeeping. One instance of misinformation is that queen bees were thought to have been kings and that bee colonies have a structured monarchy that transitions smoothly from one king to another. The misinformation on queen bees was more common and some methods of separating the “king” bees may be harmful to a colony as weak colonies were recommended to keep the original king and remove other kings, this would prevent the strongest of the developing kings from forming their own colonies. On the other hand Pattinson describes a text in his paper on feeding bees through the winter with chicken, rice porridge, or cooked red sweet potato. The recommendation of human foods for bees was included in multiple apiculture texts and may have led to many beekeepers losing colonies. Thus, some texts of Chinese apiculture are harmful and do not provide benefits for studying them.
The lack of academic papers on ancient Chinese apiculture can also be due to how turbulent China’s history has been especially when researchers like Crane were developing bee research. China was going through the great leap forward when Crane’s 1960 paper on China was published and the cultural revolution had not occurred yet and it is when education was being demonized and it was encouraged to destroy traditional artifacts. Most of China’s documentation of apiculture is focused on 1896 and beyond when Langstroth’s movable frame apiary and Apis Melliforea otherwise known as the European Honeybee was being introduced to China. Because of China’s large land mass they’re able to produce the most amount of honey in the modern day and most papers are updates on the modern apiculture and even expanding optimized apiculture to other countries. Apis Melliforea could outproduce the local Chinese species and the Movable framed apiaries were easier to use than traditional beekeeping methods. As a result of China adopting movable frames and using Apis Melliforea China has become the largest exporter of honey. Modern scholarship usually revolves around colony collapse disorder or the disappearance of bees which may have come from analyzing the effects of climate change and any human disruptions that have caused damage to the environment.
The native bee species in China and the surrounding countries most likely could not be fully optimized due to different characteristics such as different production amounts and difference in sizes and behavior and were considered inferior economically. Apis Dorsata is a species that resides in Asia and is known as the giant honeybee. Instead of movable frames, hives are raised on poles for Dorsata to live in which can be a lost opportunity to optimize beekeeping. The honey produced by Dorsata are in high places and cracks so people have to use ladders and poles to harvest the honey which is unconventional for mass scale production. Another species that is native to China is Apis Cerana which is smaller than Apis Melliforea was the main domesticated bee before Apis Melliforea, however the methods and species Melliforea outproduces Cerana causing its replacement. Apis Cerana is still viable as the bee species is more suited to local plant species that Apis melliforea has neglected and Cerana has a smaller range that it will travel from the hive made Cerana more faithful to specific plants thus a more consistent honey is produced. Apis Cerana is also more resistant to certain parasites that Apis Melliforea are not and Melliforea populations have suffered because of the spread of Melliforea to regions and bee packaging.
In conclusion the lack of Pre-modern Chinese apiculture is due to the irrelevance of pre-modern practices, so funding for apicultural research are not given to studying pre-modern apiculture. David Pattinson was right in his claim and scholars like Eva Crane and Gene Kritsky would agree as Eva Crane was trying to develop research in China and Gene notes the Eurocentric nature of scholarship on apiculture. Pattinson acknowledges the lack of scholarship on pre-modern Chinese apiculture and hopes that his paper would provide a basis for more research into Chinese apiculture.
Bibliography
Pattinson, David. “Pre-Modern Beekeeping in China: A Short History.” Agricultural History, vol. 86, no. 4, Fall. 2012, pp. 235–255.
Kritsky, Gene. “Beekeeping from Antiquity Through the Middle Ages.” Annual Review of Entomology, vol. 62, no. 1, 2017, pp. 249–264.
Crane, Eva. The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting. Duckworth, 1999.
“China’s Beekeepers and the Bees .” YouTube, China Icons , 24 Aug. 2016, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YyPvH6e3eVo&t=22s.
Taylor, Alan. “Honey Hunting on the Cliffs of China’s Yunnan Province.” The Atlantic, Atlantic Media Company, 6 June 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2019/06/honey-hunting-chinas-yunnan-province-photos/591202/.
Reflection
The research historiography assignment was the most difficult assignment yet because of my inexperience in writing research papers and my interest was really waning while writing the paper. I can say that I practiced some of the course learning outcomes (CLOs), specifically locating sources, citation conventions, and using sources to support my argument however I lost interest and I was disappointed with what I had to work with. During the research phase of the paper I had multiple times where I was interested in some aspect in my topic which is honey, but I couldn’t find too many sources connecting to it so I had to settle for something else. Many of my arguments was also assuming based on information connecting indirectly to the claim I was making.
The purpose of my paper was to inform people on the lack of scholarship on pre-modern Chinese apiculture, which is not an interesting topic to most people and is trivial even to me. I settled on trying to support this claim, because I had met with the instructor(Hopkins) and he wanted us to have a scholarly debate in our papers, a paper I found had a claim on scholarship which is the purpose and he told me to build off of that. I tried to support the claim by using sources which we could find and use 5. The scholarly debate I created was based on the authors of the 5 sources and any papers that could link them to pre-modern Chinese apiculture.
The CLO I practiced a lot is location of sources where I had to find sources that I can use for my paper. I was first instructed to use Jstor, Project Muse, and the Cuny database. Jstor and Project Muse were narrow, but the articles are usually from accredited sources like university presses. The Cuny database is very large but it provides links to other databases which made it extremely broad and overwhelming, I did happen to have a book source that was at another Cuny school, but I didn’t have enough time to have a library loan so I was instructed to look at reviews of the book. When I found sources to use I tried looking at the bibliography of the sources and search those sources however the sources were often unobtainable for me.
Another CLO I practiced was using sources to support my claim. The way I used sources may not be allowed but the sources I had were not directly linked or I found that there wasn’t enough information in one of the author’s works to support my claim. An example would be the book I cited The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting, by Eva Crane who is a respected source in beekeeping scholarship, I found that she had a short paper that I could use to describe her opinion on the debate on my claim so I had used it without citing it in my paper’s bibliography. I also used sources that were not directly linked to my paper, but I used a small portion or one sentence to include in my paper.
In conclusion, I practiced at least two CLOs and had a difficult time with the paper. I would attribute many of my frustrations to my lost interest in the assignment, so I took less logical approaches to supporting my argument. I would enjoy or feel less pressure had I had more direct guidance in practicing source finding and constructing a scholarly debate on a claim.
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