Bees Around the World

Ancient cave paintings suggest that honey has been gathered from bees by humans since prehistoric times. Honey bees can now be found all over the world except the extreme polar regions. Our collections reflect the wide range of countries where research into bees has taken place.

Anatomie et physiologie de l'abeille was written by Michał Girdwoyń, a Polish beekeeper and ichthyologist, and was published in Paris in 1876. Girdwoyń originally trained as an engineer but later studied agriculture and life sciences and wrote a number of books on bees and fish.

The Dutch entomologist Johannes Goedaert (1617-1668) was one of the earliest authors on entomology and the first to write about the insects of the Netherlands. His books were also the first to depict insects using the technique of engraving after his drawings.

The title page of this beekeeping manual, published in Amsterdam in 1670, shows a man 'tanging' a swarm of bees by banging on a pan, the rhythmical sound helping to coax the swarm into the overturned hive. The engraving was by Gerbrand van den Eeckhout, a pupil of Rembrandt.

This late nineteenth-century Norwegian publication also features an image depicting the 'tanging' of bees. The frontispiece engraving shows a woman banging a pan while a man holds an upturned hive on a pitch fork as they try and coax the swarming bees in the tree into the hive.

This work on the history of insects according to the Linnaean system by the Swiss physician and entomologist, Johann Heinrich Sulzer (1735 -1813) is exceptional for the high quality of its many hand-coloured plates. It was published in Winterthur in Switzerland in 1776.

John Jonston (1603–1675) was a Polish scholar and physician, descended from Scottish nobility, and the author of a number of books on zoology and natural history. This work was illustrated by the Swiss engraver, Matthäus Merian, who illustrated many of Jonston's other books.

Clerici’s atlas contains thirty chromolithographic plates. His studies are based on the microscopic drawings of Count Gaetano Barbò (1840-1919), who co-authored with Luigi Sartori, the first Italian manual of apiculture in 1878. This plate shows the proboscis of a bee.

The Cowan Bee Collection contains texts in a wide range of European languages, including both works in their original version and in translation. German and French feature prominently, but also Dutch, Romanian, Russian, with some Serbian and Bulgarian works, as in this example.

Lorenzo L. Langstroth is regarded as the father of American beekeeping. In 1851 he created his movable-frame hive, with hanging frames, in which the bees construct honey-filled combs, which can be easily removed by the beekeeper. This became the model for the modern beehive.

Bees around the world today are at risk from many threats including parasites, pesticides and climate change. Our wide-ranging collections help to raise awareness and inspire interest in bees and the long history of honey hunting, beekeeping and bee research around the globe.