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| Modern Agricultural Use
When the new era of “beekeeping began in 1851...a common problem facing beekeepers was the fact that bees firmly attached the comb to the sides and top of the hive [leaving] no way to remove the honey without breaking the comb” (Gojmerac 1980:14). From such a problem, the modern honeybee box was designed by the creative genius of one, Lorenzo Langstroth. A Pennsylvanian beekeeper, Langstroth’s “...hive used removable frames inside a box for the bees to build comb...where as many as 80,000 bees may live during the peak of the honey season” (Herren 2007:148). Because of his removable frames, beekeepers can now successfully harvest honey with little destruction of the comb or the entire hive.
Beekeeping has remained both an art and a tradition, passed down from generation to generation. However, in today’s society, it has evolved into a science as well. Following the general trends in agriculture, greater measures are being taken to create “better bees” through selective breeding, and artificial insemination. Before such issues as Colony Collapse Disorder were even understood, science played a large role in the honeybee industry, creating artificial pheromones, better means of reproduction and genetically superior species. As the demand for pollinators increases within sectors of the agricultural industry, so does the demand for bees whose propagation efficiency is capable of matching the ever-increasing acreage of large-scale orchards, farms, and nurseries.
The modern honeybee industry caters to interests that extend far beyond the traditional honey distributors. With an increase demand for organic, earthy products, honeybee producers are finding themselves supplying bee products to makeup, and health food companies. One must also note the indirect relationship between various grocery chains and the produce made possible by the contracted pollinators. In one way or another, nearly all divisions of society are impacted in some part by the honeybee
In many ways, modern agriculture is a far stretch from what it used to be, but regardless of all the scientific advancements, it continues to be practiced in a rather intimate fashion in comparison to some of agriculture’s ever-growing, ever-expanding animal producers.
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