First, I want you to know that I am no expert or anywhere close to being very knowable on honeybees. I did own a hive at one time but allowed my renter to spray for mosquitoes and that done away with my bees right fast.
Throughout my years I have seen honeybees swarming. Why, one time I was going down 220 Hwy. toward Rockingham and a swarm came right across the road right in front of me. First of all, it kind of startled me — but as honey started running down my windshield, I knew what had just happened.
Honeybees have been on this earth from ancient times to our modern days. Honey was mentioned several times in the Bible as a source of life and wealth.
Although, through our scientific research, Honeybees represent only a small portion of the roughly 20,000 known species of bees. Honeybees and bumblebees are most familiar to humans.The honeybee is probably the most valuable beneficial insect to agriculture and horticulture. The more common honeybee is the Western honeybee, which for the most part has been domesticated and farmed for honey production and crop pollination.
Africanized honeybees — or what some might call “Killer Bees” — are a hybrid between a European and African bee. These bees are more aggressive, and in some parts considered a pest. They seem to range out farther and have more resistance to diseases, but they make less honey.
Our own Native Americans for years would collect or rob honey from wild bees’ hives by using smoke to confuse the bees. Often the hive would be found in hollow trees.
When Europeans came over, they brought over the European bees which were more domesticated. For a long time, Native Americans called these more domesticated bees “White Flies.” Seems the natives could often spot these non-feral bees and used it as a sign that the White man was moving in closer to their lands.
For Colonial Americans, honey was used as a substitute for cane sugar or sweeteners, but most of the time the bees’ wax was more valuable.
Honey has many uses and, in older times, was valued highly, thus it was used as a tribute or payment. Honey was used to prepare food and beverages, to make cement or a type of glue, to preserve fruit, to make a type of furniture polish, and for medical purposes.
So how did the colonists and farmers keep their bees? Why, they built wooden hives, often using cut-off hollow logs with a cap on them. Some bees were kept in homemade straw baskets.
Seems farmers were always looking for bee trees to cut down, or in church steeples to replenish or add to the number of hives and bees on their property. At other times, large swarms of bees could be seen swarming just above the treetops.
When a farmer or part of his family spotted a swarm of bees flying — or swarming, as they called it — they would either give chase or start tanging for the bees to settle down and land so they could be captured.
Now what does the word tanging refer to? It is an act of creating a loud sound or signal. In bee folklore, it is said that if you start banging a wooden spoon on a metal pot, or making some other loud noise, these vibrations will signal the bees to land — hopefully in your baited hive. Now I don’t know, but one time I was driving my truck down a dirt road and spotted a swarm of bees heading into the woods. I blew my horn right loud and be doggone if’n them bees didn’t light on a limb right next to my truck.
Historians have claimed that tanging was never meant to entice bees into landing. Instead, it was meant to inform other humans or your neighbors that this swarm of bees was spoken for. It was a way of staking claim on the property, ‘bout like in the American West like “I got here first; I marked them and now they’re mine.” Don’t know how many people got shot chasing these swarming bees on others’ property but I’m sure there were a few fist fights over them bees.
Well, I hope you have learned a few things about honeybees in this here column. You know it’s never too late to learn something new.
J.A. Bolton is author of “Just Passing Time,” “Southern Fried: Down-Home Stories,” “Sit-A-Spell,” “Early Years at Blewett Falls,” and co-author of “Just Passing Time Together,” all of which can be purchased on Amazon or bought locally. Contact him at ja@jabolton.com.
