Honey, please don’t go

HONEY, PLEASE DON’T GO

In the beautiful opening passage of his epic poem The Song of Hiawatha, HW Longfellow has his subject waiting, watching from the doorway of his wigwam:

All the air was full of freshness, All the earth was bright and joyous, And before him, through the sunshine, Westward toward the neighboring forest, Passed in golden swarms the Ahmo, Passed the bees, the honey-makers, Burning, singing in the sunshine.

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The Brood Food Theory of Swarming

From David Morland, ADBKA Chair:

I learnt recently that my grandfather was the first bee scientist at Rothamsted and one of the founder members of the International Bee Research Association (IBRA). His books and papers were passed on to Eva Crane whose own collection was the foundation of the IBRA library.

He was succeeded as Head of the Bee Section at Rothamsted in 1939, by Dr Colin Butler.

At Rothamsted, he initiated studies into the causes of swarming, so our members might be interested in a paper he had published in the Annals of Applied Biology, Vol XIII, No.1, February 1930 entitled ‘The Brood Food Theory’. I believe this is the reference at the start of Snelgrove’s book about swarming.

The article is taken from a photocopy of the original typescript he submitted and includes the diagrams and table from this original.  (Click here to view the full paper in PDF  view the full paper in PDF, or here to see a photocopy of the original.)

A paper copy of the paper will be found within the library at Crathes for members to borrow.

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