Fifty Years Among the Bees BY DR. C. C. MILLER

[apisbees]

I was looking up some beekeeping facts on Google and came across "Fifty Years Among the Bees BY DR. C. C. MILLER" In pdf format. it is a great book with incite into bees and beekeeping and the progression of beekeeping as it entered the 20th century. it was published in 1911. Here is a link to it. http://www.soilandhealth.org/03sov/0302hsted/030208miller/030408miller.pdf

6/5/2023:  This link is outdated.  Here is a different source to read C. C. Miller's Fifty Years Among The Bees.  http://reader.library.cornell.edu/docviewer/digital?id=hivebees5017631#mode/1up

[neillsayers]

Thanks, I love these old books.

[riverbee]

thanks apis, i set this as a topic sticky in general beekeeping, it's a good read.

[Ray4852]

 I downloaded it to my kindle from amazon for 2 dollars. nice book. if you have an ipad you can read it too.

[Les]

Thanks, just downloaded it for free.

[tecumseh]

I highly recommend this book and it was one I read at my own 50th anniversary with the bees.  when I recommend this book to new beekeeper I tell them to pay special notice to how many times CC Miller failed before he began to get it right.  I think it is good insight into the factoid that beekeeping was not easy then and it is not easy now and the largest difference between failure and success is persistence.

[CBT]

In working on the read. First 100 pages is a good dose of real world beekeeping.

[brooksbeefarm]

Like tec i'm over 50 years of beekeeping also and for me beekeeping is alo harder these days than back in the 60's. The bees haven't changed much, but the diseases and pest have, back then (the good old days) you could set a hive out and watch it to see that it's strong and rob it in the fall and left enough for them for winter. Winter loses were rare the best i can remember? if you did lose them it was no big deal, feral colonies were everywhere and swarms also, now the honey bee is an endangered species, the times are changing.Jack

[LazyBkpr]

I started helping with bees in 1977.. I dont recall having terrible winter losses, even when we had NASTY winters...  My biggest complaint with beekeeping back then, was splitting hives after "spraying"  I knew when I saw the planes riding the buss to school, that I was going to be working hard for a few days to replace the lost hives..   Instant death, and in some cases lost an entire yard of twenty ish hives and had to pull hives from other locations to split...   An old 51 Ford hauled the hives back and forth as necessary. At the ripe old age of thirteen I was often sent in that truck to GET hives, or to put on supers etc...  Sorry... memories abound.....