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History, geneology, and beekeeping

7K views 9 replies 10 participants last post by  Arnie 
#1 · (Edited)
My wife has done some genealogy and has a lot of books. She got a new book yesterday and we were looking through it and discovered a lot of people were beekeepers around the turn of the 20th century. None of them seemed to wear veils or gloves either. It must have been nice to raise bees without mites and beetles and Africanized bees. I think it's neat to see old-time hives and setups.

My Grandfather on my Father's side of the family grew up in Cades Cove, which is now a part of the Smoky Mountains National Park on the TN-NC border. Most of the residents left the park in the 1930s.

Here are some neat pictures of folks in Cades Cove and their beekeeping from before the 1930s. I'm not sure of exact dates. One of the folks, Daniel "Uncle Dan" Myers had a lot of bees. The best I can determine is that he was my Grandfather's first or second cousin. He even made hives out of old sweetgum tree stumps.









Here's some other folk's bees:



I don't think Bess Myers is directly related to Dan Myers


 
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#4 ·
Thanks for posting! I love Cades Cove. Always a thrill to walk up to big bucks. Last time we were there it took hours to get around the loop. A bear was in a tree along the road and everyone had to get out and look at it. I thought about selling tickets for a chance to see one on my front porch! lol
 
#10 ·
Those are cool pictures. I love that kind of stuff. I'd love to be able to go back and see how they did things.

I have a book called Coffee and Hardtack, and it is a book about day to day life in the Union army during the Civil War. In it the author, who was a soldier during the war, talks about "foraging", which is basically stealing from the surrounding area. Chickens, pigs, turkeys, whatever they could find. He specifically mentions how beehives were prized. The foragers would wrap themselves in blankets and go steal the hives at night.

John W Oliver looks freaking SERIOUS!
 
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