Our club just started a library of bee books. I am the librarian and just brought all of the books home last night. One of the items is a collection of ABJ from 1951 to 1996. So today as it was snowing outside I started on the 1951 book.
I was pleased to see the similarity between today's practices and that years. If you don't pay attention to the prices a lot of the queen sales are from the same areas though not many of the same names. What does seem to be different is the agricultural practices that are discussed. Although I am only a hobbyist I'd bet not nearly as much pollination goes to clover and other crops here. Unless you are growing them for seed production does anyone still grow those type of crops?
The talk of pesticides mentions no familiar chemicals except for DDT and that is only from talk about the problems it caused way beyond my years. I should mention that I would have been 3 years old when this was published.
They also talked about the shortage of tin for storage and shipping due to the war effort. It took me a while to realize they meant the Korean war. I did see one ad for 1 lb plastic containers which surprised me as I would have suspected those not to appear until the 1970's.
Anyway lots of time to follow through the years to see how things changed in the bee world. Although not lots of snow days ahead to make it all the way til 1996.
I was pleased to see the similarity between today's practices and that years. If you don't pay attention to the prices a lot of the queen sales are from the same areas though not many of the same names. What does seem to be different is the agricultural practices that are discussed. Although I am only a hobbyist I'd bet not nearly as much pollination goes to clover and other crops here. Unless you are growing them for seed production does anyone still grow those type of crops?
The talk of pesticides mentions no familiar chemicals except for DDT and that is only from talk about the problems it caused way beyond my years. I should mention that I would have been 3 years old when this was published.
They also talked about the shortage of tin for storage and shipping due to the war effort. It took me a while to realize they meant the Korean war. I did see one ad for 1 lb plastic containers which surprised me as I would have suspected those not to appear until the 1970's.
Anyway lots of time to follow through the years to see how things changed in the bee world. Although not lots of snow days ahead to make it all the way til 1996.