The Hive and the Honeybee

It used to be that getting a good look at rare classics in the beekeeping literature—say the original edition of Lorenzo Langstroth’s landmark 1853 beekeeping manual, Langstroth on the Hive and the Honeybee—took a special browsing visit to Mann Library’s special collections reading area. Now these treasures are only a few clicks away on your home PC.

Last spring Mann Library launched The Hive and the Honeybee, a new online collection featuring selected volumes from Mann’s renowned Everett F. Phillips Beekeeping Library. Professor Phillips built Mann’s beekeeping collection—one of the largest and most comprehensive beekeeping libraries in the world—during the 1920s and 30s with the support of New York State beekeepers. For the past several years, beekeepers have taken this support a big step further by raising money to create the Hive site, making important historical books directly available to practicing beekeepers, entomologists, biologists and others around the world.

Two challenges by the Eastern Apicultural Organization and the Tampa Bay Beekeepers Association, each promising to match all gifts on a 1:1 basis up to $1000, were particularly effective in inspiring support for the Hive initiative. Beekeepers across the country—from Maine to Tennessee and Oregon—responded enthusiastically, and thanks to contributions that are still coming in the collection will continue to grow.

The Hive and the Honeybee now consists of the full text of thirty books from the Phillips Collection, chosen by a team of scholars for their historical importance and usefulness to beekeepers today. Currently, Mann Library is seeking funding to make a landmark American beekeeping magazine, the American Bee Journal, available online. This initiative will add the first twenty volumes of the ABJ, published from 1861 through 1884, to the Hive collection.

To find out more or to browse this expanding collection, go to http://bees.library.cornell.edu/. We’ve been told it’s creating quite a buzz!