Give this article a chance
Honestly, I have been considering this article for several years. Even now, I don’t feel fully grounded enough to produce this piece. As simple as a hive tool is, it is strangely difficult to get a grip on its development and implementation. You and I do not hesitate when picking up a smoker and a hive tool. These tools have always been here. Right? I probably could find ten of them around my home and I can produce many more that are of different designs.
A unique reason for my interest
Many, many years ago, when my dad was running his paint and wallcovering supply company, I worked there on the weekends and during summers. Dad carried a diversified line of scrapers and putty knives. Hyde Tools was one of the lines. The Hyde Tool Company still makes a large assortment of scrapers and tools for craftsmen and homeowners. As a budding young beekeeper, I was immediately enthralled by the offering of a pry bar — sometimes called a window opener (in all ways, it was a traditional hive tool). Now, I ask a question that I cannot answer: Which came first — the classic beekeeping hive tool, or did companies like Hyde produce them and provide them to the bee industry?
No “Langstroth” for the hive tool
Unlike the beehive itself, the common hive tool has no famous inventor and no single, universally accepted date of invention. Its history is intertwined with the development of the movable-frame hive. Its evolution reflects the transition from traditional, destructive methods of beekeeping to the management of movable-frame hives.
Beekeeping is ancient, and I am unqualified to pass myself off as a beekeeping historian, but many of the basics are well known. Honey and beeswax were being collected in ancient Egypt thousands of years ago, and people in many parts of the world developed methods for keeping colonies in artificial containers like skeps or clay pots.
Early hives, however, generally did not permit the beekeeper to easily remove individual combs. In fixed-comb hives, harvesting honey meant cutting or breaking honeycombs, frequently destroying the colony’s prospect for their future. The beekeeper consequently needed relatively few specialized tools for manipulating individual frames because individual frames did not yet exist …
