Beelining (also known as bee lining, bee hunting, and coursing bees) is an ancient art used to locate

feral A feral () animal or plant is one that lives in the wild but is descended from domesticated individuals. As with an introduced species, the introduction of feral animals or plants to non-native regions may disrupt ecosystems and has, in some ...

bee Bees are winged insects closely related to wasps and ants, known for their roles in pollination and, in the case of the best-known bee species, the western honey bee, for producing honey. Bees are a monophyly, monophyletic lineage within the ...

colonies. It is performed by capturing and marking foraging worker bees, then releasing them from various points to establish (by elementary

trigonometry Trigonometry () is a branch of mathematics that studies relationships between side lengths and angles of triangles. The field emerged in the Hellenistic world during the 3rd century BC from applications of geometry to astronomical studies. T ...

) the direction and distance of the colony's home. Beeliners generally have homemade capture boxes which aid them in their quest. Beelining was formerly a serious occupation in

Appalachia Appalachia () is a cultural region in the Eastern United States that stretches from the Southern Tier of New York State to northern Alabama and Georgia. While the Appalachian Mountains stretch from Belle Isle in Newfoundland and Labrador, Ca ...

where it was a means to obtain

honey Honey is a sweet and viscous substance made by several bees, the best-known of which are honey bees. Honey is made and stored to nourish bee colonies. Bees produce honey by gathering and then refining the sugary secretions of plants (primar ...

as a sweetener, and sometimes to capture wild colonies for

domestication Domestication is a sustained multi-generational relationship in which humans assume a significant degree of control over the reproduction and care of another group of organisms to secure a more predictable supply of resources from that group. ...

. When a

hollow tree Hollow Tree is a Western red cedar tree stump and a popular landmark in Stanley Park in Vancouver, British Columbia. History The tree was damaged during a December 2006 windstorm and was slated for removal. In 2009, the Stanley Park Hollow Tree ...

(gum) was found, it often was sawed above and below the colony and carried back to be set up as a kept

hive A hive may refer to a beehive, an enclosed structure in which some honey bee species live and raise their young. Hive or hives may also refer to: Arts * ''Hive'' (game), an abstract-strategy board game published in 2001 * "Hive" (song), a 201 ...

near home. Honey was harvested from such colonies by "sulphuring," (using burning

sulfur Sulfur (or sulphur in British English) is a chemical element with the symbol S and atomic number 16. It is abundant, multivalent and nonmetallic. Under normal conditions, sulfur atoms form cyclic octatomic molecules with a chemical formula ...

) to kill the

insect Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs ...

s. Feral hives in the USA are uncommon since the arrival of

varroa ''Varroa'' is a genus of parasitic mesostigmatan mites associated with honey bees, placed in its own family, Varroidae. The genus was named for Marcus Terentius Varro, a Roman scholar and beekeeper. The condition of a honeybee colony being infe ...

mites in the 1980s, and may represent an important, though small, pool of genetic resistance to the mites. Their value as potential breeding stock may far outweigh the value of their honey.

References

* Donovan, Robert E. ''Hunting Wild Bees'', 1980, Winchester Press. * Edgell, George, ''The Bee Hunter'', 1949, Harvard University Press. * Lockard, John, ''Bee Hunting'', 1908. Harding, Columbus OH. * Seeley, Tom, ''Following the Wild Bees'', 2016, Princeton University Press. Beekeeping Hunting {{bee-stub