The collection of beekeeping literature at the University of Guelph has grown from a modest group of books and reprints in 1940 to one of the nation's outstanding apiculture collections.

The science of beekeeping and maintaining honey bees has existed for many centuries. Honey bees were native to Europe and were introduced to the Americas at an early date with the arrival of European settlers. Modern beekeeping began in earnest after the publication of L.L. Langstroth's Hive and the Honey Bee in 1853. After this date modern beekeeping methods developed rapidly with the introduction of moveable-frame hives, the smoker, and centrifugal extractor.

The core collection was placed in the Department of Apiculture by Dr. E.J. Dyce in collaboration with Dr. E.F. Phillips of Cornell University. It was begun by Morley Pettit (1914-19) and continued by Dr. B.N. Gates (1919-20), and Eric Mime (1921-32). The bulk of the collection, however, was built by Professor Gordon F. Townsend, responsible for the Library of the Department of Apiculture until 1968 when all books were consolidated with the new central Library on campus, the McLaughlin Library.

In 1973, the personal library of Dr. Burton N. Gates was acquired with financial assistance from the International Development Research Centre, a foreign aid organization in Ottawa. Dr. Gates, a former Chairman of the Department of Apiculture, assembled a large private collection of materials on apiculture during his long career in Canada and the United States. His collection added several hundred monographs, completed serial holdings, particularly of several very scarce turn of the century American journals, and brought to the Library long runs of early beekeeping supply catalogues from North America, and samples from Europe. Unique items in the Burton Noble Gates Collection are personal archives, his 10,000 card apiculture bibliography, and his extensive photograph collection.

Periodicals and rare books are two particularly strong areas in the Collection. Beekeeping journals are represented from various parts of the world in different languages, and the Library has virtually complete files of the major periodicals such as the American Bee Journal, the British Bee Journal and Gleanings in Bee Culture. Several pre-1800 monographs also add to the value of the sources. Rare books in the collection include for example: a manuscript book by R. Corney entitled "Some observations experimental touching bees," dated 1670; an 1834 imprint, "A typographical curiosity, being a compilation on the natural history and management of bees ..." by Robert Russell; The feminine monarchie; or, the historie of bees by Charles Butler, printed in 1623; Moses Rusden's Further discovery of bees (1679); Nouvelles observations sur les abeilles, by Francois Huber (1792); and an English translation of the fourth book of Virgil's Georgics, which includes information on beekeeping, dated 1654.

For further browsing of more than 800 rare apiculture books please use this link for our main catalogue of holdings. For all the Apiculture Collection holdings (more than 2,400 at Guelph), including many circulating books, please use this catalogue link. In both cases, your search can be sorted by date, author, title, etc.

Originally created by T. Sauer (1979) with revisions by L. Bruce (2005)

Other Resources

Bees: a Honey of an Idea