An article I was reading said that honeybees were originally imported to the US from Europe back in the 1600’s.
How did they keep the colony alive during that time? Even if the bees were in hibernation, wouldn’t they suffer from the damp environment and constant motion of a ship at sea?
And even if you could find a sailing crew willing to work with an active hive aboard, how would you feed them?
Only need one hive to establish the species, and by 1622 (when the first recorded successful introduction happened) trans-Atlantic trade had become pretty well established and almost routine. But, since the next unique genetic influx was not until the mid-1800s, I am certain there were a great many failed attempts to transport hives.
from http://www.orsba.org/htdocs/download/Honey%20Bees%20Across%20America.html
I assume you’d bring honey. Isn’t that what it’s for?
You could also, I guess, just bring a dormant hive, with maybe just the queen bee and a bunch of eggs.
It seems that at the end of the 18th century it was no great surprise. In Patrick O’Brian’s second book about the British Navy, Steven Maturin brings a hive of bees on board the crack frigate 'Lively, to the enormous discomfort of the officers, but not, apparently, to the bees.
I did not know this. What was pollinating flowering plants in North America before that?
I would imagine other species of bees, butterflies and a multitude of flies.
Bumble bees are endemic to North America, but they weren’t of economic or gustatory interest due to the small size of the colonies.
Native bees ( along with a ton of other critters, from insects to mammals ) - there are ~4,000 species in the United States alone.
Virginia was pretty big… 
Honeybees hibernate for the winter. They store up all that honey, then when winter comes, they form a big ball around the queen in their honey stash and by churning and using their wing muscles, IIRC, they generate enough heat so even in the coldest winters the core of the colony (and queen) is still alive. The outer layers and inner layers keep changing positions so that the outer bees typically don’t freeze to death.
Even today, if you wait until night or winter and close off the hive so that the bees can escape (but don’t suffocate them!) they will survive, eating their stored honey.
In The Good Old Days, the hives were made of coiled rope; the classic “beehive” pointy cylinder. At the end of the summer, they best producing hives were killed (smoke?) and their honey looted. (How’s that for selective breeding). A few were left to be the next year’s founding colonies. In the spring, the hive would bulk up on honey, create a bunch more queens, and swarm out to create new hives…
I would suggest that if a full hive were closed up in the fall, and then shipped to America, it would be ready to go early next spring when placed in a field and opened up. If I were the sailors, I would add a burlap bag over the hive in case the hive accidentally broke open in transit. No need to feed, just leave them the honey they already collected. I bet the sea voyage motion would be nothing compared to the rattling a hive would get over mud and cobblestones getting to the boat.
I’ve been buzzed … :smack:
My father had several hives while I was growing up, and what’s surprising to me in this thread is that so few bees were brought over. Modern hives are certainly easier to smoke, seal up and move around on trucks than the old variety, but bees really aren’t that hard to move. People who find wild hives can scrape out the existing bees into a box or bag and relocate them with a high degree of success. Many kinds of fabric will work to seal bees in, while allowing enough air for them to breath. Honey provides the energy they need to keep going. They probably don’t like bouncing around very much, but being on the back of a pickup on a dirt road has to be worse for bees than ocean swells.
Granted, these examples don’t include a trans-Atlantic voyage, but bees do naturally hibernate each winter.
A great recent documentary on bees, BTW. Fascinating: http://www.clevelandfilm.org/films/2013/more-than-honey