Charles Butler (beekeeper)

Charles Butler (* 1560 ; † March 29, 1647 ) was an English logician , grammarian and influential beekeeper . He made many observations about bees, which he described in his main work on beekeeping and to which he owes his nickname Father of English Beekeeping .

Life

Butler was born in Buckinghamshire . He received an academic scholarship and was admitted to Oxford as a working student , where he graduated with a Master of Arts in 1587. After two posts as principal and schoolmaster , he accepted a position as vicar in Wootton St Lawrence in 1600. There Butler devoted himself increasingly to beekeeping.

Butler watched the bees to wax their honeycomb produced themselves. Up to this point it was assumed that the bees would collect it. He also observed that in trunks without a queen, worker bees sometimes lay eggs. He made the observation that injured bees secrete a secretion that induces other bees to sting. It was the first description of the effect of an alarm pheromone . He found out that the drone is male and spread the observation by the Spaniard Luis Mendes de Torres that the queen bee is female. He published his observations in his work The Feminine Monarchy in 1609. The book was revised several times by him and contained chapters on swarm trapping , bee enemies and the benefits of pollination by bees. The book remained a standard beekeeping work for almost 250 years.

literature

• AH Bullen, Karl Showler: Butler, Charles (1560–1647) , in: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , 2004/2009, doi: 10.1093 / ref: odnb / 4178

Individual evidence

1. ↑ James Mabbe: The Spanish Bawd , 2013, 412 pages; Modern Humanities Research Assn., ISBN 978-1-7 8188-040-1 , p. 10
2. ↑ Johannes Pernaa, Maija Aksela: Learning Organic Chemistry through a Study of Semiochemicals. In: Journal of Chemical Education. 88, 2011, pp. 1644-1647, doi : 10.1021 / ed900050g .
3. ↑ George Sarton: The Feminine Monarchy of Charles Butler . In: Isis,, Vol. 34, No. 6 (Autumn, 1943), pp. 469-472.