List of beekeepers and bee researchers

The list of beekeepers and bee researchers lists people who have directly or indirectly made a significant contribution to beekeeping or to knowledge about honeybees. Well-known bee researchers and beekeepers can also be found under History of Beekeeping .

Born until 1799

	Name (life data)	Research area
	Charles Butler * 1560 † March 29, 1647	Butler was an English logician, grammarian, and beekeeper. He observed that bees produce wax, that in trunks without a queen the worker bees lay eggs, and that the drone is male. He was the first to describe the effects of an alarm pheromone . In England he is nicknamed the Father of English Beekeeping .
	René-Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur * February 28, 1683 in La Rochelle † October 17, 1757 at Château de la Bermondière in Bermondière	Seigneur de Reaumur was a French naturalist and scholar. He wrote a twelve-volume work on insects and is the author of the book Physico-Economic History of Bees , which was published in German in 1759. In order to better research the bees, he constructed glass bee observation hives. He realized that the queen bee is not the regent, but the mother of the bee colony.
	Johann Christian Ramdohr * November 8, 1730 in Aschersleben † October 26, 1803 in Groß Schierstedt	Ramdohr was a German pastor and beekeeper. He first published his experience with magazine bee care in 1777 as an article in a magazine and then as a book, which appeared in four editions in 1779, 1790, 1797 and posthumously in 1812.
	Johann Ernst Spitzner * April 27, 1731 in Oberalbertsdorf † August 31, 1805 in Trebitz	Spitzner was a German Protestant theologian, economist and beekeeper. He published a book on the multiplication of bee colonies by swarming offshoots and on keeping the bees in individual baskets. He was an opponent of magazine bee care .
	Anton Janša * May 20, 1734 in Bresniza † September 13, 1773 in Vienna	Janša was a Slovenian master beekeeper from Maria Theresa and head of the school for the promotion of beekeeping. He discovered the thickened chitin plates lying in the bulb section, which the queen expels during mating. He proved that the queen bee was mated by several drones in the air during the wedding flight and operated what is known as drone breeding. He noticed that the swarm with the old queen was leaving the hive. He also invented the first frame operation and developed the Krainer peasant stick .
	Johann Ludwig Christ * October 18, 1739 in Öhringen † November 19, 1813 in Kronberg im Taunus	Christ was a German pastor, pomologist and apologist. He wrote several books on beekeeping , including the instruction for useful and pleasant beekeeping for all areas , published in 1783 .
	Jonas de Gélieu * August 21, 1740 in Les Bayards † October 17, 1827 in Colombier NE	de Gélieu was a Swiss pastor and beekeeper.
	François Huber * July 2, 1750 in Geneva † December 22, 1831 in Lausanne	Huber was a Swiss apologist. He devoted himself to researching the living conditions of bees. He published his findings in 1792 in the book Nouvelles observations sur les abeilles . In his homeland he was called Bienen-Huber ( Huber des abeilles ).
	Johann Klör * April 16, 1751 in Leutershausen , Hohenroth † March 18, 1818 in Würzburg	"Father bee"
	Karl August Ramdohr * August 14, 1780 in Westeregeln † December 8, 1845 in Jurgaitschen	Ramdohr was a German chief magistrate , zoologist and beekeeper . He published knowledge of swarm beekeeping in 1833 in the book The most profitable and simplest type of beekeeping .

Born from 1800 to 1899

	Name (life data)	Research area
	Georg Kleine * 1803 † 1894	Kleine was a German pastor and beekeeper.
	Moses Quinby * 1810 † 1875	Quinby was an American beekeeper.
	Lorenzo Langstroth * December 25, 1810 in Philadelphia † October 6, 1895 in Dayton (Ohio)	Langstroh was an American pastor and beekeeper. He devoted himself to the advancement of the booty building and discovered in 1851 the bees distance of 8-10 mm than the distance that is not built over by bees wax. In 1853 he introduced the Langstroth booty system, a modular type of booty that is considered the archetype of modern magazine booty .
	Johann Dzierzon * January 16, 1811 in Lowkowitz † October 26, 1906 there	Dzierzon was a Silesian pastor and beekeeper. He was the first beekeeper to use movable wooden strips. In 1835 he discovered unisexual reproduction ( parthenogenesis ) in bees. An important modern award for beekeepers is the Dr. Johannes Dzierzon Medal .
	William Charles Cotton * January 30, 1813 in Leytonstone , Essex † June 22, 1879 in Chiswick , London	Cotton was a British missionary and beekeeper.
	Franz von Hruschka * March 13, 1819 in Vienna † May 8, 1888 in Venice	Hruschka was an Austrian major and inventor of the honey extractor . In 1865 he presented the device under his company name Angelo Lettame at a traveling meeting of beekeepers in Brno. Information about Hruschka is rarely found in modern bee books.
	August Pollmann * November 15, 1813 in Alsdorf an der Sieg † May 17, 1898 in Bonn	Pollmann was a German music teacher, apologist and teacher of agriculture. He gave lectures on beekeeping at the Royal Prussian Agricultural School in Bonn-Poppelsdorf. He is the inventor of the bees Cabinet , and the Bienenherbariums and the first to describe the bee races Apis mellifera carnica , Apis mellifera cypria and Apis mellifera caucasica .
	Johannes Mehring * 1815 in Kleinniedesheim † 1878 in Frankenthal	Mehring was a German beekeeper. He is the author of the book The New Einwesystem as the Basis of Beekeeping or How the Rational Beekeeper Obtains the Highest Yield from His Bees, published in 1869 . In it he coined the term bee , with which he provided the first definition of a superorganism and laid the theoretical basis for rational beekeeping.
	August von Berlepsch * June 28, 1815 in Seebach † September 17, 1877 in Munich	von Berlepsch was a German bee researcher. He is the inventor of the moveable square honeycomb frames . He promoted the spread of training apiaries and migration with bees .
	Charles Dadant * May 20, 1817 in Vaux-sous-Aubigny † July 26, 1902 in Hamilton, Illinois	Dadant was a French beekeeper who immigrated to America. He translated Lorenzo Langstroth's The hive and the honey-bee into French and edited the American Bee Journal . With Dadant and Sons founded one of the world's first companies for beekeeping tools.
	Johann Georg Beringer * 1829 in Königstein † 1919 in Tutzing	“Tutzinger Bienenvater”, chairman and hiking teacher of the Bavarian beekeeping association
	Sebastian Kneipp * May 17, 1821 in Stephansried † June 17, 1897 in Wörishofen	Kneipp was a German pastor and hydrotherapist. He was a beekeeper and was involved in breeding bees. He also trained numerous young beekeepers and was known as the Swabian father of bees .
	Gregor Mendel * July 20, 1822 in Heinzendorf / Moravia † January 6, 1884 in Brno	Mendel was an Augustinian monk and priest. He founded modern genetics through experiments with peas. Since 1869 he tried to transfer his findings to the biology of honeybees, which was only partially successful because of the multiple pairing of bees.
	Traugott Ludwig Krancher * February 14, 1824 in Radeburg † May 16, 1914 in Frohburg	Krancher was the founder, publisher and editor of the association journal of German beekeepers: Deutscher Bienenfreund and author of further apidological literature.
	Charles C. Miller * 1831 † 1920	Miller was an American doctor and beekeeper.
	Wilhelm Busch * April 15, 1832 in Wiedensahl † January 9, 1908 in Mechtshausen	Busch was a German humorous poet and draftsman. Wilhelm Busch came into contact with beekeeping through his uncle Georg Kleine. He published essays on bees in the Bienenwirtschaftlichen Centralblatt . In the picture story Schnurrdiburr or Die Bienen he showed the division of labor in the beehive, the rearing of the brood, swarming and the defense against enemies of the beehive.
	Georges de Layens * 1834 † 1897	de Layens was a French botanist and apologist.
	William Broughton Carr * 1837 † 1909	Broughton was a British author and beekeeper. He developed one in the British Beekeeping long time widespread double prey .
	Amos Root * 1839 † 1923	Root was an American beekeeper.
	Albert John Cook * 1842 † 1916	Cook was an American zoologist and apologist.
	Robert A. Holekamp * 1848 † 1922	Holekamp was an American entrepreneur and apologist.
	Max Kuntzsch * February 16, 1851 in Gohlis † November 20, 1919 in Nowawes	Kuntzsch was a German beekeeper and bee researcher. He developed the Kuntzsch twin hive and standardized a honeycomb dimension (Kuntzsch wide honeycomb). He is the author of the advice book beekeeping questions and designer of the Kuntzsch honeycomb tongs.
	Ferdinand Dickel * May 22, 1854 in Michelbach † July 27, 1917 in Darmstadt	Dickel was a German teacher and entomologist. He took over his father's beekeeping. He was an opponent of the theory of parthenogenesis and wrote his own theory on gender formation. He was editor of the Bee newspaper and magazine Hessian The bee .
	Oskar Krancher * April 11, 1857 in Schneeberg † August 18, 1936 in Leipzig	Oskar Krancher was a German scientist and secondary school teacher who was introduced to beekeeping by his father . He was the founder and editor of the Entomological Yearbook and author of numerous specialist books on beekeeping. From 1910 until his death he was in charge of the apiculture department of the Agricultural Institute of Leipzig University .
	Johann Martin Roth * April 16, 1858 in Philippsburg † February 17, 1937 in Karlsruhe	In 1891 the "first officially recognized, state-assisted and supervised beekeeping institute in Germany" opened its doors in Eberbach under the direction of Johann Martin Roth. In 1893, JM Roth published his textbook BADISCHE IMKERSCHULE Guide for beekeeping lessons in beekeeping courses , which is still largely valid today. In it, Roth already described standardized advertising, standardized labels and standardized glasses, as well as beekeeping insurance.
	Hugo von Buttel-Reepen * February 12, 1860 in Bremen † November 7, 1933 in Oldenburg	von Buttel-Reepen was a German zoologist and beekeeper.
	Ferdinand Gerstung * March 6, 1860 in Vacha † March 5, 1925 in Oßmannstedt	Gerstung was a German beekeeper. Together with August Ludwig, he founded the German Reich Association for Beekeeping , one of the forerunners of the German Beekeeping Association . At his suggestion, the German Empire Beekeeping Museum of the German Beekeeping Association was founded in Weimar in 1907 .
	Heinrich Friese * May 4, 1860 in Schwerin † September 8, 1948 ibid	Friese was a German organ builder, zoologist and entomologist. He is the author of the six-volume work The Bees of Europe . The bee genus Eufriesea was named in his honor.
	Heinrich Freudenstein * February 1, 1863 Maden, Fritzlar district † February 15, 1935 in Marburg	Freudenstein was a German elementary school teacher and beekeeper. He realized that bees hibernate better on sugar than on honey and he advocated the spread of this method. From 1902 he published his own journal Neue Bienenzeitung . His “Beekeeping Textbook” was published in 6 editions. A frame measure, the Freudenstein frame, was named after him.
	Detlef Breiholz * October 24, 1864 in Vaasbüttel † December 1, 1929 in Neumünster	Breiholz ​​was a German teacher and beekeeper. In 1907 he founded the first German beekeeping school in Preetz. He was editor of the Schleswig-Holstein Bienenzeitung, chairman of the Prussian Beekeeping Association and later head of the Association of German Beekeeping Associations. He advocated uniform packaging for honey.
	August Ludwig * 1867 † 1951	Ludwig was a German pastor and beekeeper. He founded and managed the apiary at the University of Jena. He was editor of the journal Die Deutsche Bienenzucht in theory and practice, founded by L. Gerstung .
	Émile Warré * March 9, 1867 in Grébault-Mesnil † April 20, 1951 in Tours	Warré was a French clergyman and beekeeper. He developed and sold the Ruche populair (people's booty). He describes the construction and operation of this hive in his book L'apiculture pour tous ( beekeeping for everyone ) , published in twelve editions .
	Carl Rehs * April 28, 1867 in Lägs † October 4, 1945 in Königsberg	Rehs was a German teacher, author and beekeeper. He was a member of the economic committee of the German Beekeeping Association and head of the East Prussian Beekeeping Association. For more than 25 years he was the first editor of the Preussische Bienen-Zeitung and founded the beekeeping school in Korschen.
	Wilhelm August Johannes Aisch * March 19, 1871 in Müllrose , Brandenburg † May 6, 1939 in Frankfurt am Main	Aisch was a pastor and beekeeper. He brought about the connection between the beekeeping association and the German Agricultural Society and was the managing director of the traveling assembly of German-Austrian-Hungarian beekeepers.
	Guido Sklenar * June 15, 1871 in Albona † May 25, 1953 in Mistelbach	Sklenar was an Austrian teacher and beekeeper. Among the bee colonies he looked after, he recognized colony 47 as particularly calm and high-yielding and bred the Carnica line from it. From 1919 he became a breeder and in 1921 he founded the Austrian Queen Breeders Association , whose newsletter, The Bee Mother, was published by him. In 1923 he published his main work, Beekeeping Practice , which is still considered the standard textbook today.
	Enoch Zander * June 19, 1873 in Zirzow † June 15, 1957 in Erlangen	Zander was a German zoologist and beekeeper. He was professor and director of the Royal Institute for Beekeeping in Bavaria, which later became the State Institute for Beekeeping. Together with Johann Merz, he constructed the pikeperch hive and made important contributions to determining the sex of the bees. In 1909 he discovered the Nosemose pathogen , which was named after him Nosema apis Zander. He developed a method for breeding queens and introduced queen breeding in Germany. He researched the determination of the origin of honey through pollen analysis .
	Leopold Gombocz * 1875 in Károlyfa † 1943 in Laafeld , Styria	Gombocz was an Austro-Hungarian large beekeeper. He is considered to be the pioneer of bee migration by rail and one of the pioneers of the artificial reproduction of bee colonies.
	Karl Pinkpank * January 22, 1884 † after 1947	Pinkpank was a German politician and beekeeper. He was the managing director of the Mecklenburg State Beekeeping Association, and from 1926 he was press officer for the German Beekeeping Association. He wrote texts in Low German for the magazine Uns' Imme .
	Ludwig Armbruster * September 7, 1886 in Markdorf † June 4, 1973 in Lindau (Lake Constance)	Armbruster was a German priest, zoologist, and apologist. From 1923 he was director of the Institute for Apiculture (IfB) at the University of Berlin, but was dismissed in 1934 as a “Jew friend”. He was editor of the journal Archiv für Bienenkunde and is the author of the standard work on beekeeping . He set up the first honey testing facility in Berlin.
	Karl von Frisch * November 20, 1886 in Vienna † June 12, 1982 in Munich	von Frisch was a German zoologist and behavioral scientist. He discovered the bees' sense of smell and explored their ability to orient themselves. He deciphered the waggle dance . For his behavioral research he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1973 together with Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen .
	Jonas Kriščiūnas * January 5, 1888 in Stebuliškės, Russia † July 2, 1973 in Kaunas	Kriščiūnas was a Soviet-Lithuanian agronomist, beekeeper, and politician.
	Georg Statz * 1894 † 1945	Statz was a German zoologist and apologist.
	Walter T. Kelley * 1897 in Sturgis (Michigan) † August 22, 1986 in Grayson County (Kentucky)	Kelley was an American beekeeper and entrepreneur.
	Brother Adam * August 3, 1898 in Mittelbiberach † September 1, 1996 in Buckfast Abbey , Devon	Br. Adam Kehrle OSB was a German beekeeper and Benedictine monk. He raised the Buckfast bee .
	WW Alpatow * 1898 † 1979	Alpatow was a Russian zoologist and apologist.

Born from 1900

	Name (life data)	Research area
	Anna Maurizio * 1900 † 1993	Maurizio was a Swiss bee researcher. For over three decades she worked in the bee department of the Federal Dairy and Bacteriological Institute in Liebefeld.
	Friedrich Karl Böttcher * July 13, 1910 in Elberfeld † July 23, 2005	Böttcher is a German beekeeper and was the head of the Bavarian State Institute for Beekeeping.
	Eva Crane * June 12, 1912 in London † September 6, 2007 in Slough	Crane was a British physicist and author. She has published more than 180 scientific articles and books on bees and beekeeping, including the encyclopedic works Bees and Beekeeping: science, practice and world resources (1990) and The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting (1999). She was a founding member and director of the International Bee Research Association (IBRA).
	Friedrich Ruttner * 1914 † 1998	Ruttner was an Austrian beekeeper. He wrote the standard apiculture work, the natural history of honey bees .
	Karl Pfefferle * March 29, 1918 in Münstertal / Baden † October 24, 2009 in Münstertal	Pfefferle was a German beekeeping consultant and author. He is considered a pioneer of magazine beekeeping. His work Our Beekeeping with the magazine received gold medals at APIMONDIA in 1979 and 1983 . Pfefferle was the main initiator and motor of the Münstertal Apiculture Museum. In 1987 he became the only German practitioner to date to be an honorary member of the world organization APIMONDIA.
	Ted Hooper * September 21, 1918 † March 19, 2010	Hooper was a British beekeeper and co-author of The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Beekeeping .
	Martin Lindauer * December 19, 1918 in Wäldle † November 13, 2008 in Munich	Lindauer was a German behavioral scientist. He was a student of Karl von Frisch and continued his research on the behavioral biology of bees. He researched the communication methods used by bees to search for food and accommodation, the division of labor in the bee colony, temperature regulation in the beehive and orientation, as well as the bees' perception of shapes and scents and their learning abilities and memory.
	Hans Ruttner * 1918 † 1979	Ruttner was an Austrian beekeeper and director of the Federal Apiculture Institute.
	Warwick Kerr * September 9, 1922 in Santana do Parnaíba, São Paulo † September 15, 2018	Kerr is a Brazilian agricultural engineer, geneticist, and entomologist. He researched the genotypic sexing of bees and is responsible for the distribution of the Africanized honeybees , a hybrid of European and African honeybees.
	Karl Weiß * June 17, 1924 † December 10, 2018	Weiß is a German entomologist and beekeeper.
	Randolf Menzel * June 7, 1940 in Marienbad	Menzel is a bee researcher at the University of Berlin. He examined the cognitive abilities of honeybees and distinguished between short-term, medium-term and two forms of long-term memory.
	Wolfgang Ritter * 1948	Ritter is a German biologist. He did his doctorate on the thermoregulation of the bee colony and researches bee pathology, especially varroosis.
	Gerhard Liebig * December 17, 1948 in Kelsterbach	Liebig is a German agronomist and apologist. As a research assistant at the State Institute for Apiculture at the University of Hohenheim, he investigated the population dynamics of honeydew producers that are important to the bee industry and the development of the varroa destructor infestation . He set up a costume reporting service in Baden-Württemberg to monitor and forecast forest and fir costume .
	Jürgen Tautz * October 6, 1949 in Heppenheim	Tautz is a German behavioral scientist, sociobiologist and bee expert. He is the founding chairman of the Bee Research Association in Würzburg eV and developed and leads the interdisciplinary project HOneyBee Online Studies (HOBOS), an internet-based teaching and learning platform that provides access to measurement data from a bee colony.
	Friedrich Pohl * 1963	Pohl did his doctorate on the varroa mite in honey bees. He has authored several specialist books and is responsible for beekeeping at the state veterinary office in Bremen.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.bees-on-the-net.com/beekeeping/basic-beekeeping-equipment/wbc-hive/
2. ^ Rhein-Neckar-Zeitung: Eberbach could have become a "bee stronghold", October 5th, 2014.