Travelling with bees from Europe to Brazil in 1867

My ancestor Friedrich August Hannemann was responsible for introducing Apis mellifera to Brazil in 1867, when he emigrated from Germany with his wife and two nucs of bees.

But how do you travel from Europe to Brazil on a sailing ship with bees?

They boarded the vessel ‘Kosmopolit’ in Hamburg, and the following is a translation of his own account of the journey:

“The ship was due to sail on the 31st May 1867, so on the previous afternoon I went to collect the box where I accommodated the two skeps from the 4th storey of the building where they were left for the previous 14 days. From there I took them on board myself, without much of an idea on how to proceed. As there was no one with previous experience in the matter to get some advice from, I first assumed the temperature at the bottom of the hull would be around 10°C. What a mistake. Seawater has almost the same temperature as the air, for example around the Equator at 6am the temperature was 20.5°C. The highest was 24°C.

Without option, I brought the bees to the deck. The first few days they become quite agitated, as it is against their nature to be locked in, without going out to fly. I put them on top of a lifeboat and strapped them firmly to prevent from toppling over with the ship’s movement. I covered the skeps with hessian sacks and opened them to allow the bees to come out and have some fresh air, but they didn’t really like that arrangement.

In the days before setting sail, I noticed the colonies were growing considerably, almost to the point of swarming. I had to find a way to reduce their numbers, especially because the workers wouldn’t have much to do in the following 9 to 10 weeks, and large number would mean the stores wouldn’t last very long. I concluded the best way to solve that would be opening the hives and letting them fly, but at the same time I was worried they would sting the crew or passengers, which would inevitably meant I would be ordered to throw them overboard. I took the chance, and the bees went out flying and ended up returning to the hive after realising there wasn’t much for them to do.

They soon resumed their normal activities at the entrance, and evicted the drones. I had taken two large sponges to provide them with water, and they got used to collecting it from there, as the seawater was useless for them.

In a few days they stopped flying too far from the hive, but as soon as I opened the entrances in the morning they would go straight to the sponges for water. In some days, when the wind was strong, I would block the entrance to prevent the bees from being blown away by the wind, without possibility of returning. After all the brood had hatched, the water usage reduced considerably, and in some days they wouldn’t come out at all. This way I managed to keep them alive for the whole nine weeks of the trip. I was very pleased that in the end no one was stung.

When we arrived to Rio Grande harbour, the hive numbers were considerably reduced. One of the hives was so small that similar nucs in Germany wouldn’t have survived. Despite that, they recovered quickly, thanks to the mild winter, and by August they were already bringing in some pollen. In September the orange trees blossomed and the bees made most of the abundance of forage, the stronger of the two hives building comb and stores. The smallest was still weak, despite working hard for four weeks, so I used one of the brood combs from the larger to increase the numbers. That made a
considerable difference and by 2nd of October I got the first swarm from hive number one and on the 21st of October hive two also gave me a swarm.”

These two hives were the first European bees to arrive to Brazil, and Friedrich had a long and successful career as a farmer and beekeeper. He died in 1912, at the age of 93, and is regarded by many as the father of modern beekeeping in Brazil.

His farm can still be visited to this day and houses an exhibition of beekeeping equipment, including the first honey extractor in Brazil (or what remains of it), designed and built by Friedrich himself.