François Huber, king of the bees

The Geneva-based naturalist became one of the greatest specialists on bees of his time without being able to see them: he was blind and conducted his research through the eyes and hands of his faithful assistant, François Burnens.

At the age of 20, François Huber (1750–1831) cultivated two passions: Marie-Aimée Lullin, a young woman from Geneva’s high society with whom he had fallen in love a few years earlier and who reciprocated his feelings, and the natural sciences. An eye disease that appeared when he was 15 and rendered him completely blind nevertheless threatened to ruin everything. First, his marriage, as his future father-in-law opposed it, considering it inconceivable that the fortune he would leave should fall into the hands of a blind man. Then his practice as a natural observer, since without the use of his eyes the task seemed impossible.

Here are the main discoveries of François Huber*:

• Around 1790, Huber was probably the first to practise artificial insemination: p. 466;
• Huber demonstrated that the queen becomes fertile only during her nuptial flights and that, when this fertility is delayed, she lays only drone eggs: p. 465;
• A colony that has been queenless for 24 hours readily accepts another queen (Réaumur had established the fact; Huber described the method): p. 469;
• In 1740, Réaumur described the collection of propolis by bees; Huber arranged for them to collect it at a place where they could be observed: p. 562;
• Based on one of Huber’s observations and with the help of Mlle Jurine, he clearly showed that wax originates in wax glands;
• Huber found plates of a wax-like substance beneath the abdominal segments of bees; he demonstrated that wax is secreted provided bees have access to honey or another sugar source: p. 563;
• Huber observed and described the construction of honeycombs: p. 564;
• Huber observed that drones were already in flight when the queen appeared: p. 570;
• Huber clearly distinguished the food of worker bees from royal jelly, intended for future queens: p. 578;
• He confirmed the discovery of Pastor Schirac regarding the ability of nurse bees to transform worker larvae into royal larvae;
• He discovered that worker bees can lay drone eggs and identified the accidental causes of this fertility;
• He made known the various circumstances that give rise to combat between queens, and the consequences of substituting a foreign queen for the natural one;
• He explained the origin and history of swarms;
• He described how larvae spin the silk of their cocoon and found the reason why the cocoon of young queens is open at its end;
• He proved that the main function of antennae is to allow bees to distinguish one another;
• He was the first to observe the ventilation performed by bees to renew the air in their hives;
• Having identified the origin of propolis, he clarified through positive experiments that of wax, which had been a particularly obscure point in the history of bees;
• He distinguished the workers that produce wax from those that use it;
• Finally, after numerous ingenious experiments, he succeeded in forcing worker bees to sculpt their cells before his eyes.

In addition, Huber followed a rigorous scientific method, which is far from the least of his merits. He also designed the movable-frame hive, which he called the “book hive”, and proved that bees, in case of danger, intentionally narrow the entrance of the hive.

* Page numbers refer to the work by Eva Crane, The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting, London, Taylor & Francis, 1999, 720 p. (source: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fran%C3%A7ois_Huber#Crane)

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► Also read: François Huber, a blind scholar in the Age of Enlightenment