Charles Butler (beekeeper)

Charles Butler (1560–1647), sometimes called the Father of English Beekeeping, was a logician, grammarist, author, minister (Vicar of Wootton St Lawrence, near Basingstoke, England), and an influential beekeeper. He was also an early proponent of English spelling reform. He observed that bees produce wax combs from scales of wax produced in their own bodies; and he was among the first to assert that drones are male and the queen female, though he believed worker bees lay eggs.

Butler was born into a poor family in Buckinghamshire, South East England, but was admitted to Oxford as a working student with scholastic scholarships. He remained at Oxford ten years, probably teaching, and graduating with his Master of Arts in 1587. In 1593, Rev. Butler became Rector of Nately Scures in Hampshire, and later Master at the Holy Ghost School, Basingstoke. He resigned to accept a pastorage at Wootton St Lawrence in 1600 and served that rural post to his death in 1647.

Butler was engaged in beekeeping at his rural parsonage in Hampshire and made the first recorded observations about the generation of beeswax, which was previously thought to be gathered by honeybees from plant materials. He was not the first to describe the largest honeybee as a queen, rather than king - a distinction usually granted to Spaniard Luis Mendez de Torres for his 1586 observation, which was confirmed by Swammerdam's later microscopic dissections. However, Butler popularized the notion with his classic book The Feminine Monarchie, 1609. Butler may have misinterpreted the queen's function when he found queenless colonies sometimes develop eggs laid by "laying workers", however there is no doubt he saw the queen as an Amazonian ruler of the hive. As an influential beekeeper and author, his assertion that drones are male and workers female, was quickly accepted. For his discoveries and his book, Butler is sometimes called the Father of English Beekeeping.

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