Eva Crane (image courtesy Bucks Free Press, 1990)
Note that this publication is available online only. There is no printed edition available.
Introduction
The School of Celtic Studies is most grateful to Penelope Walker, a long-time colleague and friend of the late Dr Eva Crane OBE, for sending us this article on bee-related terminology from Dr Crane's unpublished papers, and allowing it to be made available on the School's website.
Ethel Eva Crane (née Widdowson) was a remarkable scientist and scholar who devoted her life to the study of everything connected with the honeybee. She was born in 1912, and read Mathematics and then Physics at King's College London. She was appointed Lecturer in Physics at the University of Hull in 1936, was awarded a PhD in Nuclear Physics from London University (external candidate) in 1938, and became a Lecturer in Physics at the University of Sheffield in 1940. She started beekeeping in 1941 to help with the war effort, and was given more bees as a wedding present when she married James Crane in 1942. She developed a keen interest in apiculture, and rapidly gained expertise in this field. In 1949 she founded the Bee Research Association, which was renamed the International Bee Research Association in 1976. Her output was prodigious, and included A Dictionary of Beekeeping Terms, 12 volumes (ed. 1951–2003), Honey: A Comprehensive Survey (ed. 1975), Apiculture in Tropical Climates (ed. 1976), A Book of Honey (1980), The Archaeology of Beekeeping (1983), World Perspectives in Apiculture (1985), Bees and Beekeeping: Science, Practice and World Resources (1990), and The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting (1999). In addition to her books, she published over three hundred articles on beekeeping, including (with Penelope Walker) ‘Irish beekeeping in the past’, Ulster Folklife 44 : 45–59 (1998), and ‘Early beekeeping in Ireland’, Bee World 86 (2): 49 (2005).
Dr Crane was an intrepid traveller, and between 1949 and 2000 visited at least sixty countries to learn more about beekeeping and honey hunting techniques in all sorts of environments. Her connection with the School of Celtic Studies began when Thomas Charles-Edwards and I undertook an edition of Bechbretha, an Old Irish law-text on beekeeping, dating from about the seventh century AD. We had a query on the terminology for swarms in the Celtic languages, which we referred to the letters page of the magazine Country Life. We received a reply from Dr Crane, and she subsequently read a draft of our section on ‘Beekeeping in Early Ireland’ (pp. 38–49 of our 1983 edition) and made many useful suggestions and corrections. We remained in touch, and on one happy occasion she paid a visit to the School of Celtic Studies. She died on 6 September 2007. It is an honour to publish her article on ‘Terms in Indo-European languages for some concepts related to honey, bees and hives’ on our website.
FERGUS KELLY
30 January 2009
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