György Nemes Csáti Szabó (1736–1792)

The bee farmer

His noble-born ancestors moved from Borsod (Csáth-Mezőcsát) to Debrecen and were gradually assimilated by the town’s bourgeoisie. The extended family had barbers, pharmacists and even notaries. Csáti Szabó himself was member of the town’s body of representatives, and being a literate man he served as a ‘testamentary agent’, that is, a recorder of last wills in return for an annual fee. Besides all that he had his own farm and apiary.

As a keen beekeeper he recorded the results of his methodical experiments in beekeeping in hives based on local traditions, publishing the Hungarian Beekeeper, printed in Debrecen in 1792.

In the 18th century before his time, bees were kept exclusively in hives woven from wicker and straw or carved from wood. People could only access the honey by destroying the bees. However, Debrecen-based beekeepers transferred bee families from one hive to another by ‘drumming them out’, then they removed the comb honey from the vacated hive. This procedure later caught on more widely, partly popularised by György Csáti Szabó’s work.

His book teaches the amateur beekeeper through ‘questions and answers’. This work, containing 30 questions and as many detailed replies, makes György Csáti Szabó the first Hungarian beekeeper with a scientific method. Some of his observations on the lifestyles of bees and the nature of bee pastures are still valid today, according to the professional literature on beekeeping.