Dictionary

beeherd en · NOUN

Etymology

From Middle English beehyrde, equivalent to bee + herd (“herder, keeper”).

Meanings

1. (rare) Beekeeper.
   • “With this I shall purchase a pig and become a swineherd, or bees and become a beeherd.” 1974, Cricket, volume 2, page 53:
   • The beeherds, swineherds and others enumerated in that document are apparently grouped together under the single heading of servi in Domesday Book. 1890, William Cunningham, The Growth of English Industry and Commerce, page 160:
   • There is no sure way of securing swarms but by a constant watching of a beeherd, retained on purpose, from seven or eight in the morning until three or four in the afternoon, till all the prime swarms have issued. 1814, John Keys, A Treatise on the Breeding and Management of Bees, page 87:
   • The peasantry were oxherds, shepherds, swineherds, gooseherds, beeherds, thatchers, ploughmen and drivers of oxen, and there were among the craftsmen blacksmiths, wood and leather workers and weavers, and in some villages, slaves. 1919, Walter Herbert Burgess, Transactions of the Unitarian Historical Society, volume 2, page 81:
   • The cowherd and beeherds did, certainly, but in Avalon there simply wasn't much reason to exert control over members of the animal kingdom. 2016, Aprilynne Pike, Arabesque:

Forms