Joachim Chreptowicz

Joachim Litawor Chreptowicz
Portrait by Josef Grassi, 1795
Coat of armsOdrowąż
Born4 January 1729
Jasieniec near Navahradak
Died4 March 1812(1812-03-04) (aged 83)
Warsaw
FatherMarcjan Chreptowicz
MotherRegina Wojnianka

Joachim Litawor Chreptowicz (4 January 1729 – 4 March 1812), of Odrowąż Coat of Arms, was a Polish-Lithuanian nobleman, writer, poet, politician of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, marshal of the Lithuanian Tribunal, and the last Grand Chancellor of Lithuania.[1] He was a member of the Permanent Council, activist of the Commission of National Education, physiocrat and a vivid supporter of the Targowica Confederation. He also founded the library of the Counts of Chreptowicz in Szczorsy (now in Belarus), which was augmented by his son and contained over 10,000 volumes, including valuable collections of Polish histories from the 16th to 18th centuries.[2]

Chreptowicz was also known in Polish apicultural circles.[3] He expressed what were then new ideas, such as the idea that the queen bee is the only fertile female in a bee colony, that worker bees are infertile females, and that drone bees are male.

  1. ^ Hundert, Gershon David (2004-02-10). Jews in Poland-Lithuania in the Eighteenth Century: A Genealogy of Modernity. University of California Press. p. 117. ISBN 978-0-520-23844-2.
  2. ^ Dell, Robert Edward; Holmes, Charles John; Child, Harold; Cust, Lionel; Fry, Roger Eliot (1915). The Burlington Magazine. Burlington Magazine Publications Limited. p. 88.
  3. ^ Tomaszewski, Roman (2008). "O bibliografii pszczelnictwa polskiego". Biblioteka (in Polish). 12 (21): 29–53. doi:10.14746/b.2008.12.2. ISSN 2391-5838.