Bee Pollen Health

The domestication of wild bees began at some point during antiquity; artificial hives were made from hollow logs, wooden boxes, pottery, and woven straw baskets known as skeps. In ancient Egypt, the sun temple of Nyuserre Ini, dating to 2,422 BC, has drawings depicting workers blowing smoke into beehives as they remove honeycombs. The production of honey was an organized activity in ancient Egypt; inscriptions detailing beekeeping activities were found in the tomb of Pabasa (~650 BC), as well as depictions of workers pouring honey into jars. Pharaohs, including Tutankhamen (1333-1323 BC), were often buried with sealed pots of honey, among other grave items.

Ancient Greek civilizations, too, had advanced beekeeping activities. Various paraphernalia related to beekeeping have been found at Knossos, on Crete: hives, smoking pots, honey extractors, and more. Cretan civilization valued beekeeping as an advanced profession, controlled by overseers. These overseers wore gold rings engraved with beekeeping scenes rather than the religious themes typically found on Cretan jewelry.

Rehov was an Bronze Age and Iron Age city in the Jordan Valley, in present-day Israel. The city thrived some 3,000 years ago and was populated by Israelites (Hebrew speakers) and Canaanites. Rehov has long been an important archaeological site, and in 2007, thirty intact beehives and the remains of a few hundred more, dating to the mid-tenth century BC, were found among the ruins. The presence of so many hives, made of straw and unbaked clay and laid out in orderly rows, indicate a highly advanced apiculture. The apiary could have held up to a million bees, with a potential annual yield of 500 kilograms of honey and 70 kilograms of beeswax. The biblical phrase “Land of Milk and Honey,” once thought to refer to “honey” derived from dates and figs, took on new meaning with this discovery.

The remains of bees, bee larvae, and bee pupae were also found at Rehov. Using DNA analysis, researchers determined that the Rehov bees were a subspecies of the Anatolian bee, now found only in present-day Turkey. It is possible that the bees naturally migrated, but it’s also possible that the Rehov beekeepers imported their bees from Anatolia, because Anatolian bees are less aggressive and provide a better honey yield, up to eight times stronger, than bees native to Israel. This would indicate an active trade in honey bees among beekeepers of different civilizations.

There is further evidence of widespread commerce in bees throughout the eastern Mediterranean. Bees were transported in large pottery vases and portable beehives. An Assyrian inscription dating to the eighth century BC records a transaction in which a cargo of bees was transported 400 kilometers, from the Taurus Mountains in Anatolia south into Assyria.

Beekeeping advanced as a profession in classical Greece. Aristotle discusses the lives of bees and beekeeping in detail. The philosopher kept bees himself, in simple hives with wooden strip top-bars, and made numerous observations about their behavior in his History of Animals. He noted that foraging bees select one type of flower only during each foraging mission; that they use propolis to “narrow” hive entrances that are too wide; that some foragers “carry water”; and that bees “discharge their excrement in flight.” Aristotle also observed the division of labor among bees in the hive, noting that “some [bees] make wax, some make honey, some make [pollen], some shape and mold combs …” Dead bees are removed from the hive, and drones are expelled when food runs short. Interestingly, Aristotle makes constant reference to the “king bee,” assuming that a male must somehow be in charge. The belief in the existence of a king bee persisted for another 1,700 years.

Beekeeping was also written about extensively in ancient Rome; Virgil, Gaius Julius Hyginus, Varro, and Columella all wrote about beekeeping. Book IV of Virgil’s Georgics, published in 29 BC, is all about apiculture, written entirely in verse. Bee colonies are a model for human society: like man, bees labor, are devoted to a king, and give their lives freely for the sake of the community. However, bees lack the arts, and they have no capacity for love. This interesting discussion about bees then leads to the story of Orpheus and Eurydice and other mythological themes. Virgil followed up the Georgics with the more widely read Aeneid.

Beekeeping was also widespread in ancient China; the government minister Fan Li, of the state of Yue during the Spring and Autumn period (roughly 750-400 BC), stresses the importance of the hive in beekeeping. In his text Golden Rules of Business Success, he writes that the quality of the wooden manmade hive can affect the quality of the honey that bees produce.

There is ample evidence of beekeeping throughout the ancient world, with more evidence being accumulated by historians and archeologists and a regular basis. Beekeeping has always been an important profession.