Beekeeping (or apiculture, from
Latin: apis "bee") is the maintenance of honey bee colonies, commonly in hives, by humans. A beekeeper (or apiarist) keeps bees in order to collect their honey and other products that the hive produces (including beeswax, propolis, pollen, and royal jelly), to pollinate crops, or to produce bees for sale to other beekeepers. A location where bees are kept is called an apiary or "bee yard".
Depictions of humans collecting honey from wild bees date to 15,
000 years ago, efforts to domesticate them are shown in
Egyptian art around 4,
500 years ago.
Simple hives and smoke were used and honey was stored in jars, some of which were found in the tombs of pharaohs such as
Tutankhamun. It wasn't until the
18th century that
European understanding of the colonies and biology of bees allowed the construction of the moveable comb hive so that honey could be harvested without destroying the entire colony.
HISTORY OF BEEKEEPING:
At some
point humans began to attempt to domesticate wild bees in artificial hives made from hollow logs, wooden boxes, pottery vessels, and woven straw baskets or "skeps". Honeybees were kept in
Egypt from antiquity. On the walls of the sun temple of
Nyuserre Ini from the
Fifth Dynasty, before
2422 BCE, workers are depicted blowing smoke into hives as they are removing honeycombs. Inscriptions detailing the production of honey are found on the tomb of Pabasa from the
Twenty-sixth Dynasty (c. 650 BCE), depicting pouring honey in jars and cylindrical hives.
Sealed pots of honey were found in the grave goods of pharaohs such as Tutankhamun.
There was an unsuccessful attempt to introduce bees to
Mesopotamia in the
8th century BCE by Shamash-resh-ușur, the governor of
Mari and Suhu. His ambitious plans were detailed in a stele of 760 BCE.
In prehistoric
Greece (
Crete and Mycenae), there existed a system of high-status apiculture, as can be concluded from the finds of hives, smoking pots, honey extractors and other beekeeping paraphernalia in Knossos. Beekeeping was considered a highly valued industry controlled by beekeeping overseers—owners of gold rings depicting apiculture scenes rather than religious ones as they have been reinterpreted recently, contra
Sir Arthur Evans.
Archaeological finds relating to beekeeping have been discovered at
Rehov, a
Bronze and
Iron Age archaeological site in the
Jordan Valley,
Israel. Thirty intact hives, made of straw and unbaked clay, were discovered by archaeologist
Amihai Mazar of the
Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the ruins of the city, dating from about 900 BCE.
The hives were found in orderly rows, three high, in a manner that could have accommodated around
100 hives, held more than 1 million bees and had a potential annual yield of 500 kilograms of honey and 70 kilograms of beeswax, according to Mazar, and are evidence that an advanced honey industry existed in ancient Israel
3,000 years ago.
Ezra Marcus, an expert from the
University of Haifa, said the finding was a glimpse of ancient beekeeping seen in texts and ancient art from the
Near East.
The Beekeepers, 1568, by
Pieter Bruegel the Elder
In ancient Greece, aspects of the lives of bees and beekeeping are discussed at length by
Aristotle. Beekeeping was also documented by the
Roman writers
Virgil,
Gaius Julius Hyginus,
Varro, and
Columella.
The art of beekeeping appeared in ancient
China for a long time and hardly traceable to its origin
. In the book "
Golden Rules of
Business Success" written by
Fan Li (or
Tao Zhu Gong) during the
Spring and Autumn Period there are some parts mentioning the art of beekeeping and the importance of the quality of the wooden box for bee keeping that can affect the quality of its honey.
The ancient
Maya domesticated a separate species of stingless bee.
INFORMATION
SOURCE: "
WIKIPEDIA"
LINK:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_farming
- published: 16 Feb 2014
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