With all of the many problems affecting honeybee colonies today, it is worth looking back through time to witness the huge role that bees have played in our own development. Without their help we simply wouldn’t be able to live the lives we do, and the sheer length of time that we have been keeping bees shows just how important they are.
Early Beekeeping Practices
In parts of Africa and Spain, ancient cave paintings exist that clearly depict people collecting honey from beehives. These date back to around 13,000 BC, meaning for the last 15,000 years bees have been providing humans with their services. This is a truly amazing figure that lets us begin to understand just how important the relationship is.
Uses of Honey and Wax
The main reason for keeping bees was the honey and wax that were produced. Honey was originally used to sweeten a range of food and drinks, such as wine and bread, and was also used as an ancient antibacterial agent. Wax was used as a binding agent in paints as well as being used in medicines, candles and mead, which was a popular drink in monasteries.
The First Beehives
It was not long before beehives were being created to keep bees. Originally honey was collected from wild hives, and this method is still used in many parts of the world, including Africa and Nepal. However, the benefits of creating beehives soon became apparent, which led to the practices that we see today.
Egypt is recognized as one of the earliest civilizations to gather honey in basic hives, which were made from anything that could provide a dark space for the swarm to settle in, although the Romans and the ancient Greeks also documented numerous references to beekeeping. However, the problem with these ancient hives was that they had a serious drawback: when the honey was collected, the colonies were destroyed.
The Moveable Comb Hive
The first moveable comb hive was created in the 19th century by Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth, an Italian immigrant who lived in America. He had taken inspiration from the book ‘The Hive and the Honey Bee’ which was published in 1853 and which detailed the finding of the ‘bee space’ – the distance between honeycombs that bees naturally create to move through – and this led to the creation of the modern hive. It allowed individual honeycombs to be taken out and inspected, and the honey extracted without damaging the colony.
Through Langstroth’s invention, bees are today used on a vast scale to pollinate huge swaths of agricultural land. It was this device that allowed such large-scale practices to be developed, and without it we surely would not be able to grow the sheer amount of food that we see today.
To find out just how important bees are to our survival, check out this article on the honeybee crisis.
 |
