What Are the Origins of Beekeeping?

This painting from the “Spider Cave” in Spain is our first evidence of a bee/human interaction! In it, a honey hunter climbs to the bee nest to steal some much coveted honey

I’ll be honest, I am a bit of a nerd about anything in the honey bee world, but before I was a nerd about bee science I was a bee history nerd. Yup, totally willing to admit dorkiness here, and for a few different reasons. First, bee culture all around is just intrinsically cool, I mean how can it not be?! Second, learning about beekeeping history, for me, is basically a way to connect with the incredibly deep rooted relationship we have with these creatures. So, in a way, bee history is a way of appreciation towards the bees, towards the act of beekeeping, and all my beekeeping predecessors that equally cared so much for these creatures.

Origins of Bee Culture

The first bits of evidence we have of interactions with the honey bee comes from cave paintings, three in particular are famous. First, the most famous of them all, the 8000 year-old Coves de l’Aranya (Catalan language, translates to “Spider Cave”) painting, which depicts a hunter on a ladder taking honey from bees in a tree. This is the very first depiction of man and honey bee interacting, notice the basket in hand indicating a strong honey gathering tendency and preparedness. John Burroughs, Catskill naturalist, once described a wild bee colony as being “the heart of the tree” and I really think this painting captures that essence well. As much as I appreciate the honey hunter lifestyle, this act meant the destruction of the colony, by taking honey they essentially doomed the hive to starvation.

The second and third paintings are notable in their own ways. The second, the Toghwana Dam painting from Zimbabwe, is of an undetermined age but presumed to be similar to the Spider Cave painting. There are two crucial details in this painting: first, the depiction of the comb is of incredible interest, especially the shading. Is it possible, perhaps, that the darker section represented brood and the lighter portions were honey? If so, this painting is a remarkable representation of human curiosity and attention to detail in the natural world, we were beginning to understand the makeup of the colony. Second, the figure is shown with something in hand and with the bees exiting the colony without bothering the hunter. It is thought that they are holding a bundle of tinder that is lit on fire, which of course means that this hunter is smoking the colony to keep them docile!

The Toghwana Dam painting

Notice the bees coming out, and the flamed bundle in hand

The Tassili Shaman

With mushrooms in hand and a bee face mask, you have to wonder what the origins of this painting might be

Finally, we have the Tassili mushroom figure from Tassili n’Ajerr, Algeria. I actually learned about this figure from a book I have on the history of fungi, not from any of my bee history texts! As a self-respecting academic at heart, I have to be clear that I would not touch any interpretation of this painting with a ten foot pole, to do so would be to invite the wrath and ire of anthropologists! Basically, this cave painting is incredibly controversial when it comes to interpretation, but at the very least we can say that this shamanic figure holds many mushrooms in hand and dons a bee mask. This, to me, is plenty to excite the imagination: what ecological links were being made, or what bits of lore could possibly connect the animal and fungal worlds in this culture, and how does all this mysticism speak to our understanding of the bees?

The First Beekeepers

As mentioned, honey hunting was a practice reliant on climbing to the tops of trees in order to engage with a stinging insect to take honey. If you were successful, you would have to haul all the honey down and the colony would be doomed to die. If you were not successful, you were at best full of bee venom and, at worst, dead from falling off the ladder amidst the chaos of the honey hunt. This was clearly not a sustainable or ideal scenario for humans, but early humans were also crafty, clever, and perceptive. They soon learned that, though they would still have to kill the colony to take honey, they could coax bees into convenient containers. Moreover, they would encourage these bees to swarm and make another colony before taking the honey, so they could always replace the colony being killed. This was the birth of human beekeeping, and it was a practice entirely centered in NE Africa and the Middle East.

The oldest apiary discovered by archaeologists was found in Tel Rehov, modern day Israel, and is dated to around the 9th-10th century BCE. However, this is not the first evidence of beekeeping that we have. The Ancient Egyptians were actually the first major civilization to keep bees, and from what we know they were all about the honey bee. In fact, one of the epithets of the pharaoh was “He of the sedge and the bee” and the bee even had its own hieroglyph.

A list of beekeeping hieroglyph terminology. I actually got the tattoo for “beekeeper” down my arm, but damn if I’m not jealous of whoever got to be “Chief Beekeeper of Amun” for a living

The Ancient Egyptians revered honey bees in every way possible. On the regular beekeeping level, we have tons of ancient art depicting beekeepers tending to stacked clay hives. In many of these there is a figure standing with hands upright, palms facing towards the bees, which was a sign of reverence and deference usually saved for the divines. And, in a way, the bees were divine! According to myth, the honey bee was created from the tears of the sun god, Ra (or Re), when they fell from the sky and hit the sand. I always thought of myth as interpretive (I mean how likely is it that Egyptians literally believed this), and you have to wonder here what the interpretation was between the bee, the Sun represented through Ra, and his tears which sound like a representation of rain.

Egyptian beekeepers harvesting honey, note the bee hieroglyph on the far right

Conclusion - Being A Beekeeper Today

What is clear is that the honey bee, beginning with ancient honey hunters and Ancient Egyptians, had totally captured the wonder of humans. At its core, beekeeping has not really changed that much since! I mean, yeah we have massive trucks that move hives across continents, and we have moveable frame hives and all these other things, but has much changed beyond that? I know that the bees have given me much wisdom and great bounties through honey harvesting, and that is so true for these ancient humans too! I know that some days I sit and wonder at my bees industriously leaving and returning to their hives as they carry out their many tasks, and I have to imagine that so did ancient people too! At the end of the day, what beekeeping once was and what it is now may look like it has changed, but I think the history shows that it really hasn’t. In my mind, I sort of hope that thousands of years from now we will have a new phase of beekeeping with historians looking at the current time period, and maybe someone at that time will also see how things have changed very little.