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GREECE

• In Natural History, Aristotle wrote about his observations of the honeybee, including how it collects the juices from flowers and carries them back to its hive. He recognized that the juices were watery and that it took some time for them to attain the correct consistency of honey. Unfortunately, his observations were not completely accurate; for example, he wrote that honey is deposited from the atmosphere.

• The honeybees’ organized structure inside the hive inspired Lycurgus, the founder of the ancient city of Sparta. He was so impressed by the social structure of the hive that he used the bee colony as a model for his government.

• Traces of honey were found in cooking pots from the Mycenaeans. Today, Greek desserts, such as baklava and yogurts, are often slathered in honey.

ISRAEL

• What is now thought to be one of the first full-scale apiaries was found in excavations at Tel Rehov in Israel’s Beth Shean Valley. The apiary dates from the period of the First Temple (in the tenth to early ninth century BC) and housed approximately two hundred hives. The beehives resemble clay tubes lying on their sides and stacked on top of one another. Remarkably, they resemble the style of apiaries found in Middle Egypt. All indications are that beekeeping and the extraction of honey and honeycomb was a highly developed industry at Tel Rehov at this time. When the Bible called Israel the “land of milk and honey,” there is a good chance it was referring to Tel Rehov, one of the most important cities and a beekeeping center.

INDIA

• Honey has an important role in the festival of Madhu Purnima, celebrated by the Buddhists of India. When the Buddha made peace with his disciples, he retreated into the wilderness. There a monkey gave him honey to eat. In honor of the monkey’s generosity, Buddhists often give honey to monks during the festival.

• One of the most common drinks in India in the first millennium AD was a special ceremonial brew made from sugar, ghi (clarified butter), curds, herbs, and honey. It was given to guests, to suitors about to ask a young woman for her hand in marriage, and to women who were five months pregnant. It was also used to moisten the lips of a newly born first son. The name for this drink was madhuparka. The first two syllables of madhuparka mean “honey”; the Sanskrit word madhu and the Chinese word myit are related to the words mit of the Indo-Europeans (Aryans), medhu of the Slavs, and mead of the English-speaking.

RUSSIA

• Russian author Leo Tolstoy was a beekeeper and uses beekeeping as a metaphor in his novel War and Peace. In it he describes the evacuated city of Moscow by saying, “It was deserted as a dying, queenless hive is deserted.” His wife, Sonja, later wrote in her diaries of Tolstoy, “The apiary has become the center of his world for him now, and everyone has to be interested in Bees!”

FRANCE

• When Napoleon Bonaparte declared himself emperor of France in 1804, he refused to allow the pope to crown him and instead placed the crown on his own head. Napoleon’s coronation robe was decorated with embroidered bees, a symbol, taken from Merovingian kings of the past, of “a republic with a chief, with a sting but producing honey.” There is even speculation that the French fleur-de-lis originated as the graphic outline of a bee (taken from the emblem of Childéric, a Merovingian king).

Louis XII (1462–1515) used a beehive as part of his coat of arms, “but the National Convention rejected this emblem for the Republic, ‘because bees do have a queen.’” The bee was a symbol for the French between 1804 to 1814 in the First Empire, during the Cent-Jours (1815), and also in Napoleon III’s rule during the Second Empire (1852–1870).

BEESWAX AND HONEY IN HISTORY

• The ancient Egyptians used beeswax to paint their sarcophaguses. The beeswax was heated and mixed with pigments and then applied with a paintbrush to the surface of the coffins. The beeswax created a waterproof color that protected the surface of the stone.

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