About beekeeping
Bees and honey have featured extensively in culture and mythology throughout history.
Cave drawings found in Spain dated around 6000 BC depict honey gatherers climbing trees to harvest honey from wild bees.
These are thought to be some of the earliest illustrations of humans risking life and limb to obtain honey. Similar drawings have also been found in India, Africa, Asia and Australia.
While beekeeping dates back at least 6,000 years there are still many parts of the world where honey is gathered by climbing trees or rock faces. One thing we can be sure of is that humans have always had a sweet tooth and would go to great lengths to obtain honey.
Bees and honey have always been associated with fertility and had a special place in ancient Greece where the great mother Goddess Artemis was depicted as half woman and half bee.
The Mayans too were expert beekeepers and the Spaniards who came across them in the 16th century were surprised to find apiaries containing one to two thousand hives.
Modern Beekeeping
There are many ‘greats’ in the world of beekeeping (each country can claim to have its own master beekeeper) who advanced the craft in some unique way. For example Rev. Charles Butler (1559-1647) described the functions of bees within the hive, how to manage swarms and honey collection in ‘The Feminine Monarchy’ (1623). Before this it was widely believed that the worker bees were all male. Thomas Wildman (1734-1781) developed the method of layering skeps, one on top of another. In this way the honey could be harvested without killing the bees. And Francois Huber (1750-1831) invented the ‘leaf’ hive making it possible to inspect frames, and identified the life cycle of bees.
However modern beekeeping, where bees are kept on moveable frames contained in wooden boxes, started about 150 years ago. Although many types of hive were designed in the 18th and 19th centuries, it is the American born Reverend L. Langstroth who is credited with the invention of an effective moveable frame hive, and over 70% of hives in use today are based on his design.
