Related Papers
Journal of Apicultural Research
Investigation of free-living honey bee colonies in Ireland
2020 •
Dora Henriques
Anales de la Universidad de Alicante. Historia Medieval
Beekeeping in late medieval Europe: A survey of its ecological settings and social impacts
2021 •
Alexandra Sapoznik
In the middle ages bees held significant economic, social and cultural importance. Constant demand for wax was driven by Christian religious practice among many other uses, while honey provided the only widely accessible sweetener in an era before large-scale sugar imports. Consequently, beekeeping was a notable part of the rural economy, drawing on the participation of numerous groups across Europe, from peasants with only a few hives for small-scale production to specialized beekeepers producing for a thriving international trade. Analysis of a wide variety of documents from northern and southern Europe, shows the importance of beekeeping in the late medieval period, and the ways in which different environments and types of economic and social organization consequently gave rise to different forms of beekeeping. This paper demonstrates that beekeeping was not an isolated activity, but rather one which competed and conflicted with, and conflicted with, many other types of resource ...
Phisis, L'environnement naturel et la relation homme-milieu dans le monde égéen protohistorique, Actes de la 14 Rencontre ègéenne internationale, Paris, Institut National d'Histoire de l'Art (INHA), Aegaeum 37 (11-14 décembre 2012)
with A. L. D'Agata 2014, Minoan Beehives. Reconstructing the practice of beekeeping in Bronze Age Crete
2014 •
Sara De Angelis
Widespread exploitation of the honeybee by early Neolithic farmers - Uso de cera de abeja en el Neolítico
Alfonso Alday
0 0 M o n t h 2 0 1 5 | V o L 0 0 0 | n A t U R E | 1 The pressures on honeybee (Apis mellifera) populations, resulting from threats by modern pesticides, parasites, predators and diseases, have raised awareness of the economic importance and critical role this insect plays in agricultural societies across the globe. However, the association of humans with A. mellifera predates post-industrial-revolution agriculture, as evidenced by the widespread presence of ancient Egyptian bee iconography dating to the Old Kingdom (approximately 2400 bc) 1. There are also indications of Stone Age people harvesting bee products; for example, honey hunting is interpreted from rock art 2 in a prehistoric Holocene context and a beeswax find in a pre-agriculturalist site 3. However, when and where the regular association of A. mellifera with agriculturalists emerged is unknown 4. One of the major products of A. mellifera is beeswax, which is composed of a complex suite of lipids including n-alkanes, n-alkanoic acids and fatty acyl wax esters. The composition is highly constant as it is determined genetically through the insect's biochemistry. Thus, the chemical 'fingerprint' of beeswax provides a reliable basis for detecting this commodity in organic residues preserved at archaeological sites, which we now use to trace the exploitation by humans of A. mellifera temporally and spatially. Here we present secure identifications of beeswax in lipid residues preserved in pottery vessels of Neolithic Old World farmers. The geographical range of bee product exploitation is traced in Neolithic Europe, the Near East and North Africa, providing the palaeoecological range of honeybees during prehistory. Temporally, we demonstrate that bee products were exploited continuously, and probably extensively in some regions, at least from the seventh millennium cal bc, likely fulfilling a variety of technological and cultural functions. The close association of A. mellifera with Neolithic farming communities dates to the early onset of agriculture and may provide evidence for the beginnings of a domestication process.
Journal of Ancient Egyptian Interconnections
SWEETNESS OUT OF CHAOS: THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF EARLY BEEKEEPING IN THE NEAR EAST AND AEGEAN
2023 •
Prentiss de Jesus
The honeybee originally migrated to the Levant and northeast Africa sometime during the early Pleistocene (300,000 BP) from her ancestral home in southeast Asia. The evolved honeybee is identified as Apis mellifera. Thanks to the pioneering studies of Eva Crane, there has been an increased interest in the role of bees and beekeeping and a desire to define the intimate relationship between bees and human societies. Recently, residue analyses have been performed on sherds, and from the results we are able to trace the spread of honey and beeswax over time and identify the practice of honey collection and beekeeping in a broad swath of the ancient Near East. Traces of beeswax have turned up in Neolithic and Chalcolithic contexts in the Levant, Anatolia, and Thracian Greece and on Cyprus and, later, Crete. The author uses his beekeeping experience to provide insights into ancient beekeeping practices.
A new approach to the study of ancient Greek beekeeping. In: Wallace-Hare, D. (ed), New Approaches to the Archaeology of Beekeeping. Oxford 2022 (Archaeopress).
Georgios Mavrofridis
The Economic History Review
Bees in the medieval economy: religious observance and the production, trade, and consumption of wax in England, c. 1300–1555
2018 •
Alexandra Sapoznik
(CO-AUTHORED with A.SAPOZNIK AND M.WHELAN) Beekeeping in late medieval Europe: A survey of its ecological settings and social impacts
Lluís Sales i Favà
In the middle ages bees held significant economic, social and cultural importance. Constant demand for wax was driven by Christian religious practice among many other uses, while honey provided the only widely accessible sweetener in an era before large-scale sugar imports. Consequently, beekeeping was a notable part of the rural economy, drawing on the participation of numerous groups across Europe, from peasants with only a few hives for small-scale production to specialized beekeepers producing for a thriving international trade. Analysis of a wide variety of documents from northern and southern Europe, shows the importance of beekeeping in the late medieval period, and the ways in which differ- ent environments and types of economic and so- cial organization consequently gave rise to different forms of beekeeping. This paper demonstrates that beekeeping was not an isolated activity, but rather one which competed and conflicted with, and con- flicted with, many other types of resource use from a variety of actors. As such, beekeeping provides a lens through which to consider human intervention in the natural environment, demonstrating the ex- tent to which the medieval landscape was regulated, managed, mediated and anthropized.
Ethnoentomology II
Urban beekeeping in Antiquity
2018 •
Georgios Mavrofridis
________________________________________ The practice of apiculture inside ancient cities and smaller fortified settlements was known but not common during the first millennium BC and the first centuries AD. This conclusion is drawn by recent archaeological data from sites around the Mediterranean. When the security of the beekeepers and the bees, the control of the apicultural production, the protection of the hives from robbery or even the reinforcement of the defence during sieges was one of the main concerns, the beehives were placed inside the city walls. Possible problems deriving from the large number of bees within the urban environment were solved either by the construction of walls around the apiaries or the placement of hives at locations that would keep the bees away from the population.
