Humans have been keeping bees for a very long time, and as beekeepers ourselves, we find the history genuinely humbling. The oldest known evidence goes back to ancient China, as far as the Neolithic Age, roughly 8000 to 4000 BCE. The Chinese prized bees for honey and wax, and they put beeswax to work in candles and as a binding agent in paints and varnishes. So the basic relationship between people and hives is thousands of years old.
The ancient Greeks made beekeeping a real part of their society, valuing bees for the same honey and wax. Aristotle wrote at length about bees and how they behave, and the god Apollo was tied to bees and beekeeping. The Romans carried on the tradition too, treating honey as an important commodity used as a sweetener and in making cosmetics and medicine.
India has kept bees for thousands of years as well. In ancient Indian culture, bees were considered sacred and linked to the gods, and honey served both as a sweetener and as the base for mead, a fermented honey drink. Beekeeping also turned up in ancient Mesopotamia, where bees symbolized royalty and appeared in art and literature. Honey mattered there too, used as a sweetener, in making alcohol, and in cosmetics and medicinal preparations.
Ancient Egypt has one of the richest beekeeping histories of all, with evidence stretching back to at least the Old Kingdom, around 2613 to 2181 BCE. Egyptians prized bees and used honey widely: as a sweetener, in cosmetics and ointments, and as an offering to the gods. They also used it to make candles, to embalm the dead, and in soap and pharmaceuticals. Their beekeeping was tied to the cult of the goddess Neith, who was associated with bees and honey.
Their methods were surprisingly sophisticated. Egyptian beekeepers used hives made of clay or wood, and they captured wild bees to move into those hives. They fed the bees a mixture of honey and water, and when it came time to harvest, they used smoke to calm the colony before removing the honeycombs, which is essentially the same trick beekeepers still rely on today. Thousands of years apart, and we’re all reaching for the smoker.