Bees, smoke and the oldest sweetener

Before sugar cane spread and long before beet sugar, honey was the concentrated sweetener, and in most regions it was also a preservative, a medicine and the base for the oldest fermented drinks.

Honey hunting

The older practice, and it persists. Wild colonies are located, smoked to subdue the bees, and the comb is cut out.

In several regions this involves considerable physical risk. Honey hunting on cliff faces, using rope ladders to reach colonies of large bees on overhangs, is documented in the Himalaya and elsewhere, and the associated traditions include ritual preparation and restrictions on who may participate.

Honey hunting is also one of the few documented cases of a cooperative relationship between humans and a wild bird. The greater honeyguide leads people to bee colonies, and in exchange gets access to wax and larvae after the humans have opened the nest. Researchers have documented specific calls used by human honey hunters that the birds respond to, and the relationship appears to be a genuine mutualism developed over a long period.

Hive keeping

The shift from hunting to keeping involved providing cavities for colonies to occupy.

Log hives — hollowed sections of tree, sometimes left in place in the standing tree. Tree beekeeping, where colonies are kept in hollowed cavities in living trees, was practised across parts of eastern Europe and elsewhere and has been revived in some areas.

Skeps — coiled straw baskets used across Europe. Effective and with a serious drawback: harvesting the honey generally meant destroying the colony, since the comb is fixed to the walls.

Clay and pottery hives, horizontal cylinders used across the Mediterranean and Middle East, stacked in walls. Harvesting from the end allowed the colony to survive.

Top-bar hives, where bees build comb down from movable bars, allowing inspection and harvest without destroying the nest. Long used in various forms and now widely promoted as a low-cost approach.

Frame hives, with fully removable frames, developed in the nineteenth century. The crucial insight was the precise gap that bees leave as a passage and do not fill with comb — build to that dimension and frames can be lifted out without damage. This made inspection, disease management and non-destructive harvesting straightforward and it is the basis of most commercial beekeeping.

The other products

Wax, which was economically significant in its own right — candles for churches, sealing, waterproofing, lost-wax casting, cosmetics. In some periods wax was worth more than the honey.

Propolis, the resin bees collect and use to seal the hive, used in various traditional preparations.

Brood, eaten in a number of cultures and a substantial source of protein and fat where it is used.

Mead, fermented honey and water, plausibly among the oldest alcoholic drinks given that the ingredients require no processing and fermentation can begin spontaneously in diluted honey.

Honey is not one thing

Flavour, colour, texture and crystallisation behaviour depend on which flowers the bees worked.

Single-source honeys have distinct characters, and some are strong enough to be an acquired taste. Honeys from certain plants have historically been avoided or valued for particular properties, and a small number of honeys from specific plant sources contain compounds that make them genuinely toxic — a phenomenon documented since antiquity in particular regions.

Crystallisation is a normal property, not a fault, and its speed depends on the sugar ratio, which depends on the source. Runny honey that never sets has usually been heated and filtered.

The medicinal claims

Honey's antibacterial properties are real and are attributable to low water activity, acidity, and hydrogen peroxide production. Medical-grade honey is used in wound dressing in clinical practice, with a reasonable evidence base for particular applications.

That is a narrower claim than most of what is asserted about honey. The general health claims range from plausible to unfounded, and the specific claims made for expensive single-source honeys have generated a substantial market and a correspondingly substantial problem with adulteration and mislabelling.

One genuine caution: honey should not be given to infants under a year old, because of the risk of infant botulism.

The bees

The western honey bee is the species most commercial beekeeping uses, and it has been moved worldwide. Many other bee species are managed traditionally, including stingless bees across the tropics, whose honey is different in character and whose keeping traditions are ancient in parts of Mesoamerica and Southeast Asia.

Managed honey bees are not the pollinators most at risk. The more serious concern is wild bee diversity, where the pressures are habitat loss, pesticides and disease, and where introducing large numbers of managed hives can add competition rather than relieve it.

Which complicates the common assumption that keeping bees is straightforwardly good for pollinators. Planting for wild bees and leaving rough ground unmanaged does more, and it does not require any equipment.