History of Honey/ Honey bees in World

A Report By Mr.Allah Dad Khan

150 million years

• Firstly, opinions vary about how long honey bees have been around on the planet: some sources state that fossilized remains of honey bees dating back 150 million years.

100m years ago• The latest bee find, one

preserved in amber found in Myanmar (Burma), now dates bees to an estimated 100 million years ago, during the Cretaceous. This is the time of dinosaurs, and makes bees even older than Australia. (These were solitary, non-social bees.)

96-74 million yrs ago

• The oldest known fossil bee, a stingless bee named Trigona prisca, was found in the Upper Cretaceous of New Jersey,U.S.A. and dates from 96 to 74 million years ago.

65m yrs Ago• The honey bee first appeared on

our planet in the Tertiary period at the beginning of the Cenozoic era, that is 65 million years ago - much earlier that the appearance of humans. If we assume that honey appeared together with bees, we can conclude that until almost the 16th century after Christ, honey was the only naturally sweet food in the "known" world.

40 million yrs ago

• Dating back to over 40 million years before the evolution of man, Honey is the oldest sweetener existent in the world

20-10 million yrs ago

• -Honey-storing social bees developed during the Miocene, between 20-10 million years ago. These bees made their nests in hollow trees, caves, crevices, rocks and holes in the ground.

Australopithicus, 4M BC

2.5 million yrs ago

• Anthropologists have suggested early Homo was a meat-and-potatoes kind of hominid. Starting roughly 2.5 million years ago, early species of Homo were the first hominids to have brains bigger than an ape’s.

300000 yrs ago• Researchers at the Uppsala

University used genomic analysis to decode evolutionary history of honeybees. The team said that the honeybee (Apis mellifera) came from an ancient lineage of bees that lived in cavities. These ancient bees came from Asia around 300,000 years ago and spread to Europe and Africa. The study challenges the idea that honeybees originated from Africa.

100000 yrs Ago• Honey was the most important

sweetener for food and alcoholic drinks in ancient times. So important were these activities that parents named their children after the bees. Both Deborah and Melissa mean "bee", in Hebrew and Greek respectively. It has been sought as an antiseptic and sweetener for at least 100,000 years.

130000yrs ago • Neanderthal• Neanderthals had a higher

volume to surface ratio, with shorter legs and a bigger body, compared to Homo sapiensbecause they inhabited higher latitudes, in conformance withBergmann's rule, and their larger stature explains their larger brain size because brain size

30000 yrsago• The Australian aboriginal

connection with bees and honey stretches back easily more than 30,000 years and examples of Aboriginal art in the form of rock paintings as well as carved images on eucalyptus bark portray beehives and men with bags of honey over their shoulders.

10000 yrs Ago

• The earliest records of humans eating honey (and wax), are believed to date back 10,000 year

10000 yrs ago• -Hives have been in

existence since Palaeolithic times, about 10,000 years (as depicted in early rock paintings in a Spanish cave in Valencia, in which a ladder was used to reach the nest and a container was used to hold the honey combs).

9000 yrs ago• There’s no denying it:

we’re in a long-term relationship… with bees. Recent evidence published in the journal Nature shows that humans have been depending on honey bees for about 9,000 years.

9000 yrs ago

• Archaeologists have found evidence on pottery that people were using honeycomb at least 9,000 years ago.

9000 yrs ago

• Beekeeping may go back to the early years of agriculture, up to 9,000 years ago .Archaeologists have found evidence on pottery that people were using honeycomb at least 9000 years ago.

8500 yrs Ago

• Residue scraped from pottery shows humans used bee products as long as 8,500 years ago

8000 yrs ago• Honey is as old as history is

itself. One of the earliest evidence of honey harvesting is on a rock painting dating back 8000 years, this one found in Valencia, Spain shows a honey seeker robbing a wild bee colony. The bees were subdued with smoke and the tree or rocks opened resulting in destruction of the colony.

7000 yrs ago

• This has been indicated in prehistoric drawings found in caves, whilst drawings found in Spain and believed to be around 7,000 years old, appear to indicate a form of beekeeping.

4000 yrs ago

• We have more than 4,000 years of recorded use of honey as medicine from the ancient world to the present. It has even been successfully used as battlefield medicine from the time of The Iliad to as recently as World War I.

4000 yrs ago

• If we journey back 4000 years to ancient Egypt, hieroglyphics show the story of the bee’s life. So primitive man had discovered the delight of honey by then — for centuries it was the only sweetener available

3000 yrs ago

• Recently discovered beehives from ancient Israel 3,000 years ago appear to be the oldest evidence for beekeeping ever found, scientists reported.

3000 yrs ago• The hives have a small hole on

one side for the bees to come and go, and on the other side is a lid for the beekeeper to use to access the honeycomb. The archeologists used carbon dating on grains that had spilled from a broken storage jar next to the hives to estimate that they were about 3,000 years old.

3000 yrs ago

• Overall, the findings "suggest that beekeeping already was an elaborate agricultural practice in Israel 3,000 years ago,

3000 yrs go• Then, three years ago, researchers

found a 3,000-year-old apiary in the Iron Age city of Tel Rehov in the Jordan Valley, the oldest known commercial beekeeping facility in the world, suggesting that the word "honey" likely referred to the real thing. Now the same researchers have gotten an even bigger surprise: The bees that were kept in the hives were most likely from Turkey, hundreds of miles away.

8000-6000 BC• They wrote that they

don’t know when or where the people first started using the honeybee , though they noted there is an example of rock art from 6,000 to 8,000 years old in Spain showing a person apparently harvesting wild honey from a tree.

8000 BC

• Goddess wearing a beehive as a tiara Hacilar, ancient Turkey circa 8000 BCE. This is the origin on the beehive shaped Mitre of the Cohen Priests.

7000 BC• Ancient Egyptians bestowed

their pharaohs the title "Bee King" (among others), thanks to the extensive beekeeping in Lower Egypt that kept the land flowing with honey. Images in tombs show cylindrical hives dating as far back as the 7th century B.C.

7000 BC• The oldest evidence they

found dates back to 7,000 B.C. in Anatolia, or Asia Minor. One Stone Age site in southeastern Turkey called Çayönü Tepesi, yielded exceptionally well-preserved beeswax residue from that time period, according to the paper.

7000 BC

• where it was mentioned in Sumerian and Babylonian cuneiform writings, the Hittite code, and the sacred writings of India and Egypt. It is presumably even older than that. Cave paintings in Spain from 7000BC show the earliest records of beekeeping.

6000 BC• Gathering honey from wild bee

colonies dates even further back—with some of the earliest evidence recorded in a rock painting from around 6,000 B.C. in Valencia, Spain that depicts a honey hunter raiding a hive. Yet how common and widespread this practice was remained unclear, until now, according to a new study published today in the journal Nature .

5500 BC-5000 BC• The team found abundant

evidence for humans using honeybee products in the Balkans, dating from roughly 5,500 B.C. to 4,500 B.C. and from North Africa from 5,000 B.C. The farthest north the researchers were able to find wax residues was Denmark.

Spain, 4500BC

4000 BC• It is not entirely clear but

about 4000 BC, the Egyptians started keeping bees in a cylinder of unbaked hardened mud pots, stacking them in rows to form a bank. Some beekeepers in Egypt moved their hives on rafts down the Nile, following the blossoms.

3000 BC

• The ancient Egyptians used honey as a wound treatment as early as 3000 BC and it has been found in Egyptian tombs

2700 BC• The first records (2700

BC) of the pharmaceutical and nutritional value of honey were found in Mesopotamia, the birthplace of the first organized communities.

2500 BC

• Egyptian wall paintings and reliefs dating to about 2500 BC illustrate the beekeeping process, Kritsky said.

2400 BC

• Relief from the Temple of the Sun (Ne-user-re, Abu Ghorab). Egypt 2400 BC. From: Eva Crane. The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting

2400 BC

• The earliest record of keeping bees in hives was found in the sun temple erected in 2400 BC near Cairo.

2100 BC• Exactly how long honey

has been in existence is hard to say because it has been around since as far back as we can record. Honey is as old as written history, dating back to 2100 B.C.

2060-1786 BC

• It seems that its use was originally a royal privilege and its use and commerce spread to the general population only after the Middle Dynasty (2060-1786 BC)

2000-1100 BC

• In ancient Egyptian poetry honey was used also as a symbol of love. In the few poems written between 1100 and 2000 BC and transmitted into our times honey is mentioned twice.

1700 BC

• Honey bees were regarded as mother Goddesses (see link below) as one of a series of identical plaques recovered at Camiros in Rhodes dating from the archaic period of Greek art in the seventh century BC shows.

The Beekeepers, 1568 BC by Pieter Bruegel the Elder

1500 BC• Knosis Crete 1500 BCE. The importance

of bee-keeping to the Minoans is documented in the Linear A hieroglyphs, where there are already drawings of actual beehives, testifying to a long history probably going back to the Neolithic era. The onyx gem from Knossos shows the Bee Goddess bearing upon her head the bull’s horns with the double axe inside their curve. The dogs – later the dogs of the underworld belonging to Hecate and Artemis – are winged and flying so close to the Goddess that their wings, at first glance, appear as hers.

1500 BC

• The tombs at Mycenae were shaped as beehives, as was the omphalos at Delphi in Classical Greece, where Apollo ruled with his chief oracular Priestess, the Pythia, who was called the Delphic Bee.

1500-1000 BC

• In ancient India honey was worshiped in many scriptures. In the Vedas, created 1000-1500 BC we find in the Rig Veda

1450 BC• 1450 BC .Some of the

great jars, or pithoi, found at Knossos were used to store honey.

• The Greeks modified the Egyptian design baking the mud into a sturdier terra cotta. (1450BC). They called the honey "nectar from the gods".

1450 BC

• Gold seal ring, c. 1450 BC. From a tomb at Isopata, near Knossos.

1350 BC• Anaylsis of the contents of a hive

found in a 19th Dynasty grave (1350 BC) in Thebes (Deir el-Medineh) revealed pollen grains, which aided in the estimation of the degree of change in the honey-producing plants over time. During this period, the Egyptians placed hives on ships travelling Nile, in search of flowering plants. In other words, we have the first attempt at nomadic bee-keeping. The hunt for "wild" honey was very popular and was protected by the King's army.

1000-900 BC

• The researchers found three rows of these hives in a courtyard that used to be part of a large architectural complex during the 10th to 9th centuries B.C.

920 BC• But historical records

indicate that the city was captured by an Egyptian pharaoh about 920 BC and its heavy industry destroyed. That time frame is close to the radiocarbon date for the bees, "so perhaps a raid by the Egyptian army caused this," Mazar said.

800 BC

• Homer is the first Greek poet, he wrote his works aroung 800 BC. In his Hymn to Hermes he writes about the bee priestesses Melissae, here in the translation of Miss Jane Harrison

771 BC• However, the Chinese went

ahead the rest of the world in terms of collecting, preserving and consuming honey, as they were the ones to begin beekeeping while the rest of the world searched for bee nests to procure honey as early as 771 BCE itself.

700 BC• <<< This painting depicts the

Buddha while living in the deep forest, where no people were around who could support him by offering food. The monkey then gave the Buddha some honey. Other animal also gave him various foodstuffs. Picture of a wallpainting in a monastery in Laos

700 BC

• Bee Coin from Sicily 700 BCE.

Egypt 660BC

600-300 BC

• According to the book ‘Bee’ by Claire Preston, the Picts (iron age people from Northern Scotland, UK), were making honey ale between 300 – 600 BC.

600-140 BC

• In Greece, during the “golden age” (600-140 B.C.), bees were studied for their own interest rather than their exploitation

582-485 BC• The poem about Eros and

the bees is attritubuted to Anacreon 582 BC-485 BC.

• Anacreon (/əˈnækriən/; Greek: Ἀνακρέων ὁ Τήϊος; c. 582 – c. 485 BC) was aGreek lyric poet, notable for his drinking songs and hymns. Later Greeks included him in the canonical list of nine lyric poets.

570-495 BC

• Pythagoras of Samos (c.570-495 BCE)

• Describes about Honey as a Food

Greeks

• 384 BC, Aristotle wrote much about beekeeping.

• Foulbrood

• First to note that honeybee's don't visit flowers of different kinds on one flight, but remain constant to one species.

384-322 BC

• Aristotle’s Natural History (344-342 B.C.) contains a variety of direct observations on honey and bees. The Iliad and the Odyssey make many references to honey.

256 BC• hus, in the year 256 BCE a

beehive owner named Senchons wanted her donkey returned to her, so that she could move her hives into the pastures.[Sometimes the hives had to be transported to higher lying land, to prevent them from being destroyed in the annual Nile inundation, as the so-called bee-keepers' petition dating from the middle of the third century

247-181 BC

• The Romans used honey to heal their wounds after battles. Hannibal, a great warrior gave his army honey and vinegar as they crossed the alps on elephants to battle Rome.

200 BC• Aristophanes of Byzantium,

the head of the library at Alexandria around 200 BCE, claimed, that the beekeepers approached the hives with shaven heads, as the bees reacted very violently to the smell of perfumed oil applied to the hair.[14]Apiarists are never shown using protective gear and relied on smoke blown into the hives to keep the bees peaceful.

• Aristophanes, of Byzantium, librarian of Alexandria (1), c. 257–180 BCE

64-24 AD• Strabo (64 BC–24 AD)

considered honey as one of the prominent products of “Arabia Felix”, indicating in his Geographica, “the far western parts, towards Ethiopia, were irrigated by summer rainfall and cultivated twice a year, and honey was one of its numerous yields and was enormously abundan

40 BC• Virgil wrote about beekeeping in

about 40BC • Keep hives:

– Near water– Out of the wind– Away for lizards, moths, and

birds• Emphasized the hives ruler• Praised Bees for their abstension

from Sexual intercourse• Spontaneous Generation?

50 AD• Democritus, a contemporary of

Hippocrates, thought a diet including honey led to a longer life. Honey was used by the ancient Greek physician Dioscorides (50 AD) for sunburn and infected wounds, as well as for coughs and for poisoning by toadstools, snakes and rabid dogs. Rather ironically, the Ancient Romans used honey medicinally as both a laxative and a cure for diarrhoea.

50 AD

• Pliny wrote about beekeeping in about 50AD.

• Wrote about wax, and propolis

• Described a transparent (Observation) hive

• The Mead consumed by the Celts!

• “Bees are the smallest of birds, and are born from the bodies of oxen”

79 AD

• Blinos (79 AD) noted that, “Arabia Felix wealth outperformed the whole world, as its lands had perfumed jungles, gold mines, irrigating water and produced a lot of honey and wax”

400 AD

• -Early European manuscripts (the earliest dating around A.D. 400) describe honey as used for food, drink, medicinal, various preservative purposes, and in magico-religious rites

571-632 AD

• -In the Middle East, the Arabs, with their Muslim religion (founded by Muhammad the Prophet, A.D. 571-632), built a vast empire which included Northern Africa, Spain and eastwards beyond what is now Iran. An Arab writer (Ibn Magih) quotes Muhammad as saying, “Honey is a remedy for every illness, and the Koran is a remedy for all illnesses of the mind, therefore I recommend to you both remedies, the Koran and honey.”

• The reasons these foods were so important around holidays of religious significance were several, including a belief in the medicinal properties of honey. When a bowl of casīda is eaten in celebration of the Prophet’s birthday, it reminds the believer that the holy Koran was recited to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel near Mecca in 610 A. D

854-932 AD• The Persian physician Al-Razi

advised using a mixture of honey and vinegar as a remedy for skin conditions, but also for gum disease. This advice has now been proven to hold some merit as recent studies suggest that the natural antibacterial properties of honey halt the growth of bacteria in the mouth and potentially even prevent gingivitis.

• Abūbakr-e Mohammad-e Zakariyyā-ye RāzīPersian: محّمد ابوبكر

رازى زکرياى

1000 AD

• During the 10 century, the Kings and Queens of England had fermented honey wine (Mead), the Edmeades family produced some of these.

1532 AD

• 1538 – Spanish import the first European honey bees to South America.

1600 AD

• Honey bees are thought to originate in Africa, and were actually brought to North America by European colonists in the early 1600s

1600 AD• Although experts argue

whether the honeybee is native to the Americas, conquering Spaniards in 1600 A.D. found native Mexicans and Central Americans had already developed beekeeping methods to produce honey.

1600-1700 AD• The bees in the United States

were brought here when EuropeansEuropeans: people from Europe migrated here in the 1600s and 1700s. Honey bees and bumblebees are probably the best known. Bees are a very beneficial insect that are necessary for the pollination of many plants.

1622 AD

• Apis mellifera mellifera• Called variably the

German black bee or north European bee, this race is thought to be the first to make landfall in North America , most likely in the year 1622 on the coat of virginia.

1682 AD

• 1682 – George Wheler – an English clergyman and travel writer, discovers and describes Greek hives (forerunner of modern hives with movable frames).

1700 AD• 1700 – Again according to the

book “Bee” above, written by Claire Preston, it wasn’t until 1700 that it was understood bees gather nectar from flowers with which honey is made. Prior to this time, it was thought the honey was collected by the bees ready-made in the flowers!

1789 AD

• The Leaf Hive, invented in Switzerland in 1789 by Francis Huber, was a fully movable frame hive. The combs in this hive were examined like pages in a book. A.I. Root and E.R. Root credit Huber with inventing the first movable framehive.

1750-1831 AD

• In 1792 a blind naturalist, FrancoisHuber, published a book in Geneva on bees and honey. The honey industry that we know today began to grow

Francis Huber• Fully movable frame, Leaf, hive 1789• Observations on Bees• Queen mating practices and role of Drones

1800 AD

• It took until the 1800s for the beekeeper Lorenzo Langstroth to invent a bee hive that allowed for easy hive manipulation and removal of honey – which is the same bee hive model we use today.

1804 AD• Napoleon used the bee as

a symbol of his empire after his coronation in 1804. It stood for industry, efficiency and productivity. Also emblematic of immortality and resurrection, the bee was chosen to link the new dynasty to the very origins of France

1820-22 AD

• In the early 1820’s the honeybee was brought to Australia aboard the ship Isabella.

• -Honey bees were introduced to Australia in 1822.

1831 AD

• -European bees were successfully introduced to Tasmania in the 1831.

Rev. Lorenzo Lorraine

Langstroth(1810 – 1895)

“Father of American Beekeeping”

Andover, MA 1836 - 1847

1838 AD• 1838 - Johann Dzierzon, a

Polish apiculturist, devised the first practical movable-comb beehive, which allowed manipulation of individual honeycombs without destroying the structure of the hive. Dzierzon discovered the phenomenon of parthenogenesis in bees .

1850 AD

• By 1850, honey was being produced by bees and harvested by man, over almost the whole world. At this time, the modern movable-frame hive was invented, and its use became widely spread.

1851 AD• The straw skep became the norm

for more than a millennium, until humans discovered that a simple wooden box also would work, as long as it had an opening that the bees could use as an entrance. Some of the earliest box hives were octagonal, to mimic the shape of a hollow tree, but square wooden hive boxes soon prevailed. The moveable frame hive now in use was developed in 1851

1851 AD• 1851 – L.L. Langstroth of

Philadelphia USA – the "father of American beekeeping had access to translations of Dzierzon's works., built upon the design of Dzierzon, and others (such as Francis Huber of Switzerland), and designed a completely movable frame hive

1890 AD

• 1890 – William Broughton Carr, English inventor and beekeeper, invented the WBC beehive (pictured left). Learn more about the different types ofhoney bee hives.

1900 AD

• By the year 1900, most modern beekeepers were using variants of the Langstroth hive with Hoffman-style frame, like the ones used today.

Brother Adam 1898 - 1996

1914 AD

• Osip Mandelstam, Russian writer, 1914

•1891-1938, a famous Russian poet, wrote a beaitiful poem about joy and the honey bee:

1920 AD• 1852-1933, famous

American poet and clergyman, wrote a beatiful poem on the bees.

• Henry Jackson van Dyke(November 10, 1852 – April 10, 1933) was an American author, educator, and clergyman.[1]

• Henry Jackson van Dyke(November 10, 1852 – April 10, 1933) was an American author, educator, and clergyman.[1]

Albert Einstein during a lecture in Vienna in 1921 AD

1925 – Brother Adam Breeding Honeybees for certain traits:

the Buckfast Bee

• Good Temper• Disease-Resistance• Prolific• Propensity for hard

work• Disinclination to

swarm

1948 AD• 1948 - Abbé Warré

published “Beekeeping For All” (opens new window).In the book he outlines plans for a a top bar bee hive. Warré also advocates far less interference with hives and bees. Read more about this and aboutNatural Beekeeping.

1984 AD• In 1984, a backstage worker

at the Paris opera established one of the most unusually sited beehives on the roof of the opera house. The "opera bees" gather their nectar as they visit flowers all over the city of Paris. The fruits of their labors are on sale in the souvenir shop of the opera.

World Honey Exporters

2014 AD

• Natural honey exports by country during 2014 totaled US$2.3 billion up by an overall 54.1% for all natural honey shippers over the five-year period starting in 2010. The value of global natural honey exports gained 10.8% from 2013 to 2014