Neolithic beekeepers: Humans have been farming bees for honey for 8500 years

They are kept in hives, and their honey and wax are harvested by humans.

Researchers found beeswax residue on fragments of ancient cooking pots from archeological sites across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa.

The honeybee has been part of human culture for centuries, appearing in cave paintings depicting honeycombs, swarms of bees and honey collecting.

“It would have been a rare sweetener for prehistoric people”, Salque said. This has been hard to do because bees leave almost no fossil record, rendering them almost invisible to archaeologists for nearly 10,000 years. Eventually, they chose to take a look at all the accumulated years of beeswax evidence and see what kind of insights could be gleaned. Fragments of organic material clinging to pottery from early farming sites display a chemical signature typical of beeswax, the scientists report in the November 12 Nature.

Pottery examined from more northerly sites, specifically above the 57th parallel, for example from Scotland and Scandinavia, were found to lack beeswax.

The research offers insights into the symbiotic relationship between humans and honeybees.

The honeybee has been a subject of concern for decades, now, thanks to mysterious widespread die-offs, the causes of which scientists are only beginning to understand. There’s even a context in which the ancient Israelite and Egyptian lore meet over honey – “And their father Israel said unto them, If it must be so now, do this; take of the best fruits in the land in your vessels, and carry down the man [in Egypt] a present, a little balm, and a little honey, spices, and myrrh, nuts, and almonds” (Genesis 43:11).

Now, learning more about how long and pervasive the history of human reliance on the honeybee has been could provide even greater motivation for people to make sure that relationship continues to last.

Dr Roffet-Salque said these sites were the locations of the oldest pottery vessels in Europe and Eurasia. The findings show that bees were certainly being exploited during this period, and hint that they may have been domesticated around the same time as other animals and plants.

These results suggest that the 57th parallel represented “the natural ecological limit for bees at the time”, Roffet-Salque said.

Before the Bristol work, the earliest evidence of humans and bees in Europe came from a cave painting in Spain, which shows a honey hunter dangling from ropes and surrounded by bees, stealing honey from a hive. (Robinson also was not involved with the paper).

The bee’s range contracted in Europe during the last Ice Age, but expanded in Africa. But being aware of the potential for these climate-related changes is useful, as these shifts can have “major implications in a few places for how agriculture is conducted”, he added.

Prof Outram explained:”The plentiful supply of sugary foods is a very recent phenomenon, but in the past sweet foods were very hard to find and it is clear from our study that the earliest farmers in Europe had a keen interest in exploiting the valuable products of the honeybee”.