Early history near
Valencia, Spain At least 10,000 years ago, humans began to attempt to maintain colonies of wild bees in artificial
hives made from hollow logs, wooden boxes, pottery vessels, and woven straw baskets known as
skeps. Depictions of humans collecting honey from wild bees date to 10,000 years ago. Beekeeping in pottery vessels began about 9,000 years ago in North Africa. Traces of beeswax have been found in potsherds throughout the Middle East beginning about 7,000 BCE.
Domestication of bees is shown in Egyptian art from around 4,500 years ago. Simple hives and smoke were used, and honey was stored in jars, some of which were found in the tombs of pharaohs such as
Tutankhamun. In the 18th century, European understanding of the colonies and biology of bees allowed the construction of the movable comb hive so honey could be harvested without destroying the entire colony. Honeybees were kept in Egypt from antiquity. On the walls of the
sun temple of
Nyuserre Ini from the
Fifth Dynasty before 2,422 BCE, workers are depicted blowing smoke into hives as they remove
honeycombs. Inscriptions detailing the production of honey are found on the tomb of
Pabasa from the
Twenty-sixth Dynasty , in which cylindrical hives are depicted along with people pouring honey into jars. An inscription records the introduction of honey bees into the land of
Suhum in
Mesopotamia, where they were previously unknown: The oldest archaeological finds directly relating to beekeeping have been discovered at
Rehov, Israel, a
Bronze and
Iron Age archaeological site in the
Jordan Valley. Thirty intact hives made of straw and unbaked clay were discovered in the ruins of the city, dating from about 900 BCE, by archaeologist
Amihai Mazar. The hives were found in orderly rows, three high, in a manner that according to Mazar could have accommodated around 100 hives, held more than one million bees and had a potential annual yield of of honey and of beeswax, and are evidence an advanced honey industry in
Tel Rehov, Israel 3,000 years ago. In
ancient Greece, in
Crete and
Mycenae, there existed a system of high-status apiculture that is evidenced by the finds of hives, smoking pots, honey extractors and other beekeeping paraphernalia in
Knossos. Beekeeping was considered a highly valued industry controlled by beekeeping overseers—owners of gold rings depicting apiculture scenes rather than religious ones as they have been reinterpreted recently, contra
Sir Arthur Evans. Aspects of the lives of bees and beekeeping are discussed at length by
Aristotle. Beekeeping was also documented by the
Roman writers
Virgil,
Gaius Julius Hyginus,
Varro, and
Columella. Beekeeping has been practiced in
ancient China since antiquity. In a book written by
Fan Li (or Tao Zhu Gong) during the
Spring and Autumn period are sections describing beekeeping, stressing the importance of the quality of the wooden box used and its effects on the quality of the honey. The Chinese word for honey
mi (), reconstructed
Old Chinese pronunciation ) was borrowed from
proto-Tocharian *
ḿət(ə) (where *
ḿ is
palatalized; cf. Tocharian B
mit), cognate with English ''''. The ancient
Maya domesticated a species of
stingless bee, which they used for several purposes, including making
balché, a
mead-like alcoholic drink. By 300 BCE they had achieved the highest levels of stingless beekeeping practices in the world. The use of stingless bees is referred to as
meliponiculture, which is named after bees of the tribe
Meliponini such as
Melipona quadrifasciata in Brazil. This variation of beekeeping still occurs today. For instance, in
Australia, the stingless bee
Tetragonula carbonaria is kept for the production of honey.
Scientific study of honey bees European natural philosophers began to scientifically study bee colonies in the 18th century. Eminent among these scientists were
Swammerdam,
René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur,
Charles Bonnet and
François Huber. Swammerdam and Réaumur were among the first to use a microscope and dissection to understand the internal biology of honey bees. Réaumur was among the first to construct a glass-walled observation hive to better observe activities inside hives. He observed queens laying eggs in open cells but did not know how queens were fertilized; the mating of a queen and
drone had not yet been observed and many theories held queens were "
self-fertile" while others believed a vapor or "miasma" emanating from the drones fertilized queens without physical contact. Huber was the first to prove by observation and experiment that drones physically inseminate queens outside the confines of the hive, usually a great distance away. Following Réaumur's design, Huber built improved glass-walled observation hives and sectional hives that could be opened like the leaves of a book. This allowed the inspection of individual wax combs and greatly improved direct observation of hive activity. Although he went blind before he was twenty, Huber employed a secretary named François Burnens to make daily observations, conduct experiment and keep accurate notes for more than twenty years. Huber confirmed a hive consists of one queen, who is the mother of every
female worker and male drone in the colony. He was also the first to confirm mating with drones takes place outside hives and that queens are inseminated in successive matings with male drones, which occur high in the air at a great distance from the hive. Together, Huber and Burnens dissected bees under the microscope, and were among the first to describe the
ovaries and
spermatheca (sperm store) of queens, as well as the penis of male drones. Huber is regarded as "the father of modern bee-science" and his work
Nouvelles Observations sur Les Abeilles (New Observations on Bees) revealed all of the basic scientific facts of the biology and ecology of honeybees. This was usually accomplished by using burning sulfur to suffocate the colony without harming the honey within. It was impossible to replace old, dark-brown brood comb in which larval bees are constricted by layers of shed pupal skins. The movable frames of modern hives are considered to have been developed from the traditional basket top bar (movable comb) hives of Greece, which allowed the beekeeper to avoid killing the bees. The oldest evidence of their use dates to 1669, although it is probable their use is more than 3,000 years old. from a
Langstroth hive Intermediate stages in the transition from older methods of beekeeping were recorded in 1768 by Thomas Wildman, who described advances over the destructive, skep-based method so bees no longer had to be killed to harvest their honey. Wildman fixed an array of parallel wooden bars across the top of a straw hive in diameter "so that there are in all seven bars of deal to which the bees fix their combs", foreshadowing future uses of movable-comb hives. He also described using such hives in a multi-story configuration, foreshadowing the modern use of supers: he added successive straw hives below and later removed the ones above when free of brood and filled with honey so the bees could be separately preserved at the harvest the following season. Wildman also described the use of hives with "sliding frames" in which the bees would build their comb. Wildman's book acknowledges the advances in knowledge of bees made by Swammerdam, Maraldi, and de Réaumur—he includes a lengthy translation of Réaumur's account of the natural history of bees. Wildman also describes the initiatives of others in designing hives for the preservation of bees when taking the harvest, citing reports from Brittany in the 1750s due to the Comte de la Bourdonnaye. Another hive design was invented by Rev. John Thorley in 1744; the hive was placed in a
bell jar that was screwed onto a wicker basket. The bees were free to move from the basket to the jar, and honey was produced and stored in the jar. The hive was designed to keep the bees from swarming as much as they would have in other hive designs. In the 19th century, changes in beekeeping practice were completed through the development of the movable comb hive by the American
Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth, who was the first person to make practical use of Huber's earlier discovery of a specific spatial distance between the wax combs, later called
the bee space, which bees do not block with wax but keep as a free passage. Having determined this bee space, which is commonly given as between , though up to has been found in populations in Ethiopia. Langstroth then designed a series of wooden frames within a rectangular hive box, carefully maintaining the correct space between successive frames. He found the bees would build parallel honeycombs in the box without bonding them to each other or to the hive walls. This enables the beekeeper to slide any frame out of the hive for inspection without harming the bees or the comb; and protecting the eggs, larvae and pupae in the cells. It also meant combs containing honey could be gently removed and the honey extracted without destroying the comb. The emptied honeycombs could then be returned intact to the bees for refilling. Langstroth's book
The Hive and Honey-bee (1853), describes his rediscovery of the bee space and the development of his patent movable comb hive. The invention and development of the movable comb hive enabled the growth of large-scale, commercial honey production in both Europe and the U.S.
20th and 21st century hive designs Langstroth's design of movable comb hives was adopted by apiarists and inventors in both North America and Europe, and a wide range of moveable comb hives were developed in England, France, Germany and the United States. Classic designs evolved in each country;
Dadant hives and
Langstroth hives are still dominant in the U.S.; in France the
De-Layens trough hive became popular, in the UK a British National hive became standard by the 1930s, although in Scotland the smaller Smith hive is still popular. In some Scandinavian countries and in Russia, the traditional trough hive persisted until late in the 20th century and is still kept in some areas. The Langstroth and Dadant designs, however, remain ubiquitous in the U.S. and in many parts of Europe, though Sweden, Denmark, Germany, France and Italy all have their own national hive designs. Regional variations of hive were developed according to climate, floral productivity and reproductive characteristics of the subspecies of native honey bees in each bio-region. Hives also use
queen excluders between the brood-box and honey supers to keep the queen from laying eggs in cells next to those containing honey intended for consumption. With the 20th-century advent of mite pests, hive floors are often replaced, either temporarily or permanently, with a wire mesh and a removable tray. whose design allows honey to be extracted without cumbersome centrifuge equipment.
Pioneers of practical and commercial beekeeping In the 19th century, improvements were made in the design and production of beehives, systems of management and husbandry, stock improvement by
selective breeding,
honey extraction and marketing. Notable innovators of modern beekeeping include:
Petro Prokopovych used frames with channels in the side of the woodwork; these were packed side-by-side in stacked boxes. Bees traveled between frames and boxes via these channels, which were similar to the cutouts in the sides of modern wooden sections.
Jan Dzierżon' beehive design has influenced modern beehives.
François Huber made significant discoveries about the bee life cycle and communication between bees. Despite being blind, Huber discovered a large amount of information about the queen bee's mating habits and her contact with the rest of the hive. His work was published as
New Observations on the Natural History of Bees.
L. L. Langstroth has influenced modern beekeeping practice more than anyone else. His book
The Hive and Honey-bee was published in 1853.
Moses Quinby, author of
Mysteries of Bee-Keeping Explained, invented the
bee smoker in 1873.
A. J. Cook author of ''The Bee-Keepers' Guide; or Manual of the Apiary'', 1876.
Dr. C.C. Miller was one of the first entrepreneurs to make a living from apiculture. By 1878, he made beekeeping his sole business activity. His book,
Fifty Years Among the Bees, remains a classic and his influence on bee management persists into the 21st century.
Franz Hruschka was an Austrian/Italian military officer who in 1865 invented a simple
machine for extracting honey from the comb by means of
centrifugal force. His original idea was to support combs in a metal framework and then spin them within a container to collect honey that was thrown out by centrifugal force. This meant honeycombs could be returned to a hive empty and undamaged, saving the bees a vast amount of work, time and materials. This invention significantly improved the efficiency of honey harvesting and catalyzed the modern honey industry.
Walter T. Kelley was an American pioneer of modern beekeeping in the early-and mid-20th century. He greatly improved upon beekeeping equipment and clothing, and went on to manufacture these items and other equipment. His company sold products worldwide and his book
How to Keep Bees & Sell Honey, encouraged a boom in beekeeping following
World War II.
Cary W. Hartman (1859–1947), lecturer, well known beekeeping enthusiast and honey promoter was elected President of the California State Beekeepers' Association in 1921. In the UK, practical beekeeping was led in the early 20th century by a few men, pre-eminently
Brother Adam and his
Buckfast bee, and
R.O.B. Manley, author of books including
Honey Production in the British Isles and inventor of the Manley frame, which is still universally popular in the UK. Other notable British pioneers include
William Herrod-Hempsall and Gale.
Ahmed Zaky Abushady (1892–1955) was an Egyptian poet, medical doctor, bacteriologist, and bee scientist, who was active in England and Egypt in the early twentieth century. In 1919, Abushady patented a removable, standardized aluminum honeycomb. In the same year, he founded
The Apis Club in
Benson, Oxfordshire, which later became the
International Bee Research Association (IBRA). In Egypt in the 1930s, Abushady established The Bee Kingdom League and its organ
The Bee Kingdom. == Hives and other equipment==