Buzz

People from all cultures have mythologized and romanticized the bee throughout history.

Bees and humans have shared a special relationship for thousands of years. Early humans raided hives by climbing trees and smoking out bees. As agriculture developed, people cultivated bees. By the third millennium BC, Egyptians ferried bees up and down the Nile to pollinate plants. People kept bees long before they tamed horses or domesticated fowl.

People distilled honey into mead, the first alcoholic beverage, and used bees and their products as remedies and tonics. For thousands of years, beeswax was the most clean-burning and pleasant-smelling source of light.

The bee appears in mythology, poetry and art. Bees were often messengers from the gods, and portended natural catastrophes. Cicero attributed Plato’s eloquence to bees landing on the philosopher’s lips when he was a baby. “Bee-priestesses” served in the temples of Aphrodite, Artemis and Demeter. Legends say wild bees raised the god Zeus, and they call the gods Krishna and Vishnu “the nectar-born ones.” Rivers of honey appear in almost every culture’s conception of paradise.