Disciplines
Apiculture
Also Known As Beekeeping
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The keeping of honey bee colonies, historically in hollow logs, skeps and clay hives before the modern movable-frame box, for honey, wax and pollination. Where deliberate husbandry of bees first replaced simple honey hunting is disputed between an early Anatolian trail and a later, better-documented Egyptian one.
Sources disagree on where deliberate beekeeping began: Egyptian tomb art shows organized hives by roughly 2500 BCE, while beeswax residue in Anatolian pottery and cave art pushes human use of hive products back into the seventh to ninth millennium BCE. One reading holds these mark two independent origins rather than a single one.
Facts
Central QuestionApiculture, or beekeeping, is the maintenance of bee colonies, commonly in artificial beehives. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Sources
Open Questions (1 open question)
When and where did deliberate beekeeping begin?
Sources disagree on both the date and the place. Beeswax residue in Neolithic pottery pushes organized use of hive products into Anatolia and North Africa by the seventh to ninth millennium BCE, while the earliest unambiguous depictions of managed, tended hives come only from Egyptian tomb art around 2500 BCE. Some researchers argue for two independent centers of invention, in Egypt and Anatolia, rather than a single origin, since no continuous evidence links the two.
What would resolve this Additional securely dated archaeological finds of hive structures or beeswax use bridging the gap between the early Neolithic residue evidence and the first unambiguous Egyptian hive depictions, ideally with clear stratigraphic dating linking the two regions or ruling one out as independent.
ArchaeologyBeekeeping (Wikipedia)
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