HONEY BEES in the Vinyard

Carol Wright on the importance of bees and the health-giving qualities of honey

- Carol Wright

Pliny described honey as ‘Sweet of the heaven’, perhaps writing this on the reusable writing pads the Romans made from beeswax. Human relations with bees and honey go back at least 15,000 years, as depicted in South African rock art. Ancient Egyptian tombs contained beeswax figurines and sealed jars of honey, still edible after thousands of years. Bees and honey-hunting feature in the 5000-year-old Indian Rig Veda.

In addition to producing honey to sweeten the world, bees are vital to our food supply as they pollinate two-thirds of the world’s crops and flowers. A single bee will visit 7,000 flowers in a single day. Plus, bees can protect us in many ways. The phrase ‘to make a bee line’ comes from Phoenician sailors releasing bees to lead their ship safely to landfall. Romans used bees in tunnels to fight off enemies; the Macedonians used pottery hives of wild bees as missiles, catapulting them into enemy armies or ships.

Bees still play a part in today’s high-tech warfare; the Viet Cong trained them as mine detectors and UK researchers have used bees, which are cheaper and quicker than dogs, to trace explosives, drugs, radioactive metals and pesticides. In Germany bees have been used to detect pollution levels.