Aristotle's description of honeybees
Aristotle offers us the earliest and most detailed description of ancient knowledge about beekeeping and honeybees. In this essay we explore some of his ideas and claims.
This year on Honeybee Histories we’ve been exploring the history of honeybees from the very beginning to its present day. That story begins with their initial evolution out of predatory wasps and early bees around 40 million years ago. As far as human records go, we know that bees nests were hunted for their honey from at least the Neolithic period, and certainly by the time the civilisations of ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia emerged. By the Fifth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt, we have our first evidence of managed beekeeping practices and ample proof that honey and wax were highly valued commodities.
The next step in our understanding of our history with honeybees must therefore move to the more intellectual side of things. What is the early history of studying and writing about honeybees? What was our state of knowledge - including its correct discoveries and its misunderstandings? Who made those studies and what do they tell us about beekeeping practices at those times?
This week’s Honeybee Histories takes a look at the intellectual writings of the ancient Greeks, beginning with the famous philosopher, Aristotle. While we know that others wrote about honeybees before Aristotle, it is his ideas about them that survived the ravages of time. It is also one of the most detailed of the early writings about honeybees, including their biology, management, and behaviour.
This essay will be dedicated to Aristotle’s understanding, with the development and continuation of ideas by the ancient Greeks and, a bit later, the Romans, left for future essays. This is an important moment in the development of human understanding and connection to honeybees as the ideas that Aristotle, Pliny the Elder, and others set down, would influence writers and beekeepers for generations and arguably still have an influence today!