Near the Baltic Sea imprints have been found of a bee in rock strata over 50 million years old.
This insect was the predecessor of the present-day honeybee.
It is called the “Apis mellifera”, which means: “honey-bearing bee”.
In antiquity the relationship between bees and honey was not well understood. People thought that nectar fell from the sky and was the food of the gods. The fact that bees collect nectar from flowers and turn it into honey was only discovered after the Middle Ages.
At that time bees were considered “mysterious” and therefore held sacred. Popular belief held that they had a relationship with the gods and were able to predict the future. Or that they took the souls of the deceased to those gods. They could not explain how bees reproduced either. Aristotle failed to find the normal “male/female” pattern and wrote an entire treatise on the matter. Partially because these mysterious bees were able to reproduce amazingly fast in spring without any males. In antiquity bees were among the top ten remarkable animals.
Bees continued to fascinate church scholars in the Middle Ages.
The worker bee, who never had sexual intercourse, produced honey and wax. The unstained virgin wax was immediately selected to lighten the altars in churches in the form of an Easter candle.
The entire bee community, with its strict hierarchy and virgin workers, furthermore served as an example for the numerous religious communities.
Today, bees have become pets, members of the family.
Until recently it used to be a custom in many countries to inform the bees of the death of a family member.
This means they are still held in high regard socially. But now because of entirely different reasons: among other things, bees take care of the pollination of our fruit trees. Their intervention is especially of crucial importance for apples and pears; there would hardly be any fruit without bees.