We know that honey already existed before mankind made history. This means that the concept of “honey” was already there when language first developed. In most languages the present-day word for honey is derived from “medhu-” or “melit-. In the Germanic languages, including English and Dutch, the term is derived from the basic word "hunaga", which means golden or yellow. In Dutch, both “honig” and “honing” are considered correct.
Even before primitive humans started stealing honey from bees, other animals were already interested in their supply. The best known example are bears. However, monkeys also poked a stick into the hive until honey stuck to it.
Honey thieves
Rock drawings in Zimbabwe dating from 10,000 BC show primitive bee hunters who already used smoke to calm down bees while stealing their honey.
Even today there are tribes in Nepal who risk their lives for a piece of honeycomb. Dangling on a rope 300 metres above a raging river with thousands of angry bees flying around their heads, these honey hunters cut wild honeycombs with a long stick, which then fall into a basket just below.
The first drawings of people keeping bees because of the honey date from 2400 BC. They were found in Egyptian graves. At that time people used some kind of movable hive which could be placed near the house.
Beekeepers
In those times people believed that nectar fell from the sky like manna and that honey was the food of the gods. These people mainly used it as an offering at important moments in life: birth, marriage and death. It is well known that the old Egyptian king Ramesses (1198 – 1167 BC) offered quantities of up to 15 tons at a time.
In addition, honey was often used by the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans in the kitchen, as medicine or as beauty product. At that time there were also all kinds of beverages, such as mead, which were made from honey. There were books of recipes full of delicacies made with honey. Famous examples are goat or sheep cheeses mixed with honey. Or a kind of cake-like bread enriched with honey by the Romans, that was called “honey cake”. Already at that time!
In the middle ages honey was the most popular sweetener. Beet sugar was not yet available and cane sugar was rare and expensive. Partially thanks to the great demand for wax for the production of candles, more bees were kept and the number of hives increased. Even to such an extent that people could pay their taxes with wax and honey.
During the colonisation bees were shipped to America and Australia, currently major honey producing countries. The trade in honey nowadays takes place at the international level, whereby countries in the South mainly sell to countries in the North. The versatility of this remarkable natural product has remained intact after all those centuries.