Reviewed by Elena P. · Last Updated September 23, 2026 · How we review
Ancient beekeepers kept bees in horizontal hives of clay, straw, bark, cork or hollow logs, calmed them with smoke, cut honeycomb from the back of the hive while leaving the brood nest at the front, captured swarms to increase their stock, and even passed laws on hive spacing and bee theft. The oldest direct evidence of managed hives, from Egypt and the Near East, is around 3,000 to 4,500 years old, and people were using beeswax thousands of years before that.
This article focuses on the practices themselves: what ancient beekeepers actually did, how we know, and which of their methods survive in a modern apiary. For the full chronological story from prehistory to the Langstroth hive, see our overview of beekeeping history through time.
Key Takeaways
- Beeswax residues in pottery show people were exploiting honeybees at least 8,500 years ago, across the Near East, Europe and North Africa.
- An Egyptian relief from the sun temple of King Nyuserre (about 2400 BCE) is the earliest known depiction of organised beekeeping and honey processing.
- At Tel Rehov in the Jordan Valley, archaeologists found an apiary of straw-and-clay cylinder hives from the 10th to 9th centuries BCE, the oldest excavated beehives yet found.
- The Roman writer Varro ranked bark hives best and earthenware worst, because clay hives are too cold in winter and too hot in summer.
- Ancient beekeepers harvested by removing comb, not by extracting it; the centrifugal extractor dates only from 1865.
- Smoke, swarm capture, careful apiary siting and leaving honey for the bees are ancient practices that modern beekeepers still use.
Table of Contents
- How We Know: The Evidence for Ancient Beekeeping
- Ancient Hives: Materials and Designs
- Harvesting Honey and Wax
- Smoke, Swarms and Colony Increase
- Apiary Siting, Spacing and the Law
- Beyond the Honeybee: Stingless Bees in the Americas
- What Ancient Beekeepers Got Wrong
- Ancient Practices in the Modern Apiary
- Frequently Asked Questions
How We Know: The Evidence for Ancient Beekeeping
It helps to separate two activities. Honey hunting means raiding wild nests, and it is far older than farming; the famous rock painting at the Cuevas de la Araña near Bicorp, Valencia, which shows a figure climbing to a wild nest, is commonly dated to around 8,000 years ago. Beekeeping means housing and managing colonies in containers people provide. Honey hunting still survives in places, as our article on the Gurung honey hunters of Nepal describes.
The evidence for ancient beekeeping comes from five kinds of source:
| Type of evidence | Key example | Approximate date | What it shows |
|---|---|---|---|
| Chemical residues | Beeswax in Neolithic pottery (Roffet-Salque et al., Nature, 2015) | From about 7000 BCE | Widespread use of bee products by early farmers |
| Art | Relief from Nyuserre’s sun temple, Abu Gurob, Egypt | About 2400 BCE | Stacked hives, honey collection and sealing honey in jars |
| Law codes | Hittite laws; Solon’s laws in Athens | About 1500 BCE; 6th century BCE | Hives were valuable property worth regulating |
| Excavated hives | Tel Rehov apiary, Jordan Valley | 10th to 9th century BCE | An organised, large-scale apiary inside a town |
| Written manuals | Aristotle; Varro; Virgil; Columella | 4th century BCE to 1st century CE | Detailed instructions on hives, siting and harvest |
The residue study, led by researchers at the University of Bristol, analysed more than 6,000 pottery sherds from over 150 sites and found beeswax in vessels as old as the 7th millennium BCE; the University of Bristol’s summary explains the method. That tells us people used bee products very early, though not whether they kept bees in hives.
Ancient Hives: Materials and Designs
Almost every ancient hive was a single, fixed-comb cavity: bees built comb wherever they liked, and there were no removable frames. What varied was the material, chosen from whatever was cheap and local.
- Horizontal clay or mud cylinders. Used in Egypt and the Near East, these were stacked in rows or walls. At Tel Rehov, the hives were cylinders of straw and unbaked clay roughly 80 cm long and 40 cm across, arranged in orderly rows; about 30 survived intact, alongside remains of many more. Remains of bees in the hives suggested a type similar to the Anatolian honeybee, apparently brought in from what is now Turkey.
- Bark and cork. Roman writers preferred these for insulation, and cork-bark hives are still made in Portugal and Spain, as our article on Portugal’s cortiço hives describes.
- Hollow logs. Sections of hollow trunk, laid horizontally or stood upright, were used across Europe, Africa and Asia; see our guide to log hive beekeeping for how they work today.
- Woven wicker and fennel stalks. Light, cheap containers, often plastered with mud or dung to seal and insulate them.
- Pottery. Fired clay hives were used in Greece, where some had separate extension rings that could be added as the colony grew.
The Roman agricultural writer Marcus Terentius Varro, writing in 36 BCE, left one of the clearest comparisons of hive materials:
“The best hives are those made of bark, and the worst those made of earthenware, because the latter are most severely affected by cold in winter and by heat in summer.”
That is an observation any beekeeper who has wintered colonies on the Northern Plains will recognise: insulation and moisture control mattered then just as they do now.
Harvesting Honey and Wax
Without frames or extractors, ancient beekeepers harvested by cutting out comb. Horizontal hives made this practical: bees tend to keep their brood nest near the entrance and store honey further back, so a beekeeper could open the rear end, cut out the honey-filled comb and leave the brood at the front largely intact. The honey was then drained or pressed from the comb, and the wax melted down for use.
Egyptian art shows the whole chain. The Nyuserre relief, now fragmentary, depicts workers taking comb from stacked hives and pouring and sealing honey in jars, and later tomb paintings such as those in the tomb of the vizier Rekhmire at Thebes (about 1450 BCE) show similar scenes. Our article on beekeeping in ancient Egypt covers these images in detail.
Ancient writers also understood that bees need to keep some honey. Varro reports that some authorities advised taking nine-tenths and leaving one-tenth, warning that “if you take all, the bees will quit the hive,” while others left more. Modern northern beekeepers leave far more than a tenth, but the principle is the same.
Wax was as valuable as honey. It was used for lamps and candles, for writing tablets, for waterproofing, for sealing and in lost-wax metal casting, which is one reason bees were worth regulating.
Smoke, Swarms and Colony Increase
Smoke is the oldest beekeeping tool still in daily use. Ancient beekeepers used smouldering dung, straw or other fuel held in pots or blown from a burning bundle to calm bees during harvest. Varro advises examining hives about three times a month in spring and summer, “smoking them lightly.” Our history of the bee smoker traces how that practice became the bellows smoker.
Ancient beekeepers increased their stock mainly by catching swarms, since they had no way to rear queens or make controlled splits. Roman manuals describe settling swarms into prepared hives rubbed with fragrant herbs, a practice that survives in modern swarm lures. Virgil advised rubbing the hive with crushed balm and clashing cymbals to make a swarm settle, a noise-making custom later known as “tanging” in Britain.
Apiary Siting, Spacing and the Law
Roman writers gave detailed advice on siting: near clean water, sheltered from strong wind, facing the winter sun and surrounded by flowering plants. Virgil’s Georgics Book IV opens with the same concerns. Our article on what Virgil’s Georgics got right compares that advice with modern practice.
Law followed value. The Hittite laws of Anatolia set penalties for stealing swarms and hives, which we examine in what the Hittite laws reveal about bee theft. In Athens, according to Plutarch, the lawgiver Solon required anyone setting up new hives to place them at least 300 feet from hives already established by a neighbour, an early form of the forage and spacing rules some jurisdictions still apply.
Beyond the Honeybee: Stingless Bees in the Americas
Western honeybees (Apis mellifera) were not present in the Americas until Europeans brought them in the 1600s, so there was no ancient honeybee keeping here on the Northern Plains or anywhere else in the hemisphere. See how honeybees came to America for that story.
In Mesoamerica, however, the Maya kept native stingless bees, especially Melipona beecheii, in hollow log hives sealed at each end with stone or clay plugs. Honey was harvested by opening an end and removing the storage pots the bees build from wax and resin. The tradition, called meliponiculture, continues today; see our guide to Maya stingless beekeeping. In Asia, a parallel tradition developed around the Asian honeybee, Apis cerana, covered in our article on beekeeping in ancient China.
What Ancient Beekeepers Got Wrong
Ancient observers were often sharp, but their biology had gaps that shaped their practice:
- The “king” bee. Greek and Roman writers called the colony’s leader a king. The queen’s sex was not firmly established until the 17th century.
- Bugonia. Virgil and others described bees being generated from the carcass of a slaughtered ox. This mistaken belief persisted for centuries.
- Mating. No one in antiquity knew queens mate in flight with drones; that was not demonstrated until the 18th century by François Huber.
Aristotle’s observations in the History of Animals are a notable exception in places, as our article on Aristotle’s surprisingly accurate observations explains.
Ancient Practices in the Modern Apiary
| Ancient practice | Earliest clear evidence | Modern equivalent |
|---|---|---|
| Smoke to calm bees | Egyptian art; Varro | Bellows smoker |
| Brood at the front, honey at the back | Horizontal clay and log hives | Brood box below, honey supers above |
| Leaving honey for the bees | Varro’s one-tenth rule | Leaving winter stores |
| Catching swarms in scented hives | Roman manuals | Swarm traps and lures |
| Siting near water, out of the wind | Varro, Virgil, Columella | Standard apiary siting advice |
| Hive spacing rules | Solon’s law in Athens | Local zoning and setback rules |
| Penalties for hive theft | Hittite laws | Modern hive theft laws |
The biggest break came with the movable-frame hive in the 1850s, which let beekeepers inspect brood without destroying comb. Until then, every beekeeper, ancient or medieval, worked with fixed comb. Our article on skep beehives covers the most familiar of those later fixed-comb hives.
For bee imagery on jewelry, see the Malia Pendant.
Frequently Asked Questions
When did humans start keeping bees?
People used beeswax at least 8,500 years ago, based on residues in Neolithic pottery. The earliest clear evidence of managed hives comes from Egypt around 2400 BCE, and the oldest excavated hives, from Tel Rehov, date to the 10th to 9th centuries BCE.
What were ancient beehives made of?
Mostly local materials: unbaked clay mixed with straw, fired pottery, hollow logs, tree bark and cork, and woven wicker or fennel stalks, often plastered with mud or dung.
Did ancient Egyptians use smoke on bees?
Yes. Egyptian tomb paintings show beekeepers using smoke while removing comb, and Roman writers such as Varro also recommend smoking hives lightly.
How did ancient beekeepers get honey out of the comb?
They cut the honey-filled comb from the hive, then drained or pressed it. Centrifugal extraction was not invented until 1865.
Did Native Americans keep honeybees?
No. Honeybees are not native to the Americas and arrived with European colonists in the 1600s. The Maya and other Mesoamerican peoples did keep native stingless bees.
Which ancient beekeeping practices are still used today?
Smoking bees, catching swarms, siting hives near water and out of the wind, and leaving honey for the colony are all ancient practices that modern beekeepers still rely on.
The Bottom Line
Ancient beekeepers had no frames, no extractors and no idea that their “king” was a queen, yet their core methods were sound: insulated hives, smoke, swarm capture, sensible siting and leaving the bees enough to live on. Those principles have survived thousands of years of change, and they still sit underneath every modern hive inspection.
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