Beekeeping and honey-hunting traditions from around the world, past and present, including native stingless bee keeping, honey hunting, folklore, and cultural practices distinct from mainstream Western Langstroth-hive beekeeping.
Elephants, it turns out, are genuinely afraid of bees. That real, documented behavioral fact – elephants reliably avoid areas with active beehives and flee from the sound of disturbed bees,…
Japan maintains two genuinely distinct honeybee traditions side by side: large-scale commercial beekeeping using Apis mellifera, introduced from the West during the Meiji era, and a smaller-scale, culturally beloved traditional…
Turkey occupies a genuinely unusual position in the world of beekeeping: it is consistently ranked among the countries with the largest number of managed honeybee colonies anywhere on earth, it…
Ounce for ounce, Sidr honey is consistently ranked among the most expensive honey varieties in the world, and its price reflects genuine, longstanding scarcity rather than pure marketing: it comes…
In the forested mountains of southern India’s Western Ghats – a UNESCO-recognized biodiversity hotspot running along India’s southwestern coast – indigenous forest communities including the Kadar and Irula peoples have…
High on a rock wall near Bicorp, in the Valencia region of eastern Spain, a Mesolithic artist painted a scene that still resonates with anyone who has ever climbed toward…
Walk through a traditional Slovenian apiary and you won’t just see rows of identical hive boxes – you’ll see a gallery. On the front of each compartment in a traditional…
Few insects have carried as much symbolic weight across as many unrelated cultures as the honeybee. From ancient Greek priestesses who took their very name from bees, to a Pope…
In rural England, Germany, Wales, and later New England, families kept a custom that sounds almost like superstition today but was, for centuries, treated as a genuine household obligation: when…
China has one of the longest continuously documented beekeeping histories in the world, and today it is also the world’s largest honey producer by volume – a genuinely striking combination…
In the tropical and subtropical woodlands of northern Australia, Aboriginal Australians have gathered “sugarbag” – the honey and nest contents of native stingless bees – for an extraordinarily long span…
Deep in the pine and linden forests of the southern Ural mountains, in Russia’s Bashkortostan region, beekeepers still climb living trees using a leather climbing belt and spiked hand tools…
Ethiopia is Africa’s largest honey producer, and by a wide margin – a fact that surprises many people unfamiliar with just how deep and continuous the country’s beekeeping tradition actually…
Twice a year, in the foothills of central Nepal, men from Gurung communities climb hand-woven bamboo and rope ladders hundreds of feet up sheer cliff faces to harvest honey from…
Long before a Spanish ship ever reached the Yucatan coast, the Maya were already sophisticated beekeepers – just not of the honeybee most of us picture. Their bee was Melipona…