Since time began, honey and bees have been part of the great myths of humanity and have always been extraordinarily potent symbols.
The birth of bees
According to the ancient Greeks, all of Nature's phenomena had divine origins. Bees were a source of great fascination, and their mysterious origins inspired the legend of Aristæus.
Aristæus, the son of the god Apollo, had a beehive. But he wanted to seduce Eurydice, Orpheus' wife, who died from a snake bite because she had refused Aristæus' advances. In revenge, Orpheus destroyed Aristæus' hive. To appease the wrath of the gods, Aristæus sacrified four bulls and four heifers. From their entrails, new swarms suddenly appeared, so Aristæus was able to rebuild his hive and teach beekeeping to men.
This legend is told by Virgil, the great Latin poet, in his famous ''Georgics''. Like the ancient Greeks, he believed that bees were born spontaneously from animal corpses.
In the texts of ancient Egypt, bees were born from the tears of Râ, the Sun God. When the tears fell onto the soil, they were transformed into bees that built honeycombs and produced honey.
Bee symbolism
As the workers of the hive, bees are symbol of an industrious and prosperous community governed by the queen bee. They have therefore symbolized all that is royal and imperial, in France and in ancient Egypt (associated with Râ, the Sun God).
Three hundred gold bees were discovered in the tomb of Childeric I (on the year 481), which showed that the hive was the model of an absolute menarchy.
Napoleon I used bees as a motif on all his carpets, as well as on his coronation robes.
As organizers of the universe between earth and sky, bees symbolize all vital principles, and embody the soul. In the Greek religion, the bee was sometimes identified with Demeter, the goddess of the earth and crops, who represented the soul sent to hell. The bee also symbolizes the soul that flies away from the body in the Siberian, Central Asian, and South American Indian traditions.
Bees also symbolize eloquence, speech and intelligence. In Hebrew, the word for bee, Dbure, has its origins in the word Dbr, speech. They settled on the mouth of the child, Plato, "announcing the sweetness of his enchanting soul" (Pliny) and also settled also on the lips of Saint Ambrose, the patron-saint of beekeepers. According to Virgil, they have a grain of divine intelligence and the famous Pythia, the priestess of Apollo, was called "the bee of Delphi". In some texts from India, the bee represents the spirit becoming intoxicated with the pollen of knowledge.
Because of its honey and its sting, the bee is considered to be an emblem of Christ - it represents his mildness and mercy on one side and his justice on the other.
Honey
Honey is a symbol of richness and sweetness in all traditions.
In the sacred texts of East and West, milk and honey flow like a stream through the promised land.
The Celtic traditions celebrate mead as an immortal beverage.
In Greek mythology, in which honey is the drink of the gods of Olympus, it is the symbol of knowledge, learning and wisdom.
Honey a food reserved for the elect, the initiated, and to exceptional people in this world and the next. Greek tradition claims that Pythagoras ate nothing but honey throughout his entire life.
All the great prophets refer to honey in the Scriptures. Speech is honey, it represents softness, justice, virtue and divine goodness. The Koran uses holy terms to talk of bees and honey :"Honey is the first blessing that God gave the earth". Virgil calls honey the celestial gift of the dew, dew itself being a symbol of initiation. Honey even designates supreme bliss and the state of Nirvana. Symbol of all sweetness, the honey of knowledge creates the happiness of mankind.
The perfection of honey makes it a major element in many religions rituals.
For the Egyptians, honey was the tears of the god Râ and was a part of all the religious offerings in pharaonic Egypt.
In Islam, according to the Prophet, it restores sight, preserves health and resuscitates the dead.
For the American Indians, it plays a great part in ceremonies and the rites of initiation and purification.
A source of inspiration, honey gave Pindar the gift of poetry and Pythagoras the gift of science.
In modern psychoanalytical thinking, honey symbolizes the "higher self", the ultimate consequence of work on one's inner self. As the result of the transmutation of ephemeral pollen into a delicious food of immortality, honey symbolizes the transformation by initiation, the conversion of the soul, and the complete integration of the person.
It is not just humans that get stuck in their ways.
Scientists have discovered that old bees have trouble finding their way to new hives as their learning behavior becomes increasingly inflexible.
Researchers from Arizona State University and the Norwegian University of Life Sciences examined how ageing impacts the ability of honey bees to find their way home. Older bees find it hard to adjust to new hive locations, a new study has found.
Bees are typically impressive navigators, able to wend their way home through complex landscapes after visits to flowers far removed from their nests. But the study reveals that aging impairs the bees' ability to extinguish the memory of an unsuitable nest site even after the colony has settled in a new home.
A bee is very well-trained as a forager after three to four days of flight time.
Mature bees have piloted their way to and from the hive for five to 11 days and old bees have had more than two weeks of flight time.
To test how old bees adapt to a changed home location, researchers trained bees to a new nest box while their former nest was closed off.
Groups composed of mature and old bees were given several days in which to learn the new home location and to extinguish the bees' memory of their unusable former nest box. The scientists then disassembled the bees' new home and forced groups of mixed-age bees to choose between three alternative nest locations, including the former nest box. Old bees began flying toward the former nest site, despite the experience that should have told them that it was unusable.
"Although many old bees fail in learning tasks, we also discovered that a few still perform with excellence," explains Daniel M|nch, lead author of the study and a senior life sciences researcher in Norway.
The scientists believe that their findings with bees offer a new means to model and understand the variability found in brain function between individuals; where some individuals' memories remain intact, while others' learning behavior becomes inflexible with age.
Bees are cold blooded, so their body temperature reflects the ambient temperature. If they become too cold they lose the ability to move their muscles, quit breathing and die - too cold is below 50ºF/10ºC. So how do cold blooded insects stay warm?
First, bees are furry, and fur keeps air from just rushing by. It provides a dead air space that insulates them. When two bees get close together, they have more dead air space. If 15 or 50 or 5000 bees give a group hug they can all stay a bit warmer for even longer, using that fuzz as an insulator to keep warm air in.
But that only works until there's no more warm air to hold. What then?
Bees exercise to stay warm - they huddle together in a ball.
Remember that to bees, the vertical surfaces of the frames inside a hive act as the floor - that's where they stand and sit and live. The floor is full of holes, and in those holes, what beekeepers call cells, are where the bees store their honey and pollen, and raise their young.
So when it gets cold, bees huddle together in the center of the hive, standing shoulder to shoulder, side to side as close together as they can get between the frames. Bees will be on the surface of one frame, and their backs will be just touching the backs of the bees standing on the surface of the frame next door. Then, more bees will come along and squeeze between these two bees so they are all tucked in safe and snug.
As cozy as this is, it's still not enough to keep a bunch of bees warm. Some bees will go into empty cells, and they will be very close to bees in the next cell over and the empty cells on the other side of the frame. So the bees keep any brood in the hive warm at about 93ºF/34ºC and each other warm. How?
The bees on the inside of that cluster vibrate their wing muscles - the biggest muscles in their bodies. And they warm up. That warmth is moved up, down and sideways throughout the bunch of bees - we call it a cluster - and keeps all the bees warm.
Some of the bees in the cluster are standing right on top of honey. But most aren't. When a bee far from honey is hungry she begs the bee next to her for food, who then passes that message along. The bee on the honey eventually gets the message, sucks some up and passes it to the next bee to the next bee - until everybody has had lunch.
Meanwhile, the bees on the outside of the cluster squeeze close together to keep that heat in. The colder it gets, the closer they get. Eventually they get tired, hungry and cold. So they get to sit out an inning or so, and head toward the middle of the cluster for some lunch and a warm place to take a nap. They stay there until they are needed again. This is a continuous cycle, all winter long.
As winter progresses, there is usually very few baby bees so the adults can move from one spot with honey to another without letting the young get cold. If the beekeeper has done the job right there's more than enough food, and more than enough room, and the bees keep this up all winter, until it's spring and they can fly again.
Veiled in this fragile filigree of wax is the essence of sunshine, golden and limpid, tasting of grassy meadows, mountain wildflowers, lavishly blooming orange trees, or scrubby desert weeds.
Honey, even more than wine, is a reflection of place. If the process of grape to glass is alchemy, then the trail from blossom to bottle is one of reflection. The nectar collected by the bee is the spirit and sap of the plant, its sweetest juice. Honey is the flower transmuted, its scent and beauty transformed into aroma and taste.
The Egyptians used honey as an antiseptic, a way of preventing body decay, and also to aid upset stomachs. During World War I soldiers were treated with a mixture of honey and cod-liver oil on open sores. Today, honey is just as remarkable for cuts, scrapes and to keep a youthful appearance.
Heal Infections
Honey can heal infections, and can be used as an anti-inflammatory as well. Scientists found that the protein in honey has antibacterial properties.
Spread honey over scars to help the healing process because of its ability to fight microorganisms.
Honey Mask
Try using a raw honey mask to help moisturize and purify your skin. Gently massage into skin and rinse.
Exfoliate
Add baking soda, honey and water to exfoliate you skin. Take a teaspoon or more of honey; add a pinch of baking soda and water.
Plump Up Your Skin
Try using honey to tightening and plump your skin. Use a mixture of egg whites, honey and moisturizer.
Bees have rich mythological and symbolic history. In dreams, they can symbolize sacrifice, industry and immortality.
Bees have been used as to represent everything from productivity to the Goddess herself.
Their link to immortality and resurrection made them favorites of French royalty with Napoleon having his robes adorned with bees and Merovingian monarchs being buried with golden effigies of them.
A bee sting dream is an expression of the quality of an emotional sting and symbolizes hurt feelings. The emotional injury might be the result of a friend's betrayal or lover's scorn and is likely to burrow deep inside the soul much like a bee's stinger gets under one's skin.
Symbol of Sacrifice
When it senses a danger to the colony exists, the bee literally lays its life down to protect the hive-as its sting means its death. Bee dreams can therefore symbolize a waking life sacrifice made for the good of others or for a precious cause or endeavor.
Industry and Productivity
Whether buzzing about collecting flower pollen, maintaining a hive, or nurturing and protecting the queen, bees are almost always actively working. Their tireless labor is one trait that leads to the bee as a symbol of industry. In dreams they can therefore symbolize an active mind or a period of productivity.
Sometimes, however, this activity is not described as productive, but is demeaned as being "busy" - buzzing for buzzing's sake. In dreams, this can symbolize an unquiet mind, a need for constant chatter, or nervous energy.
Communication
Some theorize that a bee "dance" is their primary mode of communication, while others favor theories involving odor and pheromones. No matter which mode they use, their buzz, the way in which an entire hive acts in harmony, their ability to silently communicate food sources to other colony members are all reasons for the bee's status as a communication symbol.
Folklore reinforces this status. "Tell it to the bees" meant relating one's needs and desires to them so that they could, in turn, take those messages on to the Goddess. Telling it to the bees was also a directive to literally alert bees to deaths, lest the they themselves die.
As communication symbols these insects can indicate a mysterious link exists between the dreamer and a group or lover. That link is reciprocal; both parties feel an inexplicable connection with one another. The relationship is not only healthy, but it is also one with the potential to touch and inspire others.
Honey, Immortality and Resurrection
Honey has long been link to resurrection and immortality. In Finnish mythology, Lemminkäinen's mother brought her son back to life by feeding him honey. Other cultures viewed honey as the drink of the immortals with the Celts believing that inhabitants of the Otherworld were freely fed honey-mead.
Honey can symbolize the dreamer's own alchemical ability to take raw materials and work with them until their finished form bears little resemblance to the original. It means a similar alchemical transformation is occuring within the psyche.
Honey can indicate a sweet time in life with the waking world feeling like it is the "land of milk and honey."
Honeybees can symbolize the return of vitality or feeling that life has been resurrected via new relationships, spiritual connections, or psychological transformation.
Bees, it seems, aren’t too picky about the color of their hives. As long as there is no paint on the inside, the bees should be fine. It’s more important to please the beekeeper. Here are some considerations.
Most hives used to be white. White is especially good in the warmer climates where a light color will reflect a lot of light and a lot of heat.
In the cooler climates it’s nice to have a color that will absorb heat, such as green or brown.
If your hives are not in the sun, the outside color won’t have much of an effect on the inside temperature.
Some beekeepers like to paint different size boxes with different colors, so they can tell them apart. If you have multiple sizes that are hard to tell apart — like mediums and shallows — a little help is a nice thing.
Suburban beekeepers often like to paint their hives to match their house so it will blend in and be less conspicuous.
Some beekeepers like green because it disappears in the foliage and is less likely to be spotted by vandals.
While some folks choose the same brand and color every time to make touch-up a breeze, other folks buy paint that has been returned to the store, colors that have been phased out, or surplus from various projects because of the price.
When hives are lined up in long rows, bees tend to drift to the ones at the end. Apparently, if a bee becomes confused and the hives are close enough that the pheromones are getting all mixed up, she will tend to favor the ends. That’s the theory. To reduce drift, some people decorate the front of the hives with distinctive shapes and colors. Some lids are painted with big, bold letters that face up—sort of like landing pads for helicopters.
Some hives are painted with murals, fraternity insignia, or just wild free-form designs.
Paint is full of vile things, including fungicides, so always remember to keep the paint on the outside of the hive and let it dry completely before you install the bees. Painted woodenware lasts a whole lot longer than unpainted, so it is well worth coating anything that will be exposed to the weather.
For thousands of years, thinkers have marvelled at the feat of engineering that is the honeycomb.
Each waxy cell is a perfect hexagon, its six wafer-thin sides providing not only strength to the honeycomb structure but also the smartest way to store honey.
"By virtue of a certain geometrical forethought bees know that the hexagon is greater than the square and the triangle and will hold more honey for the same expenditure of material in constructing each."
Pappus of Alexandria, 4th-century Greek geometer
For Charles Darwin, the honeycomb was "absolutely perfect in economizing labor and wax."
How do bees do it?
The answer, according to a new study, is that the cells do not start out as hexagons but as circles. They gradually form into hexagons by a subtle flow of the wax, which is turned semi-molten by the heat from a special class of worker bee.
The solution is proposed by a trio of scientists in Britain and China, led by Bhushan Karihaloo of Cardiff University. They looked at what happens after waxy flakes are pulled from the bodies of foraging bees by specialist bees tasked with building the honeycomb.
Working furiously, these bees operate side by side in adjacent and opposite circular tubes, which they build around themselves. They knead the flakes and tamp them into place near the triple junctions of their tiny six-mm (quarter-inch) cylinders. Heat provided by the workers and the physical properties of the wax then do what's necessary.
At a temperature of around 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit), the wax starts to flow slowly as an elastic, viscous liquid.
At the junction, surface tension causes the wax to stretch like toffee. It gradually pops upwards, forming a tiny point that becomes an "angle" of the hexagon.
During the process, the cell's walls are continually stretched. Ultimately, the walls of adjoining cells fuse and become straightened, forming a perfect hexagon.
Even if the riddle may have been solved through a combination of physics and maths, the scientists are keen to pay tribute to the insects themselves. "We cannot... ignore, nor can we not marvel at the role played by the bees in this process by heating, kneading, and thinning the wax exactly where needed," says the study, published in Britain's Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
The oldest hotel in Cardiff has welcomed some high flying guests - tens of thousands of honey bees in a rooftop hive.
It is hoped the beehive at the six storey Royal Hotel in the city centre will eventually produce honey for its guests.
The new residents have even been given their own room number - 6B.
It follows an action plan unveiled by Welsh ministers last month to halt the decline of honey bee populations.
The hotel wants to encourage other building owners to follow its example. Royal Hotel manager Joe Swingler said: "We are committed to playing our part in worldwide efforts to save bees whose pollination of plants and food crops is vital to our planet."
Poor weather
"We want to encourage building owners in Cardiff to follow us and install their own rooftop beehives. We would love to hear from them and share our experiences."
"It will be wonderful to produce our own prized Royal Hotel honey, but our main aim is to spread the word and encourage others to participate in conservation."
Joe Swingler, Royal Hotel manager
Beekeeper Peter Shaw from Cardiff honey farm Nature's Little Helpers has been working on the project for two years.
He said setting up the hive had to be delayed until late July due to the poor weather at the start of the summer.
"We transported the bees to the roof of the hotel in the hive, which at this stage housed 8,000 bees," said Mr Shaw.
"This number will rise to 40,000 to 50,000 by the end of the summer."
Encouraging guests
"We left them to settle for a week, to become oriented with their new location, and established a water supply for them on the roof."
The Welsh government announced in July it was drawing up an action plan to protect endangered insect pollinators such as honey and bumble bees.
Mr Shaw added: "We are very excited to be involved in this project as city centres can certainly have an important role in fostering bee colonies and pollination across a wide area."
The bees will fly up to a three mile radius around the hotel, making millions of journeys between the hives and plants, collecting pollen from Bute Park, private gardens and surrounding green areas.
The 60-bedroom hotel's engineering manager Steve Harris and reservations manager Scott Frankton have also been trained to work as beekeepers.
It is believed the hive could produce as much as 35lbs (16kg) of honey in a good summer.
Now the hotel will be educating its guests about its bee campaign and encouraging them to take the ideas back to their own towns and cities.
100 ml honey
100 g butter
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla
300 ml flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
100 g ground walnuts
100 g chocolate chips
Cream honey and butter together.
Add egg and vanilla.
In small bowl, mix flour, soda, powder and salt together.
Add flour mix.
Add nuts and chocolate chips.
Drop onto cookie sheet and bake at 175°C for 11-12 minutes.
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