We could all do with some of the above in our lives, as another difficult year comes to an end, and whether you’re a honey-lover or not, it’s sometimes surprising to realise how intertwined human society is with bees and honey. The Egyptians in 3000BC adopted the bee as a sign of mankind’s ingenuity, a symbol of power, industry and production, and Cleopatra is said to have used honey as part of her beauty routine. Bees are reputed to have settled on the lips of Plato, indicating his future brilliance with words, and similarly, a swarm of bees is said to have gathered on baby Ambrose’s face, leaving behind a drop of honey. Ambrose became a bishop in fourth-century Milan who encouraged monks to use the bees’ chaste hard-working life as a model for their own.
Bees and honey have been part of music, poetry (many of us can recite the first verse of ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ by Edward Lear!), architecture, art, philosophy, politics and religion for thousands of years, so it’s no wonder these days we have such an affinity with them. We used honey long before sugar, in ceremonies and celebrations, for healing and for mead. The idea of honey now has the sweetest of associations, its flavours evoking thoughts of summer days and the sound of bees buzzing between flowers in the sunshine. AA Milne was on to something when he created the best known honey-lover in fiction, Winnie-the-Pooh. Thankfully, nowadays, we have safer, more efficient ways of harvesting honey; I don’t fancy just sticking my paw into a hive and scooping out what I can!
