Compendium

The western honey bee, Apis mellifera, is the commonest of the honey bee species; its species name is Latin for honey-bearing. It probably arose in Africa or Asia and spread unaided through Africa, the Middle East and Europe, and people later carried it to the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and eastern Asia, so that it now lives on every continent except Antarctica. Rock art in Spain and France shows honey being taken from wild nests thousands of years ago, and Egyptian tomb paintings record beekeeping before 2600 BC. Foragers bring nectar back to the hive, where workers break its sugars down, fan off most of the water and seal the finished honey into comb built from wax that they secrete from glands on the abdomen. People have long taken both from the hive: honey as food, medicine and offering, wax for candles, seals and much else. In ancient Greek religion honey, as nectar and ambrosia, was the food of Zeus and the Olympian gods; Egyptians kept bees at temples to supply offerings and buried their dead with honey, and in Hindu temples honey is poured over images of the deities. In Hoodoo, a honey or sweetening jar is made to sweeten a person or a situation towards the maker.