Verwandte Artikel zu Letters from the Hive: An Intimate History of Bees,...

Letters from the Hive: An Intimate History of Bees, Honey, and Humankind - Softcover

Buchmann, Stephen; Repplier, Banning

 
9780553382662: Letters from the Hive: An Intimate History of Bees, Honey, and Humankind
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0553382667 ISBN 13: 9780553382662
Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 2006

Inhaltsangabe

They work hard, are devoted to family, love sex, and know the importance of a good piece of real estate. Honey bees, and the daily workings of their close-knit colonies, are one of nature's great miracles. And they produce one of nature's greatest edible bounties: honey. More than just a palate pleaser, honey was once an offering to the gods, a preservative, and a medicine whose sought-after curative powers were detailed in ancient texts . . . and are being rediscovered by modern medical science.

In Letters from the Hive, Prof. Stephen Buchmann takes us into the hive--nursery, honey factory, queen's inner sanctum--and out to the world of backyard gardens, open fields, and deserts in full bloom, where the age-old sexual dance between flowers and bees makes life on earth as we know it possible. Hailed for their hard work, harmonious society, and, mistakenly, for their celibacy, bees have a link to our species that goes beyond biology. In Letters from the Hive, Buchmann explores the fascinating role of bees in human culture and mythology, following the "honey hunters" of native cultures in Malaysia, the Himalayas, and the Australian Outback as they risk life and limb to locate a treasure as valuable as any gold.

To contemplate a world without bees is to imagine a desolate place, culturally and biologically, and Buchmann shows how with each acre of land sacrificed to plow, parking lot, or shopping mall, we inch closer to what could become a chilling reality. He also offers honey-based recipes, cooking tips, and home remedies--further evidence of the gifts these creatures have bestowed on us.

Told with wit, wisdom, and affection, and rich with anecdote and science, Letters from the Hive is nature writing at its best. This is natural history to be treasured, a sweet tribute that buzzes with life.

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Stephen Buchmann is an amateur beekeeper, associate professor of entomology at the University of Arizona in Tucson, author of The Forgotten Pollinators, and founder of The Bee Works, an environmental company.

Banning Repplier is a writer who lives in New York City.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1


The Beginning of an Enduring Passion:
Prehistoric Honey Hunters


O bees, sweet bees! I said: that nearest field
Is shining white with fragrant immortelles.
Fly swiftly there and drain those honey wells.
--Helen Hunt Jackson,
"My Bees"


A few years ago, when I was still keeping honey bees in my Tucson backyard, I always found it particularly exciting to check my hives in late spring, after the blooms had begun and the honey had started to flow. What had my bees been up to? What would the honey crop taste like? If generous winter and early spring rains had tickled the sandy desert soils and brought them to life, there could have been an explosion of wildflowers. Even with normal precipitation, the old desert standbys--velvet mesquite, foothill, and littleleaf paloverde trees--would break out in riotous bloom, attracting hungry bees from far and wide. Tens of thousands of them would plunder the flowers and carry home the precious nectar, transforming it into golden honey--a sweet, fragrant crop that I was always eager to sample.

Whenever I cracked the lid of one of my hives, the bees would rush up toward the light to see what had disrupted the cozy tranquility and comforting darkness of their nest. Selecting a middle frame fat with honey, I would ease it up and out of the box while the bees, clinging to its surfaces, ran about chaotically, confused by this rude interruption of their smooth, efficient daytime routine. Only days before, worker bees would have sealed the crinkly, textured surface of the honeycomb with the virgin white beeswax they secrete as tiny scales and form into cell caps through the workings of their mandibles.

This was the moment I had been longing for throughout the long winter months--a perfect day in late April with the first honey crop of the year ready to taste, waiting for me beneath those brilliant white caps. Since I never wore clumsy bee gloves, I was able to thrust my right forefinger deep into the comb and drag it across the frame, rupturing more than a hundred cells and releasing the glistening honey, which would stream out in thick little rivulets with the bees in hot pursuit. Withdrawing my finger, I would savor my prize, for there is nothing in the world like the taste of warm, fresh honey straight from the comb.

I am not alone in my passion for honey-making bees and their honey. From prehistoric times to the present, we humans have felt a mysterious and enduring connection to these furry little creatures and the food they produce. We have endowed them with magical properties, attributed to them surprising healing and cleansing powers, and seen in them meaningful symbols representing some of our most profoundly held beliefs.

Our fascination with bees is deeply rooted in our collective consciousness. We see it in the cave paintings that our prehistoric ancestors left behind. We can read it in the rich, complex rituals and traditions that evolved to govern our relationship with these admirable insects. And we can still catch the reverberations of our instinctive connection to that part of the natural world every time a husband calls his wife "honey" or an excited child chases a buzzing bee through a bright summer afternoon. But its influence is much more far-reaching than you might imagine, extending not just to everyday moments of affection and play but to diverse cultures, religious beliefs, cuisines, and scientific study around the world. We can look for its roots in our history and, before that, our prehistory.

Thanks to petroglyphs, the spectacular painted records still visible on cave walls throughout Europe, Africa, Asia, and even Australia, we know our ancestors definitely had a sweet tooth, and we know that they indulged it by embarking on arduous and often dangerous honey hunts, armed with tools that enabled them to pillage bee nests with remarkable efficiency. We don't know why cave artists put so much effort into recording these often dramatic hunts. Perhaps the honey hunts signified something more profound than the simple harvesting of an ingredient to sweeten their days--something with deep religious or ceremonial meaning. Whatever the reason, vivid paintings chronicling those honey-hunting expeditions--beautifully stylized yet powerfully real--have been found on the ceilings and walls of hundreds of caves spanning the globe.

In her recent book The Rock Art of Honey Hunters, Dr. Eva Crane, the grande dame of honey bee researchers, has collected some of the most striking examples of the cave art chronicling these prehistoric hunts. As she has vividly documented, there are a number of common elements that recur throughout this pictorial world. The honeycombs are prominently drawn, generally with great exuberance and appearing much larger than they are in real life. Bees, with or without wings, are shown flying angrily about as their nests are pillaged by the daring hunters. The hunters themselves are usually depicted either standing at the foot of a tree or cliff that harbors a bee nest or climbing long rope ladders to reach their prize. And they are typically shown naked--although to modern beekeepers, the idea of raiding a colony without protective clothing seems foolhardy at best. The honey hunters portrayed in African cave art frequently wear penis sheaths and nothing else.

When looking at photographs of some of these paintings, I can't help thinking of the brilliant frescoes that transformed the walls of medieval and Renaissance churches into graphic lessons in religious and moral history. The cave painters, who created their art thousands of years before, using mineral pigments mixed with animal fats, may also have wanted to give their work a didactic or sacred meaning. There are several clues that support this supposition: the cave walls that served as their canvases enclosed spaces large enough to have comfortably accommodated crowds of people gathered to watch or participate in ceremonial rituals; the subjects of the paintings--hunting and fertility rites--are the kind that lend themselves to sacramental reenactment; and, in addition to the honey- and animal-hunting scenes, some of the paintings show women engaged in what seems to be sacred dancing, groups of archers led by a priest or shaman wearing a large headdress, and warriors engaged in hand-to-hand combat.

I'd love to know what lessons, if any, our forebears found embedded in the painted chronicles of their honey hunts. Did the rituals of the hunt serve to enlighten them or to give them spiritual guidance? Did they inspire these nomadic clans to strive for the same kind of efficient, productive social organization that the bees had so wonderfully evolved? And what role did honey play in their daily lives? Was it a key ingredient in their primitive cuisine, a medicine used to cure a number of ills, or simply eaten raw as a palate-pleasing, energy-supplying snack after a long, hard day hunting and gathering?

Despite the dedicated work of many archaeologists, we'll probably never know the answers to these questions. But based on hunting scenes found in caves separated by thousands of miles (and executed with uncanny similarity), we can safely say that plundering bee nests has been an important human activity for many millennia, all over the globe. In fact, there are places in the world today where the ancient rituals of those long-ago honey hunters are still practiced virtually unchanged. In the rainforests of Malaysia, the remote valleys of Nepal, and the vast Australian outback, honey-hunting clans set out on expeditions so similar to those depicted in prehistoric cave art that those paintings might well have served as their primers. We will actually travel to Malaysia to witness some of those rituals as they unfold today. But first, let's travel back in time, to a cave that contains one of...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
Random House Publishing Group
Erscheinungsdatum
2006
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0553382667
ISBN 13 
9780553382662
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
288
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
gpsr@libri.de
gpsr@libri.de

Europaallee 1
Bad Hersfeld
36244
Deutschland