Background

Beekeeping is the branch of agriculture which deals with breeding bees for honey, beeswax and other bee products, as well as for the pollination of crops to increase their productivity.

Beekeeping was known long before our era. Its development went through several stages:

Wild beekeeping - hunting for honey and wax, bees nests – honeycombs were found in tree hollows;
Hollow log beekeeping (form of beekeeping, close to the original) - keeping bees in natural or specially created hollows of trees – hollow logs.
Stump beekeeping – bees were kept in non-separable hives - stumps;
Framework beekeeping – keeping bees in sectional hives with movable frames.

Beekeeping has become a highly marketable branch in many agricultural countries since in 1851 in the U.S.A. Langstroth patented his frame hive where the frames can be removed from the top and after the invention of honey extractor by Czech beekeeper F. Hruschka. Huge contribution to the development of scientific bases of beekeeping and its propaganda was made by Russian scientists and public figures: A.M. Butlerov, M.A. Dernov, I.A. Kablukov, I.M. Kulagin, G.A. Kozhevnikov, A. F . Yubin, etc. A great deal for the development of beekeeping has been done by such figures as F. Huber (Switzerland), L. Langstroth (USA), I. Mehring, E. Zander (Germany), etc.

Bees and bee products, especially honey, and then wax have aroused interest of a man since the most ancient times. Apparently, people always tried to find bees and take advantage of their unique products. The earliest evidence of this was discovered by scientists while studying the sites of ancient men. In 1919 in Eastern Spain in the mountains of Valencia the site of an ancient man was found in the Spider Cave (Cuevas de la Araña) near Bicorp. On the wall of the cave there is an extant drawing depicting the hunt for bees. Images in the Spider Cave date back to 15-20 millennium BC. Pieces of evidence relating to a later period were found during the excavation of one of the pyramids in Egypt.

The findings in this pyramid show that the ancient Egyptians were engaged in large-scale honey hunting 5 thousand years ago and it was considered highly profitable. Egyptian pharaohs appropriated the title of "Lord of bees." At first, the nests of bees were destroyed, but later people began to take honey only. The laws protecting the bees were written. In the legends of many ancient peoples the bee is represented as a divine creation, as a gift of the gods. It was considered that people were ordered from above to take care of the insect. The most ancient evidence of the legal protection of beekeeping is the statute of the Hittite laws issued by Hammurabi around 1800 BC. According to the laws of the Dragon (Ancient Greece) it was forbidden to arrange apiaries at a distance less than 92 meters from the existing ones. Solon repealed the laws of the Dragon and issued a statute which increased the distance between existing and newly organized apiaries up to 275 meters.

Bees were of great importance in the life of the ancient Slavs, inhabiting the northern and north-western areas. Hollow log beekeeping when bees are kept in tree hollows was particularly widespread in the feudal period. Hollows might be natural or specially prepared; they were hollowed out in the thick trees at a height of 4 to 15 m. Inside the log there were crosses or skewers to fix the honey combs. Long, narrow slits were used to take out honey. People engaged in hollow log beekeeping were called log beekeepers.

Hollow log beekeeping had been known in Russia before the XVII century and at those times it was one of the important sectors of the country’s economy. It was significantly developed in the forests of the Dnieper, the Desna, the Oka, the Voronezh, the Sosna and other rivers on the border of the steppe. Honey and wax, along with furs, were the main items of export from Russia.

As the lands were deforested and agriculture developed, hive beekeeping gradually superseded hollow log beekeeping. Nowadays hollow trees with wild dark forest bees remained only in Burzyansky Reserve of Bashkiria (now it is the Shulgan-Tash reserve). The development of hollow log beekeeping in Bashkortostan was supported by the special natural conditions - an abundance of lime and maple forests, the source of massive honey flow. Besides the local population dealt primarily with nomadic herding, hunting and honey hunting, leaving the forest intact for long time. Mass cultivation of land and deforestation in Bashkortostan began only in the second half of the XIX century. Intact forests have remained in the remote and almost roadless spurs of the Ural Mountains. It was here in 1958 where the natural habitat of the dark forest bee was declared a natural reserve.

Here's how a Russian journalist, Vasily Peskov, directly acquainted with this ancient craft, described the process of preparing a hollow log:

Pine should be sufficiently thick (about a meter in diameter) ... The log is hollowed at the height from six to twelve meters. First beekeeper carves a narrow slit in wood and then with special tools he makes a hole about one meter high, quite spacious, but without a threat of wood fracture. The inside of log is thoroughly smoothed ... The entrance for bees is hacked from the side and the slit is closed with wooden shutter ... After that, the log is dried. And only two years later it can be prepared for keeping bees.

The article is based on the facts derived from The Free Encyclopedia - Wikipedia on conditions of Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike.