The New Cork Times

Like eggs and milk, honey is one of the few foods generated by animals that doesn’t require the animal’s demise. Usable as an ingredient in recipes and edible in its raw form, this sweet substance has proven its worth through thousands of years of human harvesting; to this day, beekeepers with apiaries (collections of bee hives) provide honey for themselves and the masses. Unlike hens or cows, however, keeping bees and harvesting their sweet delicacy requires little extra care – most of the time, all that’s needed is a beehive and a bit of bravery.

While humans have collected honey for thousands of years (rock paintings of honey gatherers date to circa 13,000 BCE), it was the ancient Egyptians who are believed to have first kept bees for their personal use. The honeybee symbol was used to signify pharaohs of Upper Egypt starting in approximately 2650 BCE.

However, early honey collectors were forced to destroy their hives in order to harvest the food, a method that proved both inefficient and painful. Over time, less invasive methods of beekeeping and honey harvesting were developed, ultimately culminating with Lorenzo Langstroth’s creation of the moveable comb hive in the mid-19th century. Upon discovering bees always kept a set amount of space between the combs of their hives, Langtstroth developed a rectangular box to be used as a hive, with removable wooden frames separated by the appropriate distance – allowing each honey comb to be removed, drained of honey and replaced without damaging the hive. To this day, the Langstroth hive (and its descendents) are quite common around the world.

George Deihl, who owns two hives in Florida, says his bees have come to play more than one important role on his property: in addition to providing honey (roughly eight gallons per hive per year), the bees have been successfully pollinating his fruit trees and other plants.

“Beekeeping is one of the few instances where man and beast can work together to benefit one another,” Deihl says. In nature, bees usually only inhabit a hive for a few years before the hive grows too small or an unpleasant calamity befalls it. Under human care and maintenance, not only can bees remain in a hive much longer, but the beekeeper protects them from pests and predators such as wax-eating moths.

Like Deihl, Angela Van den Berghe maintains a pair of beehives at her home in the English countryside; however, her two hives are located 12 miles apart, one in her garden and one in an apple orchard. And as in real estate, when it comes to the flavor of honey, location is everything.

"The honey from my garden hive is delicate and gently floral, while the orchard hive produces honey that is a bit more robust with a lovely apple scent,” she says. For Van den Berghe, the hardest part of her work is trying to deal with the reality of keeping bees, as opposed to the research she’s conducted – “the bees haven’t read the same books as me” – and watching the bees struggle during cold winters or infections. But she’s still glad she took on the task three years ago.

“Being a beekeeper is an exhilarating experience because the more you work with them, the more learn you how ingenious and sophisticated a collective of bees can be,” she says. While honey isn’t the only bee-sourced product humans consume – “royal jelly,” which facilitates a bee’s transformation from a worker to a queen, is used in cosmetics, while beeswax is commonly used for candles – honey does pack both the sweetest taste and a wide variety of health benefits. Honey has been known to mitigate pollen allergies, as well as substances that may help fight cancer. Honey also comes in far more varieties than other bee products, with more than 300 varieties available in the U.S. alone. For the most part, these varietals differ only in flavor and color – all unprocessed honey contains the same health benefits. So don’t be afraid of wild honey – not only is it completely safe, it’s far better for you than its pasteurized equivalent!