Professional migratory beekeeping has been around for at least 2200 years,
and the essential problems have not changed in all that time.
The papyrus "Beekeepers' petition to Zenon" from the 3rd Century BCE shows
some pretty clear evidence of organized migratory operations, and the
beekeepers writing Zenon (the secretary to an high-ranking Egyptian
government official), were desperate to get their donkeys back from being
conscripted by Zenon so they could get their hives out of a location,
apparently in the flood plain of the Nile, that was to be burned over and
then flooded. The term "impost" here means taxes. They are making a not
very subtle threat that they will be unable to pay taxes to the king and
they will blame Zenon if Zenon does not send them their donkeys back
immediately. ("Philadelphia" here is not the city in Turkey, or the old
name for the capital of Jordan, but a small town in the Fayoum area of
Egypt, South of where Cairo is now, and a formerly very fertile area, so the
distance to the Nile was not very far.)
"To Zenon greeting from the beekeepers of the Arsinoite nome.
You wrote about the donkeys, that they were to come to Philadelphia and work
ten days. But it is now eighteen days that they have been working and the
hives have been kept in the fields, and it is time to bring them home and we
have no donkeys to carry them back. Now it is no small impost that we pay
the king. Unless the donkeys are sent at once, the result will be that the
hives will be ruined and the impost lost. Already the peasants are warning
us, saying: "We are going to release the water and burn the brushwood, so
unless you remove them you will lose them." We beg you then, if it please
you, to send us our donkeys, in order that we may remove them. And after
removing them we will come back with the donkeys when you need them.
May you prosper!"
There's another papyrus that survived from the same era, a complaint that
prompted legal action:
P.Cair.Zen. 3 59368
Kharabet el Gerza (ancient Philadelphia)
26th July, 240 BCE
http://papyri.info/ddbdp/p.cair.zen;3;59368
A Letter from Sostratos to Zenon and Xenophon:
"...this again is the memorandum from Kleon and Sostratos in which they
state that they own a thousand bee-hives leased to various natives, some in
the Herakleopolite and some in the Memphite nome. The latter hives had
lately been transferred to the Herakleopolite nome without their permission
and Ammonios the oikonomos had imprisoned the bee-keepers, doing much damage
to the hives, though afterwards, on the intervention of Sostratos and
through fear of Zenodoros, he had released the prisoners.
Again he had arrested Rhodon the guard of the petitioners' hay, and in the
absence of the guard most of the hay was carried off by the natives; and
though he had promised to recover the price of it, he had not yet done so.
Moreover, the petioners had hired a boat to carry the hay to Alexandria;
owing to obstruction on the part of Ammonios' agents the boat had gone away
empty; but all the same the owner claimed payment for hire. They therefore
ask Sosibios to write to Ammonios to send the bee-keepers together with his
own representative to the place where the petitioners are living in order
that the case may be tried there."
There's another papyrus "A petition of beekeepers at Oxyrynchus", which
includes references to 487 hives, a comfortable number for anyone who has
hauled their hives on a 55-foot tractor trailer flatbed. In this case,
someone apparently blocked the entrances to the hives for several days,
killing some of the hives.
September, A.D. 16
http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.0599796.0010.001:02
"To Herostratus, strategus, from Heraclius and Onnophris, both sons of
Sarapion, of the beekeepers of the city of the Oxyrhynchi. Four hundred and
eighty-seven bee-hives belong to us and to the sons of Heraclius, of which
we had eighty-seven hives in the village of Toka of the middle toparchy in
the place called Petn in the household of Diogenes, in accordance with the
declaration which we made last year, the 2nd year of Tiberius Caesar
Augustus. But on the 17th of the current month Sebastos of the 3rd year of
Tiberius Caesar Augustus, when we arrived at the above-mentioned place for
the inspection of the hives, we found part of the hives ruined and the
remaining hives in danger of being deserted through their weakened
condition, and at once we questioned the master of the household Diogenes
about all this and he said to me that by the agency of the gymnasiarch
Sarapion, son of Theon, and those he brought with him secretly by night all
the hives... had been blocked up for several days, with the result that the
hives had no passage for the [exit of the bees]..., and so it happened that
part of the..."
In Rehov, an ancient city in the Jordan Valley, archeologists uncovered the
cylindrical clay hives of an urban beekeeping operation, dating back to 900
BCE. The paper describing the find also mentions the older Egyptian tomb
illustrations.
http://www.rehov.org/Rehov/publications/Mazar_NEA70_4.pdf
Pliny the Elder (AD 23-79) describes the moving of hives up and down the
Italian River Po (formerly "Padus") in his "The Natural History"
Book 21 Chapter 43.-THE FOOD OF BEES.
"In relation to the food of bees, I have ascertained a very singular fact,
and one that well deserves to be mentioned. There is a village, called
Hostilia, on the banks of the river Padus: the inhabitants of it, when food
fails the bees in their vicinity, place the hives in boats and convey them
some five miles up the river in the night. In the morning the bees go forth
to feed, and then return to the boats; their locality being changed from day
to day, until at last, as the boats sink deeper and deeper in the water, it
is ascertained that the hives are full, upon which they are taken home, and
the honey is withdrawn. (Footnote 13) In Spain, too, for the same purpose,
they have the hives carried from place to place on the backs of mules."
***********************************************
The BEE-L mailing list is powered by L-Soft's renowned
LISTSERV(R) list management software. For more information, go to:
http://www.lsoft.com/LISTSERV-powered.html
|
