Abstract
In the middle ages bees held significant economic, social and cultural importance. Constant demand for wax was driven by Christian religious practice among many other uses, while honey provided the only widely accessible sweetener in an era before large-scale sugar imports. Consequently, beekeeping was a notable part of the rural economy, drawing on the participation of numerous groups across Europe, from peasants with only a few hives for small-scale production to specialized beekeepers producing for a thriving international trade. Analysis of a wide variety of documents from northern and southern Europe, shows the importance of beekeeping in the late medieval period, and the ways in which different environments and types of economic and social organization consequently gave rise to different forms of beekeeping. This paper demonstrates that beekeeping was not an isolated activity, but rather one which competed and conflicted with, and conflicted with, many other types of resource use from a variety of actors. As such, beekeeping provides a lens through which to consider human intervention in the natural environment, demonstrating the extent to which the medieval landscape was regulated, managed, mediated and anthropized.
Highlights
In the middle ages bees held significant economic, social and cultural importance.1 Constant demand for wax was driven by Christian religious practice, in addition to its use for seals, writing tablets, casting, and luxury lighting, while honey provided the only widely accessible sweetener in an era before large-scale sugar imports
This association of beekeeping with people who were increasingly under Christian rule is reflected within an Iberian context in the efforts of the Kings of Portgual and the Crown of Aragon to tax, through different forms of the azaqui tithe, the honey and wax produced in the hives owned by Muslim communities
Of all the rural banalités and taxes on production that were managed by territorial lords in the Kingdom of Valencia, those related to wax and honey appear to be the least profitable (Guinot, 1992)
Summary
In the middle ages bees held significant economic, social and cultural importance. Constant demand for wax was driven by Christian religious practice, in addition to its use for seals, writing tablets, casting, and luxury lighting, while honey provided the only widely accessible sweetener in an era before large-scale sugar imports. In the former region, heavily forested and thinly settled, bee forests were created through hollowing out large spaces in tree trunks and allowing bees to naturally move from tree to tree as they swarmed, protected from the worst of the winter weather within the trees’ cavities This is a form of wild honeyhunting and beekeeping, within a highly managed environment, in which cutting down or damaging certain trees and removing forest litter or other resources was forbidden or strictly contained through a legal rights, privileges and customs It should be noted that in most, if not all, of the regions under study here, apiculture is recorded precisely because it came into conflict with other activities in a time of resource pressure or as new territorial lords imposed their own legal structures over already existing societies In this way, beekeeping provides a lens through which to consider human intervention in the natural environment, demonstrating the extent to which the medieval landscape was regulated, managed, mediated and anthropized.
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