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Recently detected beehives from very old Israel 3,000 years ago crop up to be the oldest justification for beekeeping ever found, scientists reported.
Archaeologists identified the stays of honeybees — together with workers, drones, pupae, and larvae — inside about thirty clay cylinders thought to have been used as beehives at the site of Tel Rehov in the Jordan hollow in northern Israel. This is the initial such find from very old times.
"Although texts and wall paintings indicate that bees were kept in the Ancient Near East for the prolongation of changed polish and honey, archaeological justification for beekeeping has never been found," the researchers, led by Guy Bloch of Israels Hebrew University of Jerusalem, wrote in a paper in the Jun 8 issue of the biography Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The hives have a small holeone side for the bees to come and go, andthe alternative side is a lid for the beekeeper to make use of to entrance the honeycomb.
The archeologists used CO datinggrains that had spilled from a damaged storage glass container subsequent to the hives to guess that they were about 3,000 years old.
"The well-developed refuge of these stays provides undeniable marker of the clay cylinders as the majority very old beehives nonetheless found," the researchers wrote.