Earliest use of beeswax, 40,000 BP

Beeswax collected and used by hunter-gather group 40,000 years ago...

Wild honeybee comb filled with honey. Photo by author, 2013

Investigators, digging for early evidence of modern human culture at Border Cave, an early occupation site in the ancient lands of South Africa's San people, have identified complex technologies supporting material culture dating to at least 44,000 years ago. Trace analysis of well preserved organic remains of tools demonstrates the first use of beeswax in adhesives for hafting stone points at least 40,000 BP.

Lead investigator Francesco d'Errico reported the oldest use of beeswax in a recipe for hafting based on residues identified on well preserved wood. The recipe included beeswax, Euphorbia resin, and possibly egg matter supporting vegetable twine likely made with stringy inner bark. Francesco d'Errico added: "This complex compound used for hafting arrowheads or tools, which is 40,000 years old, is the oldest known evidence of the use of beeswax."

Complex materials culture is a hallmark of modernity among ancient peoples. This find suggests the early San hunter-gatherers could find, identify, and assemble ingredients for preparing adhesive, making cordage, and joining flaked stone with carved wood for the manufacture of complex tools.

"This research, funded by an ERC Advanced Grant, is published in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. © F. d’Errico and L. Backwell"

Environmental History Timeline June, 1780

David Zeisberger records the arrival of European honey bees in eastern Ohio

David Zeisberger, indomitable Moravian missionary, penned his detailed observations, knowledge and experience with Native American life ways and of wild North America during the Contact Period as tentacles of pioneer settlement fingered westward across the Alleghenies. Zeisberger cataloged wildlife in later sections of his history while at his remote mission, Schoenbruun Village, near today's New Philadelphia, Ohio, most likely completing his notes during the summer of 1780.
Zeisberger noted (page 152):

Of bees, nothing was known when we came here in '72, now they are to be found in large numbers in hollow trees in the woods.

Zeisberger's fascinating history and bestiary can be viewed online here: David Zeisberger's History of Northern American Indians.

Honey bees were, and remain, agricultural partners with Western commercial agriculture. They were introduced alongside pioneer European agriculture and alongside the many species of undesired European weeds that came with imported livestock feed and crop seeds. Westward spreading exotic flowering weed species provided essential nutrition for westward spreading honey bees. Pioneer honey bees, always just ahead  of  pioneering peoples, did not reach eastern Ohio for 150 years following introduction in Virginia by 1622.

Native American agriculture produced abundance through partnerships with native pollinators, among them, butterflies, hummingbirds, ants, flies, beetles, and our numerous species of solitary bees, small semi-colonial native ground-nesting bees, and our heavyweight pollinators, bumblebees.

More on honey bees:
Colony collapse disorder CCD
First record of honey bees imported to North America

Environmental History Timeline April, 1622

Honey bees introduced in North America by early colonists, beehives listed as ship's cargo.

Bee historian, retired USDA Apiculturist Everett Oertel summarized available information about the introduction of honey bees in North America in his article, History of Beekeeping in the United States, Agriculture Handbook, No. 335 (1971):

Information available indicates that colonies of honey bees were shipped from England and landed in the Colony of Virginia early in 1622. One or more shipments were made to Massachusetts between 1630 and 1633, others probably between 1633 and 1638. The author was not able to find any records of importing honey bees into other Colonies, but it is reasonable to assume that they were brought by the colonists to New York, Pennsylvania, Carolina, and Georgia.

Brenda Kellar, Oregon State Beekeeper's Association, assembled additional information from multiple early sources for her paper, Honey Bees Across America. At least two ships arrived in Virginia during March and April, 1622, at least one of them carried beehives, most likely the second identified only as "this Shipp", likely the Bona Nova:

The only evidence we have of the initial importation of honey bees to North America is a letter written December 5, 1621 by the Council of the Virginia Company in London and addressed to the Governor and Council in Virginia, "Wee haue by this Shipp and the Discouerie sent you diurs [divers] sortes of seedes, and fruit trees, as also Pidgeons, Connies, Peacockes, Maistiues [Mastiffs], and Beehives, as you shall by the invoice pceiue [perceive]; the preservation & encrease whereof we respond vnto you..."

Kingsbury, Susan Myra. The Records of the Virginia Company of London The Court Book, From the Manuscript in the Library of Congress 1691 -- 1622 Vol 1 and 2. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1906.

Thomas Jefferson penned copious notes about agriculture and all aspects of frontier wilderness, including comments about honey bees, the "white man's fly". Accounts by Jefferson and Zeisberger (see the next blog post, 3/29/2013), together, suggest that pioneer honey bees swarmed westward ahead of pioneer settlers, first occupying broad open landscapes long managed by Native Americans, and presumably, natural prairie openings and pigeon balds--swaths of collapsed forest where vast numbers of Passenger Pigeons had nested or roosted, wherever sunshine reached the ground and abundant warm season flowering plants could be found. Honey bees became increasingly abundant and widespread with the opening of the temperate deciduous forests for European agriculture.

Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia c1781.

The honey-bee is not a native of our continent. Marcgrave indeed mentions a species of honey-bee in Brasil. But this has no sting, and is therefore different from the one we have, which resembles perfectly that of Europe. The Indians concur with us in the tradition that it was brought from Europe; but when, and by whom, we know not. The bees have generally extended themselves into the country, a little in advance of the white settlers. The Indians therefore call them the white man's fly...How far northwardly have these insects been found? That they are unkown in Lapland I infer from Schefer's information...Kalm tells us the honey bee cannot live through the winter in Canada.

 Monticello.org accessed 03/07/2013.