5500 year old honeybees!!

Wednesday, June 9, 2010 it was Bunny's and my pleasure to host the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association's (MABA) June speaker, Dr. Omed Afik from Israel. Dr. Afik (pronounced ah-FEEK) is an entomologist who has been working in the lab of Dr Keith Delaplane at the Univ of Georgia for the past two years and will return to Israel in the fall (2010). He spoke on "Beekeeping in the Land of Milk and Honey". Dr. Afik presented lots of technical information about Israeli beekeeping which distinguishes it from North American beekeeping. We also saw an interesting photo of an Israeli archaeological dig in which 5500 year old honeybee hives were discovered. Yes, honeybees have been kept by humans since 3500 BC. A quick wikipaedia search reveals that honeybees have been discovered in the fossil record as far in the past as 34 MILLION years ago!! By contrast, homo erectus has only been around for less than 2 million years.