Welcome to Writing Rural with Alley. I'm Alley and this Is Episode Number three, beekeeping Overview. You can find this episode, the show notes and helpful links where you can learn more on my website, alleyhart.com That's Alleyhart.com. For the first week of this podcast, I will be putting out a new podcast every single day. After the first week, I will be putting out a new episode every Monday. Now on to the show. While collecting honey and beeswax is thought to have been happening since roughly the beginning of mankind, the first known recording of this is currently believed to be a cave painting in Spain. I will leave a link in the episode journals because there is no way I'm going to pronounce that correctly. However, we're talking about beekeeping, which is defined as keeping and caring for bees in an artificial dwelling nest, hive, cavity or structure. And when I say cavity, I don't mean in a tooth. That sounds painful. The first known documentation of beekeeping comes from Egypt during the first dynasty at about 3100 BC. At that time, they used an artificial clay tube that resembled a log. They would stack these in the dirt to make a wall out of them, which sounds terrifying to me as I have a mild phobia of lying things with stingers. They were also luring bees to new hives by mimicking the queen. It is believed that the ancient Egyptians used smoke to work with their bees, but the modern smoker that we know today was not invented until 1873. My dad tells a story of my great grandfather who used to do beekeeping himself. He would find a bee going from flower to flower and he would follow the bee. He followed the same little bee for an entire day back to its hive inside of a tree. In the morning, he came back and spent half of the day reaching in to find the queen among all of the other bees. No, I don't know how he knew which one was the queen. He carefully picked her up, somehow not getting stung, slowly withdrew his hand, taking over an hour, then walked all of the bees very slowly back to the new hive and put the queen in. All of the other bees followed, and that was how they got their hives. There are many documented cases of people covering or placing things over their heads when handling bees. However, the beekeeping suit that we know today was invented in the 16th century Europe. But many expert beekeepers will forego the suit instead to work off of instincts. That basically means they've mastered bee body language and know when a hive is aggressive or docile. There are other beekeepers that believe that working without a suit is just foolishness. Throughout history, there have been many types of manmade beehives, everything from upside down wicker baskets to today's box hives. This part can be as simple or as creative as you wish to make it. I had always believed that you just stick the bees somewhere safe and return when it's time to get the honey. I was wrong. Beekeepers provide food by planting bee friendly gardens and by having bee watering stations. They watch out and protect their hives from things that could hurt them, such as some species of wasps, parasites, predators like bears, and more. They also make sure the hives do not become queenless hives. Queenless hives will die. Modern beekeepers must watch out for pesticides that could kill the bees. Beekeeping is not something that is learned overnight. It would be trial and error over years to learn how to beekeep without some form of help, whether it's someone who knows what they're doing or a wealth of information that you can learn, such as off of the Internet. Fun fact today we have a twofer. Did you know that one third of the food we eat today is because of a honeybee pollination? And did you know that it takes roughly 2 million flower trips to make 1LBS of honey? Now, for everyone's favorite part, what could possibly go wrong? Well, let me tell you. Likely to go wrong, your character gets stung. Also likely to go wrong, there are many beginner mistakes, like checking the hive too often, not checking it enough, taking out too much honey and the high starves in the winter. And many, many more possible your character gets done and has an allergic reaction. This could be anything from swelling to itching to anaphylactic shock, and your character dies because they could not breathe. Also possible your character could come face to face with bears or other animals that want to eat the honey. Unlikely the bees could swarm your character's home. If your character missed that the bees were preparing to swarm, your character might find that the queen decided to move into their home. There are many instances of bees making a colony inside of walls or ceilings because they had access to it from outside. While it's not something that I personally worry about, it is definitely possible. Also unlikely there could be a human honey robber. While it's more unlikely that your character will get a modern human honey robber, more historical based characters might come against other robbers that are looking for the honey, the beeswax, both of which are very valuable commodities. Improbable, but technically still possible. Your character could get swarmed, like a scene from Stephen King's The Birds, but with stinging bees. If for some reason they believe that your character is a threat to the hive, the bees could swarm them. This is definitely something to think about in a postapocalyptic book as killer bees have been known to sting until a person or animal stops moving and have chased people and animals for over a mile, swarming and stinging after they got too close to a hive. Thanks for listening to get the show's notes. Or if you want to learn more, you can find helpful links on my website, alleyhart.com. That's Alleyhart.com. Please subscribe or follow for more episodes. A new episode comes out every Monday. Until then, happy wordsmithing.