Beekeeping and Honey Throughout History - Honeybee: Lessons from an Accidental Beekeeper - page 61

• Romans carved death masks and life-sized figures out of beeswax.
• Ancient Egyptians, Assyrians, Greeks, and Chinese, and modern Germans as late as
World War I, used honey as an antiseptic for wounds during wartime.
•TheGreekphysicianHippocratesreferredtoasthefatherofmedicine,curedskinail-
ments and ulcers using honey.
H ONEYBEES IN A RT
Reading accounts of beekeeping in ancient history is intriguing to me. In my own
travels to foreign countries I have uncovered more of the history of bees and honey, as
wellasmanyexamplesofhoneybeesinartwork.OnavisittoVaticanCity,forinstance,
I discovered bees and honey depicted in marvelous paintings on crumbling stone walls
and decorative patterns of honeybees adorning the inner chambers of sanctuaries. The
honeybee repeatedly appears as an icon throughout Roman, Florentine, and Venetian
art.
In the seventeenth century the famous sculptor Lorenzo Bernini was commissioned
byPopeUrbanVIII(orUrbanoBarberini)tosculpthisfamilycrest.Thefinalsculpture,
completed in 1644 in Rome, was called Fontana delle Api, or the Fountain of the Bees.
The basin is in the shape of an open clamshell. Inside the shell stands the Barberini
family crest, adorned with three honeybees. But why bees, you may ask? Because they
symbolize diligence (the hard work of the worker bees), social organization (hierarchy
within the hive), and purity (production of beeswax, the purest form of candle wax).
Around the mid-1800s the fountain was dismantled, and some parts were lost. In 1915,
it was restored and moved to the north side of Rome's Piazza Barberini, where the
piazza meets the Via Veneto.
AtthePalazzoBarberini,Iwashumbledbyit'sbestexampleofhoneybeeart:ahuge
fresco, Pietro da Cortona's masterpiece, entitled The Triumph of Divine Providence ,
which fills the ceiling of the grand salon. This baroque painting was begun in 1633 and
was completed in 1639. It celebrates the spiritual and secular power of the Barberini
family's glory. The highly detailed painting gives the illusion of figures floating above
the room and is full of various symbols, including honeybees, which bob among the
figures.
In Slovenia, during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, beekeeping used to be
an important element in people's lives and an important line of business. Today, the
Radovljica Museum of Beekeeping in the town of Radovljica, Slovenia, boasts a fine
permanent exhibition of painted beehive panels. These wooden panels depict colorful
storiesofthelifeofthehoneybeeandwerehungonthesidesofbeehives.Thetradition-