Living in a medieval town with one of the world's biggest medieval festivals, it's hard not to take an interest in the middle ages, so I thought id make a post about beekeeping in the middle ages. Humans have been working with bees for thousands of years now, although there's not a lot of text about beekeeping in the middle ages, there is a byzantine work called Geoponika, which is a general book on farming from the middle ages, but it does cover bees and beekeeping. Bees were kept in anything from skeps to logs and beekeeping mostly happened on farms, wax and honey became very valuable in trading. From what we know beekeeping suits didn’t exist in those days, beekeepers would use smokers with cow dung in to drive the bees away, they would also make an ointment out of wild mallow, fenugreek and olive oil, with a constancy like honey they would smear this thick ointment over there bare skin and face to prevent being stung. Although we do use smokers in modern times we tend not to use dung to fuel them, many techniques have changed and developed over time but some of the traditional aspects of beekeeping still remain today.
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