Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to blow your Mind from housetop works
Speaker 1: dot com. The god Ray wept, and the tears from
Speaker 1: his eyes fell on the ground and turned into a bee.
Speaker 1: The bee made his honeycomb and busied himself with the
Speaker 1: flowers of every plant, and so wax was made, and
Speaker 1: also honey out of the tears of Ray. Hey, welcome
Speaker 1: to stuff to blow your mind. My name is Robert
Speaker 1: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And that was a beautiful
Speaker 1: little reading. Robert, what was that? That quote comes to
Speaker 1: us from a nineteen translation of a three hundred BC
Speaker 1: bit of writing. It's it's essentially cursive hieroglyphs, which is
Speaker 1: called the hieratic writing. And more specifically, this wonderful uh
Speaker 1: little excerpt comes from a book titled The Tears of
Speaker 1: Ray be Keeping an Ancient Egypt by Jean Kritzky. And
Speaker 1: at the end of this episode we're going to chat
Speaker 1: with the author just a little bit about some of
Speaker 1: the material we're discussing here and about the book The
Speaker 1: Tears of Ray. This was a very interesting book. Robert
Speaker 1: and I both read it for this episode, and it
Speaker 1: essentially it covers the relationship between the ancient Egyptians and
Speaker 1: the honeybee, the complex economic, religious, and scientific relationship you
Speaker 1: might say, going back and forth between them. But we
Speaker 1: should start, I guess with Ray, because that's the focus
Speaker 1: of this little poems segment. You read at the beginning.
Speaker 1: Who is Ray? Right, you may be more familiar with
Speaker 1: the name raw are a Uh, the sun god, the
Speaker 1: creator god of the ancient Egyptians, as often depicted as
Speaker 1: sort of like a bird's head, the head of a falcon,
Speaker 1: but also a sun disc that travels across the sky
Speaker 1: and then of course dusk it gets eaten and then
Speaker 1: goes into the underworld. Well, actually I think those are
Speaker 1: two different myths. Right, it goes into the underworld and
Speaker 1: then comes back out. But there's another version where Ray
Speaker 1: gets eaten and then gets re birthed. Yeah, and there's
Speaker 1: a there's a lot of material about the like he
Speaker 1: travels across the sky and a solar barge, and then
Speaker 1: there's a different barge that travels through the underworld at night,
Speaker 1: and and sometimes the additional gods on those barges. It's uh,
Speaker 1: it's it's very complex. One of the things I definitely
Speaker 1: did find out from this book is that these days,
Speaker 1: if you want to be in line with the academic
Speaker 1: egyptology community, you say Ray, not Raw. Now, I I
Speaker 1: got Raw from the movie Stargate, where Raw is the
Speaker 1: bad guy who is essentially an alien version of an
Speaker 1: Egyptian god. But but that that's not anymore, it's y Yeah.
Speaker 1: Plus most most Egyptologists dismissed uh Stargate as a reputable
Speaker 1: source of data these days. Yeah, I don't know why,
Speaker 1: but but yeah, this this episode, hopefully what we're gonna
Speaker 1: do here is is we will will allow you to
Speaker 1: leave the podcast with maybe a little more understanding and
Speaker 1: respect for the kingdom of the bees and a little
Speaker 1: more respect and understanding for the kingdom of ancient Egypt,
Speaker 1: because there's a there's so much complexity in both and uh,
Speaker 1: and it's fascinating to sort of look here at this,
Speaker 1: this kingdom within a kingdom, and how they how they
Speaker 1: were related to each other. Oh, the b kingdom within
Speaker 1: the Egyptian because because yeah, we have a monarch, uh,
Speaker 1: monarchy within the honey bee hive. And then workers, we
Speaker 1: have a lot of workers toiling away involved in this industry.
Speaker 1: And then uh, we have this, we have ancient Egypt.
Speaker 1: We have another monarchy with a very complex system of order. Uh,
Speaker 1: a lot of industry going on, a lot of workers, uh,
Speaker 1: toiling to make it all possible. And also sort of
Speaker 1: a two way cyberbiotics symbiotic relationship. Yeah, indeed, But I
Speaker 1: guess we should start with the bee first, because obviously
Speaker 1: the b pre dates ancient Egypt as a civilization, probably
Speaker 1: not the land mass. So Robert, where do bees come from? Well,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you asked, Joe. Let me tell you about
Speaker 1: the bees. Uh. You'd have to travel back about a
Speaker 1: hundred million, maybe a hundred thirty million years, depending on
Speaker 1: who you're talking to, all the way back to the
Speaker 1: Cretaceous period. Okay, you'd find dinosaurs roam to the earth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're going away back here, and you'd find a world
Speaker 1: rather different than the one we're we encountered today. Uh,
Speaker 1: devoid of flowering plants and occupied mostly by conifers, which
Speaker 1: depend on the wind to spread their seats. Wow. Can
Speaker 1: you imagine that? I mean a world where where reproduction
Speaker 1: depends entirely on the whims of the weather. Like can
Speaker 1: you imagine if animals Because trees can't walk around and
Speaker 1: find each other to mate, they're stuck in place, trees
Speaker 1: and bushes, you know, whatever you want. Plants are not
Speaker 1: very mobile, so they essentially have to spray their reproductive
Speaker 1: material into the air, just hoping it gets somewhere worthwhile
Speaker 1: by chance. Yeah, indeed, this is just an earlier state,
Speaker 1: and it's just the the the evolution of seed transfer.
Speaker 1: So there are no flowers and there's certainly no pollination.
Speaker 1: Now there were There were no bees at this point,
Speaker 1: but there were wasps. And these wasps were also kind
Speaker 1: of different from the wasps that we encounter today. They
Speaker 1: were hymenoptera, the order that wasts some bees are. Yeah,
Speaker 1: indeed they were, now they were, but they were carnivorous.
Speaker 1: They preyed on spiders and other insects, and many of
Speaker 1: which in turn fed on vegetation. Uh so along, So,
Speaker 1: so we have a traffic going on here, all right.
Speaker 1: Seeds are going into the air, the wasps are eating
Speaker 1: the insects that live on the plants. But plant of
Speaker 1: evolution eventually begins to make the most stat of this
Speaker 1: constant insect traffic, using it like the wind, to carry
Speaker 1: a genetic material from plant to plant, and this results
Speaker 1: in the rise of angiosperms. These are plants that depend
Speaker 1: on insects to spread genetic material and pollen from male
Speaker 1: plant parts called anthers to female parts called stigmas. This
Speaker 1: is one of those moments I often want to say, like, oh,
Speaker 1: how smart that is, which it's like as if somebody
Speaker 1: planned it. Now, of course it wasn't. These are just
Speaker 1: the wonderful ingenuities of evolution acting upon the environment. But uh,
Speaker 1: it's fascinating how things like this come about. So you
Speaker 1: have to imagine a system where these plants are pollinating
Speaker 1: by wind, but they have this this sperm the pollination
Speaker 1: material I guess you would say pollen. Uh, And somehow
Speaker 1: insects start getting this stuff on their bodies. Right, Essentially,
Speaker 1: a new wind emerges and that wind is the movement
Speaker 1: of these insects. And then, of course it once that
Speaker 1: works out for long enough, plants sort of evolved traits
Speaker 1: to specialize in that mode of transmission. It's no longer
Speaker 1: an accident. It's how they work now. In indeed, you
Speaker 1: see the the emergence of delicious nectar to sweeten the
Speaker 1: deal for the pollen carrying insects, saying hey, come here,
Speaker 1: get all nice and covered in polony and I'm totally
Speaker 1: anthropomorphizing the entire process here. My apologies, but but yeah,
Speaker 1: essentially bribing the insects with the with the the delicious
Speaker 1: nectar to give them to carry the pollen, giving them
Speaker 1: a specific reason to traffic the parts of the plant
Speaker 1: where pollen is produced. So I can imagine if you're
Speaker 1: some wasp DT thirty million years ago and you've been
Speaker 1: hunting insects. That's that's tough work, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: really tough. Now, if you could just start getting all
Speaker 1: of your meals from a passive plant that will sit
Speaker 1: there and let you just lap up delicious sweet things
Speaker 1: from its open maw, that I mean, what a nice deal. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: suddenly there's this, there's this wonderful new way to get
Speaker 1: the food you need. Now. Granted, they're still they're still
Speaker 1: sort of tied to their predatory past, and indeed, today,
Speaker 1: um you'll you have you can look at most common
Speaker 1: wasps and they're depending upon upon nectar as their primary food.
Speaker 1: But they still have to turn to their carnivorous ways
Speaker 1: when it comes to rearing their young, implanting their young
Speaker 1: in the belly half another creature that wasps. Oh yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: which is just a wonderful area that we have explored
Speaker 1: in past podcast and I'm sure will return in the future.
Speaker 1: Christian and I talked about it in our X Files episode. Yes,
Speaker 1: of course, yeah, that parasitoid wasps are not only is
Speaker 1: it just an endlessly fascinating area, but we just get
Speaker 1: new studies each year with either a new type of
Speaker 1: parasitoid wasps or some new details about a species we
Speaker 1: are already familiar with. Yeah, so the wasps evolved to
Speaker 1: to live off of what is provided by the plants,
Speaker 1: and in an interesting way, I think we could think
Speaker 1: about this as the plants domestic aiding livestock. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: plants have domesticated the live stock of insects in order
Speaker 1: to do their bidding. And of course the wasps are
Speaker 1: one thing, but it's the bees where we really see
Speaker 1: this takeoff, because of course bees evolve from wasps, they're
Speaker 1: all related. But the bees are actually they're getting the nectar,
Speaker 1: they're bringing it back for their young. They're they're they're
Speaker 1: they're they're creating honey, they're creating these uh, these these
Speaker 1: waxy nests. They are completely beholden to the nectar. Uh,
Speaker 1: they're no longer going out and the and and specifically
Speaker 1: killing other creatures to rear their young. Okay, so when
Speaker 1: we're talking about honey bees, true honey bees, that this
Speaker 1: is the genus APIs, right, yes, and that's why we
Speaker 1: also refer to it as uh is apriculture. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: bee keepingture, not the keeping of apes. A fun fact
Speaker 1: to remember, by the way, next time you're adding a
Speaker 1: dab of honey to your earl gray tea, is that
Speaker 1: honey is bee bar right? Yes? Is how honey is produced.
Speaker 1: It's produced by bees grabbing some sweet nectar, which is
Speaker 1: pretty much sugar water from plants and then going through
Speaker 1: a complex process of regurgitation and evaporation. Yeah, so they're
Speaker 1: kind of uh distilling it, refining it through their their
Speaker 1: just regigitation of the material, you know, And I should
Speaker 1: I should also mentioned that, uh, when it comes to
Speaker 1: two bees, we have bumble bees, we have stainless bees,
Speaker 1: and we even have a few other non bee species
Speaker 1: that produce honey and small amounts. But for the most part,
Speaker 1: we're you know, we're dealing with those uh, those APIs
Speaker 1: honey bees, which are the superstars, the generators of like
Speaker 1: a true bounty and excess of honey, uh, in the
Speaker 1: amount that it makes sense for humans to raise them
Speaker 1: and pillage their stores. Now, when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I used to wonder how we eat honey? But I
Speaker 1: know bees make honey. I did not know that they
Speaker 1: barfed honey up for us. I didn't know that they
Speaker 1: made honey, but I didn't know what they did with it.
Speaker 1: I was why do they make it? Is it just?
Speaker 1: What is it? What's it for? Did the bees themselves
Speaker 1: eat the honey? Yeah, they stored as a primary food source.
Speaker 1: They also eat what is called bee bread, which is
Speaker 1: a semary cute name. Yeah. Yeah, it's essentially like a
Speaker 1: pollen cake, you know. But yeah, the the honey is
Speaker 1: a food source for the bee people, if you will. Um.
Speaker 1: And they stored away in those waxy cells in the honeycomb.
Speaker 1: But you mentioned wax. Of course, wax is another important
Speaker 1: byproduct of bee culture. It's it's their second great technology. Yes, indeed,
Speaker 1: and uh and the wax that the workers actually secrete
Speaker 1: from specialized glands on the underside of their abdomens. Wait
Speaker 1: what they secrete it? Yeah? Essentially, you know, you can
Speaker 1: think of them as like wax nipples. I guess, um,
Speaker 1: the bee. The bees have wax nipples and they put
Speaker 1: out the wax. What it's a little flaky lipids for us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they get the raw materials for this metabolized product
Speaker 1: through the consumption of that honey and that be bread,
Speaker 1: which we already mentioned and the bee bread. I should
Speaker 1: also have have pointed out that it's essentially a collected
Speaker 1: fermented pollen. So um, so these service there. So it
Speaker 1: kind of goes around in a circle, right, the nectar,
Speaker 1: the honey, the wax, this whole um, this whole little
Speaker 1: little city for the insects built from the bounty of
Speaker 1: the flowers. Yeah. Now, long before humans started formalized apriculture,
Speaker 1: before they started making bee hives to keep bees in
Speaker 1: to sort of have an agriculture of insects, they hunted honey. Right,
Speaker 1: there was wild honey hunting. The same way you would
Speaker 1: hunt game in the forest or on the savannah. You
Speaker 1: could hunt honey just as it occurred in a bee
Speaker 1: hive that might be hanging from a tree. And there
Speaker 1: are actually ancient works of cave art that depict this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's still also honey hunting traditions that survived this day
Speaker 1: and it's essentially the same thing a bear does. Right
Speaker 1: of a bear breaks into a honey hive or a
Speaker 1: honey badger, it goes after some some bees as well.
Speaker 1: You just you find out where the hive is, you
Speaker 1: locate it, and then you use the best skills at
Speaker 1: your disposal to break in there and get as much
Speaker 1: dripping honeycomb as possible and run off with it. Now,
Speaker 1: Krisky's book has an illustration, or not an illustration. It
Speaker 1: does have an illustration, but also a photo of this
Speaker 1: great cave painting from Spain that seems to depict honey
Speaker 1: hunting from How how old is this thing? Yeah, this
Speaker 1: dates back seven thousand to eight thousand years, so that
Speaker 1: gives us a rough estimate not not where it began,
Speaker 1: but at least how far it probably goes. And so
Speaker 1: what what's depicted in the painting is this great setup.
Speaker 1: It looks like a scene from a movie where you've
Speaker 1: got somebody hanging from a rope, apparently off a cliff,
Speaker 1: being lowered down to an area where there's a tree
Speaker 1: with a bees nest hanging off of it and reaching
Speaker 1: in to grab the honey, and you can see bees
Speaker 1: swarming around the person I mean that's a lot of
Speaker 1: trust and whoever's holding the rope, right, yeah, and uh
Speaker 1: and and and you know you're just getting just the
Speaker 1: Jesus stung out of you the whole time. But it's
Speaker 1: just such I mean, especially in the energy density and
Speaker 1: connicity of that of that that score. I mean, this
Speaker 1: stuff is just is pure gold, uh, nutritionally speaking, So
Speaker 1: you're going to occasionally do what it takes to get
Speaker 1: it and bring it back, not to mention the value
Speaker 1: you're going to have bringing that stuff back to your community.
Speaker 1: But I guess we should now look at when when
Speaker 1: true apriculture started. When did we start having bee hives
Speaker 1: where we sort of set up an enclosure and said
Speaker 1: bees go live in there, here's where you should make
Speaker 1: your homes. And they obeyed alright, So it's best we
Speaker 1: can tell bee keeping probably emerged by accident, probably in
Speaker 1: the fertile crescent um. And probably what you had happened
Speaker 1: was you have human industries is creating all of these
Speaker 1: different pots and containers, uh, for your various agricultural efforts,
Speaker 1: and one might leave a pot hanging around some where unused.
Speaker 1: Suddenly some bees come in, they take up a residence
Speaker 1: in the pot, and this could theoretically serve as is
Speaker 1: like the first accidental bee hive that's actually kept by
Speaker 1: beekeepers and they realize, oh, bees will will will actually
Speaker 1: build their nest in this, uh the spot if I
Speaker 1: leave it out for them, there's a chance I'll have
Speaker 1: my own captive honey. I've yeah, I mean talk about
Speaker 1: turning a loss into a wind. So imagine you know,
Speaker 1: you've got this jar that you were planning on keeping
Speaker 1: full of urgad infested drye uh, and you go back
Speaker 1: to get it and suddenly it's full of bees and
Speaker 1: you're like, oh man, my plans are spoiled. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: get stung cleaning this thing out. But then you realize
Speaker 1: you have access to all this sweet sweet honey. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and not only the honey, but the wax. The
Speaker 1: wax is key because uh, there is evidence of lost
Speaker 1: wax castings uh dating back to thirty BC. Now, a
Speaker 1: lost wax casting for anyone not familiar, this has to
Speaker 1: do with, uh with a cast used to make uh
Speaker 1: like a metal objects in which it's uh you build
Speaker 1: like the clay or what have you around a wax
Speaker 1: model of the thing you're going to build and then
Speaker 1: you melt the wax out of there, and while you
Speaker 1: have this mold which you can use to make metals.
Speaker 1: It's a way of turning easily multiple wax into metal,
Speaker 1: which is pretty awesome. Yeah. So the only thing here
Speaker 1: is that you don't have to be a beekeeper to
Speaker 1: get that wax. That wax could have been obtained through
Speaker 1: honey hunting. We just don't know. Um. But when when
Speaker 1: it comes to actually finding the the earliest evidence of
Speaker 1: bee raising, of bee keeping, then you really have to
Speaker 1: go to the Egyptians, to the ancient Egyptians. Uh. And
Speaker 1: this would put us around three thousand b C. That's
Speaker 1: five thousand years ago. Yeah. I mean it's amazing just
Speaker 1: to consider, completely separate from the topic of beekeeping, how
Speaker 1: enormously long ancient Egypt went on. Yeah, we're talking roughly.
Speaker 1: You have five thousand years of of human history wound
Speaker 1: up in the ancient Egyptians. U A a civilization that
Speaker 1: after you know, even when it was going it was
Speaker 1: it was an ancient civilization. Um. And of course it's
Speaker 1: gonna it's impossible for us to summarize, you know, thousands
Speaker 1: of years of ancient history. The EBB and flow of
Speaker 1: political and social change here. Uh you know, in the
Speaker 1: In the same way that Egyptian history is tied closely
Speaker 1: to the Nile, so too is the region's history a long, twisting, swelling,
Speaker 1: shrinking movement across the landscape of human history. But to summarize,
Speaker 1: we're talking the civilization of ancient North Africa, generally attributed
Speaker 1: to lasting from roughly thirty one hundred BC to three
Speaker 1: twenty two uh. See, So that's talking about the transition
Speaker 1: out of the Stone Age, out of the Nearithic period,
Speaker 1: the beginning of large scale civilization in ancient Egypt until
Speaker 1: the time I think they mark the end of it
Speaker 1: with the time that the last hieroglyphic carvings were made
Speaker 1: in Egypt. Yes, and made the one in three hundred
Speaker 1: some things. He correct. Now. You can also some historians
Speaker 1: um and and authors including gene Kritsky also go ahead
Speaker 1: and include that Neolithic period, and that would put the
Speaker 1: beginning around fifty BC. So that's where you would get
Speaker 1: a total time period of around uh five thousand, one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty three years of culture. Yeah. So for
Speaker 1: those of you who think it's been forever since the
Speaker 1: American Revolution or something, like that it is such a
Speaker 1: tiny blip. Modern history is such a tiny blip in
Speaker 1: humans who really dwarfs the modern age. So you know,
Speaker 1: that's essentially at the time period we're talking about, and
Speaker 1: during that time, the ancient Egyptians demonstrated their expertise of
Speaker 1: a number of general and highly specialized categories and skills.
Speaker 1: They were accomplished farmers and engineers. They were artists and linguists,
Speaker 1: they were soldiers, they were astrologers, they were doctors, uh,
Speaker 1: and and much more. I mean, everyone knows about the
Speaker 1: Pyramids and various architectural marvel marvels that survived this day.
Speaker 1: Everyone knows about the rich history of mummification, which we've
Speaker 1: talked about here on this show before. But there's other
Speaker 1: stuff just continues continually fascinates me when I read about it.
Speaker 1: For instance, to find out that ancient Egyptians perform surgical
Speaker 1: skin graphs as early as eight hundred BC UM and uh, indeed,
Speaker 1: as we're discussing in this episode, that they practice uh
Speaker 1: the earliest known examples of apriculture. Okay, well, once Egyptian
Speaker 1: civilization is underway, once we've got our our dynasties and
Speaker 1: our organized hierarchical civilization and culture. We we should look
Speaker 1: at the role bees and honey played in that. And
Speaker 1: one of the first things I think we can observe
Speaker 1: is that there is a glyph in the ancient Egyptian
Speaker 1: hieroglyphic language. It's one of their symbols. That's a honey bee.
Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, it's um. It chose up in some
Speaker 1: of the earliest examples of ancient Egyptian writing. Um. In fact,
Speaker 1: we we see it in use by the Old Kingdom
Speaker 1: that's uh seven through And we probably shouldn't try to
Speaker 1: get too much into talking about the different ages in Egypt,
Speaker 1: but essentially there's an Old Kingdom that goes on for
Speaker 1: a long time with many Pharaonic dynasties, and then there's
Speaker 1: an intermediate period that's sort of like a Dark Age,
Speaker 1: and then there is a Middle Kingdom, and then there's
Speaker 1: another break in that there's another intermediate period, and then
Speaker 1: there's a new Kingdom, and then of course there's the
Speaker 1: Greco Roman period. But but essentially coming into the Middle Age. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but but essentially at this point, just think of this
Speaker 1: that the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx are there, they're
Speaker 1: relatively newly constructed, and there's evidence already that the Egyptians
Speaker 1: had at that point, uh, mastered to some degree beekeeping
Speaker 1: and we're producing honey. Okay. Yeah. According to u Kritsky
Speaker 1: here there's evidence from around this point that you actually
Speaker 1: had a role in the in the governmental structure known
Speaker 1: as the seiler of honey. There's an individual who was
Speaker 1: the seiler of honey, and this at least suggests either
Speaker 1: very organized honey hunting or quite possibly the beginnings of
Speaker 1: industrialized um beekeeping. You know, I love this title that
Speaker 1: you see throughout ancient Egypt, the seiler, Yeah, the person
Speaker 1: who seals and that that abuse an authority. Yeah. It
Speaker 1: reminds me a lot of our recent episode on the
Speaker 1: INCA and we talked about the importance within a government,
Speaker 1: with importance with an empire, of of having a way
Speaker 1: to of course record uh you know, amounts when it
Speaker 1: comes to goods, the the price of goods, the exchange
Speaker 1: of goods, and then also being able to to seal
Speaker 1: it and say this is what is contained within and
Speaker 1: uh and someone is accountable for it. Yeah. It's a
Speaker 1: very wonderful physical metaphor for having the fine a word
Speaker 1: on something. But so we do see in ancient Egypt
Speaker 1: the evidence of the first organized beekeeping, right. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: the current earliest known evidence takes us uh to uh
Speaker 1: around uh hundred and thirteen b C. And specifically it
Speaker 1: takes us to the solar Temple chasup Be brit So
Speaker 1: what we have here within the ruins of this solar temple,
Speaker 1: that's again it's it's devoted to to ray. We see
Speaker 1: decorative color reliefs that show off scenes of desert wildlife, boating,
Speaker 1: and bee keeping. Yeah, and it's got these different vignettes
Speaker 1: that actually showed the stage. I mean, it's not just
Speaker 1: sort of like a cartoon like, oh, here are some
Speaker 1: people beekeeping it. It's sort of uh comprehensive. It shows
Speaker 1: the different steps you take in order to do the
Speaker 1: main jobs of a beekeeper. Yeah, and uh, there's a
Speaker 1: certain amount of interpretation that has to take place in
Speaker 1: figuring out exactly what they're showing and exactly what those
Speaker 1: of vignettes are showing. They especially because some parts of
Speaker 1: it are missing. Yeah, some parts are missing and row
Speaker 1: damage and uh and depending on what's going on there,
Speaker 1: you know that that ends up impacting our understanding of
Speaker 1: exactly how advanced they were, so for instance, that there's
Speaker 1: one of the vignettes in particular, represents a man either
Speaker 1: using a smoker to control the bees or he's calling
Speaker 1: a queen to enter a jug. Now, either one of
Speaker 1: those options is very interesting, and we should talk about
Speaker 1: what that actually means, to to smoke the bees or
Speaker 1: to call the queen. Yeah, the smoking thing. I think
Speaker 1: most people are familiar with this because if you've seen
Speaker 1: any footage or just or even just in the course
Speaker 1: of your life, if you've seen beekeeping, you've probably seen
Speaker 1: people using a smoker because the smoke, uh, calms the bees.
Speaker 1: That's a nice way. That's a nice way of putting it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's uh, it's it's a weapon you get to use
Speaker 1: against the bees so you can pillage their goods. It's
Speaker 1: like saying tear gas calms the crowd. Yeah, yeah, but
Speaker 1: it works. And when you try and figure out exactly
Speaker 1: how this came about, you know, who knows. Somebody was
Speaker 1: getting stung by bees and they leveled their torch at
Speaker 1: them and they noticed the smoke helped, or perhaps one
Speaker 1: was making a burnt offering, and they found that the
Speaker 1: instanse uh, the smoke from the incense calmed the bees. Uh,
Speaker 1: you know, they're a couple of different ins there. Now
Speaker 1: the calling is also a fascinating possibility whichever one he's
Speaker 1: doing here. If he's calling, it seems to be that
Speaker 1: he's got to bee hive up to his face and
Speaker 1: he's making sounds with his mouth into the beehive to
Speaker 1: get the bees to do something, which which is just amazing. Now,
Speaker 1: how exactly would this work? What would he be doing? Well,
Speaker 1: it's known as is piping, and uh, it's it's a
Speaker 1: very real thing, and it's also still practiced in some
Speaker 1: beekeeping traditions, especially in Egypt to this day. Like even
Speaker 1: despite all that has fallen away from ancient Egypt and
Speaker 1: modern Egyptian culture, you still see some of these traditional
Speaker 1: beekeeping practices that are utilized there. So essentially what's happening
Speaker 1: here is a bee keeper mimics the queen's audible communication,
Speaker 1: so that the queen is pushing her thorax against the
Speaker 1: honeycomb and vibrating her wing muscles without moving her wings. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it creates this um. It's a it's a a
Speaker 1: a long tone followed by a series of short bursts.
Speaker 1: And I've heard it described as zeep zeep, zeep. There's
Speaker 1: also a cack cack, yeah right, yeah, yeah, so they're
Speaker 1: there are different tones that the bees make to one
Speaker 1: another to communicate, to signal essentially what they need to
Speaker 1: do in the next stage of a reproductive process, like
Speaker 1: if a if a young queen is within the nest right,
Speaker 1: and specifically here, my understanding is that what the bee
Speaker 1: caller is doing is creating the sound of an emergent
Speaker 1: virgin queen, and then that would cause the existing monarch
Speaker 1: or another emergent queen to come forward and fight hor
Speaker 1: her and try to kill her. Uh calling her out? Yeah,
Speaker 1: calling her out. So you're you're manipulating the bees speaking
Speaker 1: their language in order to draw the queen away so
Speaker 1: that you can put her in a bottle, move her
Speaker 1: to another hive, and use her presence to manipulate the
Speaker 1: uh your creation of new hives or just moving the
Speaker 1: existing hive. Yeah. So, just the idea of of a
Speaker 1: human being able to make bee sounds to talk to
Speaker 1: the bees is fascinating on its own. Also that they
Speaker 1: figured this out in ancient Egypt. But there are other
Speaker 1: techniques displayed at newer sarah Any's Solar temple as well. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's another vignette that seems like it shows a man
Speaker 1: pouring something from a spout. So this might be honey
Speaker 1: taken from the hive. It might be honey that's just
Speaker 1: separated from the wax. They might be deluding it. Um,
Speaker 1: we're deluding the honey honey with water. And I remember
Speaker 1: reading in Krinsky's book that that that some have commented
Speaker 1: on this and thought, well, maybe they were making meat
Speaker 1: or or something. Um, you know, because you can of
Speaker 1: course take honey and create an alcoholic beverage from it,
Speaker 1: but there's apparently no real evidence that that's what was
Speaker 1: actually taking place here. Though they apparently did add honey,
Speaker 1: perhaps in deluded form, to their alcohol. Yeah, so they
Speaker 1: sweetened wine or beer with it, but they didn't make
Speaker 1: meat as far as we know. As far as we know. Yeah, now,
Speaker 1: looking at these vignettes, I wanted to observe something that
Speaker 1: struck me as quite strange. Throughout this book and so
Speaker 1: meaning throughout ancient Egypt, there are lots of pictures of bees.
Speaker 1: I mean, this makes sense because we have this b glyph,
Speaker 1: this standard be illustrations, part of the hieroglyphic language. You
Speaker 1: know the written language system, but there are also all
Speaker 1: these illustrations of bees that appear in vignettes and carvings
Speaker 1: throughout ancient Egypt, depicting a swarm of bees, or a
Speaker 1: bee next to a jar showing that the jar has
Speaker 1: honey in it, or in these beekeeping scenes. And I
Speaker 1: noticed very often it looks to me like these bees
Speaker 1: do not have correct number of legs. Indeed, yeah, and
Speaker 1: I feel like I don't want to be pedantic here,
Speaker 1: but often you see the bees with four legs, or
Speaker 1: you see them with three legs. I can understand the
Speaker 1: three legs, because we know insects have six legs. The
Speaker 1: three legs maybe you're just seeing one side of the bee,
Speaker 1: so each leg stands for a pair. But the ones
Speaker 1: where it shows four legs or maybe five legs, like
Speaker 1: four forward legs and one back legs sticking out, those
Speaker 1: are strange to me, especially since there's like no animal
Speaker 1: on Earth that has an odd number of legs. But anyway,
Speaker 1: this four legged ancient be sort of it rang a
Speaker 1: bell vaguely in the back of my mind, and I
Speaker 1: was like, where do I know that concept from before?
Speaker 1: And it was it was it was saying to me
Speaker 1: go back to Sunday school. So I did. I checked
Speaker 1: it out. I looked in the Bible and bingo in
Speaker 1: the Bible. In in the the Hebrew Bible, in Leviticus
Speaker 1: eleven twenty to twenty three, we read about four legged
Speaker 1: insects in a part of the ancient Hebrew dietary restrictions.
Speaker 1: So I just want to read the selection of Leviticus
Speaker 1: from the New American Standard translation. This is referring to
Speaker 1: which insects that are koshure, yeah, which you can and
Speaker 1: can't eat? And so the translation reads like this, all
Speaker 1: the winged insects that walk on all fours are detestable
Speaker 1: to you. Yet these you may eat. Among the winged
Speaker 1: insects which walk on all fours, those which have above
Speaker 1: their feet jointed legs with which to jump on the earth.
Speaker 1: These of them you may eat. The locust and its kinds,
Speaker 1: and the devastating locusts and its kinds, and the cricket
Speaker 1: in its kinds, and the grasshopper in its kinds. But
Speaker 1: all other winged insects which are four footed, are detestable
Speaker 1: to you. Now, obviously I'm not trying to like hammer
Speaker 1: these ancient people, like what a bunch of dummies. I mean,
Speaker 1: they weren't dummies. You wouldn't expect either the ancient Egyptian
Speaker 1: artists who created the Solar Temple carving or any of
Speaker 1: these other carvings and illustrations. Uh, Nor would you expect
Speaker 1: the Jewish author who wrote this part of Leviticus to
Speaker 1: be some kind of entomologists studying bees up close and
Speaker 1: locusts to see how many legs they have. Right, there's
Speaker 1: a division in Egyptian society, and the individuals who are
Speaker 1: who of keeping the bees are probably separate from those
Speaker 1: that are actually carving the hieroglyphics. Yeah. So I'm certainly
Speaker 1: not saying that they're stupid they should have known better,
Speaker 1: But but it just did seem like an interesting coincidence
Speaker 1: that multiple ancient people's would get this wrong. And also,
Speaker 1: as I kept reading in the book, I came across
Speaker 1: more art that depicted bees this way is on this
Speaker 1: Old Kingdom seal amulet, on a Middle Kingdom Scarab carving,
Speaker 1: And so it just made me wonder, is there a
Speaker 1: widespread belief in the ancient Near East that insects had
Speaker 1: four legs? Well, you know, after you brought this to
Speaker 1: my attention. I was looking around a little about it,
Speaker 1: and certainly there's there's a lot of just pointless information
Speaker 1: out there, with people either using this as as an
Speaker 1: argument against UH religion and against the Bible, saying, hey,
Speaker 1: they got the number of legs on a on a
Speaker 1: on a grasshopp or long, how wrong? How can you
Speaker 1: trust anything? Yeah? I read in Food and Culture a
Speaker 1: Reader by Carol Counahan and Penny than Estric that that
Speaker 1: possibly the I mean, the biblical distinction here is more
Speaker 1: about insects that walk versus those that that fly or
Speaker 1: at least kind of have that live in that area
Speaker 1: between true flight and UH and walking. So in that
Speaker 1: case he would be saying something like the saying having
Speaker 1: four legs or going on all fours, which the Bible
Speaker 1: passage says, in which these b images indicate, it's not
Speaker 1: really about counting the number of legs. It's more just
Speaker 1: kind of like this is in the category of things
Speaker 1: that crawl, right, that it's a land animal and that
Speaker 1: but bees fly, bees fly, so they're okay. So it's
Speaker 1: more like saying, don't eat that the insect land animals.
Speaker 1: But then another thing that comes to mind here is
Speaker 1: just the law of conservation of detail, which is the
Speaker 1: reason that everybody and the Simpsons would only have four
Speaker 1: digits on each hand. And why you do see a
Speaker 1: number of bees and other insects and cartoons that have
Speaker 1: the wrong number of limbs, because ultimately, when you're recreating
Speaker 1: these things that are on a smaller, unreal scale, you
Speaker 1: are forced to to use an inaccurate number of limbs
Speaker 1: or digits. Oh well, that seems like a very logical
Speaker 1: explanation to me, especially for the the illustrations of the bees. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and certainly worth remembering for future alien civilizations that come
Speaker 1: to our plan and try and figure out the Simpsons
Speaker 1: what is what are they trying to tell us? What?
Speaker 1: What is with the fingers? So um, it's first of all,
Speaker 1: it's it's interesting to just discuss the importance of of
Speaker 1: honey as a trade good. I was really fascinated by this,
Speaker 1: uh because it's it's Critsky points out Egyptian societies didn't
Speaker 1: a society didn't really have a currency. I mean they
Speaker 1: sort of did. They didn't have a physical currency. They
Speaker 1: had like they had an ideal currency which they would
Speaker 1: use to Essentially, the way it worked is you had
Speaker 1: a measure of a certain metal like copper, and then
Speaker 1: you would have certain quantities of that copper, but you
Speaker 1: wouldn't actually hold the copper in your hand. So if
Speaker 1: you were owed, for example, five debans of copper, you
Speaker 1: would be paid five debans of copper worth of grain
Speaker 1: or something like that. Yeah, And there would be there
Speaker 1: would also be cases where if you were supposed to
Speaker 1: pay or be paid in grain and they could not
Speaker 1: have the grain, you might pay in honey. So honey
Speaker 1: in a in a sense was the currency. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: and it was valuable when I understand, and that value
Speaker 1: would go up and down, but it was it was
Speaker 1: a valuable commodity. It wasn't something that everybody beating all
Speaker 1: the time. It was sort of a luxury food item. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a luxury food item as well as will discuss an
Speaker 1: item that is that is utilized in medicine and magic.
Speaker 1: So you're saying honey was money, Yeah, honey was money.
Speaker 1: And since honey was money, honey was of course also
Speaker 1: an industry, a state run industry. Um that they were
Speaker 1: the ancient Egyptians were a civil organization, and that's how
Speaker 1: they that's how they built their wonders, that's how they
Speaker 1: made their honey. They had a system of beekeepers, overseers,
Speaker 1: overseers to to look over those overseers. They're just a
Speaker 1: whole um, you know, system, uh, to regulate the production
Speaker 1: of honey and then ultimately the trade of honey with
Speaker 1: other with other cultures. But of course the honey also
Speaker 1: had a great spiritual significance within Egyptian religion and their
Speaker 1: their their priesthood and their mythology. Right. Yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: we we already talked about the tears of ray. The
Speaker 1: bee is the tear of ray, and the sun god
Speaker 1: cries and his his tears become a gift to us
Speaker 1: that gives us this sweet, sweet food. Yeah, it is uh.
Speaker 1: It is the the product of a of a holy
Speaker 1: animal to the ancient Egyptians and certainly to I mean,
Speaker 1: it's gold, and it glistens when the sunlight hits it.
Speaker 1: It appears to clothe you. Can you can easily imagine
Speaker 1: just carrying a little of your your symbolic, magical understanding
Speaker 1: of the world into your your contemplation of honey. It's
Speaker 1: just it's this this potent perfect thing. Now. Of course,
Speaker 1: in the ancient world, we often see an association between
Speaker 1: healing and religious ritual that it's very likely in an
Speaker 1: ancient culture that you might find the medicines and the
Speaker 1: doctor is sort of overlapping with the priesthood and the
Speaker 1: sacred rights. There wasn't always so much of a distinction
Speaker 1: between science based medicine and magic based medicine, and you
Speaker 1: certainly see that come through with honey because honey actually
Speaker 1: does have known medical uses that are truly effective. Uh.
Speaker 1: It was also used as a you know, a sort
Speaker 1: of functional medicine, but also as a magical medicine in
Speaker 1: ancient Egypt. That's right. Yeah, I mean we're in a
Speaker 1: we're in a situation where the best mind, they're using
Speaker 1: the materials at hand to try and treat injuries and disease.
Speaker 1: Some of it is working, some of it is sort
Speaker 1: of working, some of it's not working, but maybe it
Speaker 1: seems to work, and some of it just feels right
Speaker 1: within the uh, you know, the framework of their worldview.
Speaker 1: So it's interesting that Egyptian physicians who were at the
Speaker 1: time were considered some of the best in the world.
Speaker 1: Like this was again in ancient Egypt. You found skin
Speaker 1: drafts taking place. Um, so an Egyptian physician would treat
Speaker 1: a wound. But they would also give you a wax
Speaker 1: amulet to burn. Uh. And and this is key because
Speaker 1: because because you take the wax, all right, you make
Speaker 1: a candle from the wax or just this amulet, and
Speaker 1: when it burns, it burns up brightly, and it burns
Speaker 1: up completely, So symbolically and by extension magically, it consumes
Speaker 1: the illness, burning completely. Mean there's no ash left, no
Speaker 1: ash at all. I mean, so there's this almost a
Speaker 1: magical quality to that. You'd expect ash from all of
Speaker 1: the other burning you do in your normal life. I mean,
Speaker 1: we all burn a lot of things, but there's always
Speaker 1: some evidence left behind. If you can burn this wax
Speaker 1: figuring up completely, something does seem very otherworldly about that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and you burn it. You burn this thing that is
Speaker 1: made from the substance that comes from the creature that
Speaker 1: in turn came from the God of the sun. Now,
Speaker 1: speaking of the sacred or religious aspects, I couldn't pardon
Speaker 1: me this indulgence, but I could not help but notice
Speaker 1: that sort of understanding. The science behind the emergence of
Speaker 1: beekeeping is to see the biological evolution of a trinity
Speaker 1: between three organisms. So you've got your auto trophes, your pollinators,
Speaker 1: and your domesticators. The auto trophes are the plants, you know,
Speaker 1: these are the creators of the energy in this chain,
Speaker 1: and they create nectar from sunlight, so they turned the
Speaker 1: sunlight photo energy into sugar. Then the pollinators, the bees
Speaker 1: in a way or sort of the redeemers, they convert this, uh,
Speaker 1: this scant nectar that the plants produce through a process
Speaker 1: of sacred barfing, into very highly concentrated and prized, valuable honey.
Speaker 1: And then of course the domesticators, which are the human
Speaker 1: beekeepers are I would think of them sort of as
Speaker 1: like the order, the logos that holds this whole system
Speaker 1: in place. And in biological terms, it's a three way symbiosis.
Speaker 1: It's three ways that organisms are all interacting and all
Speaker 1: benefiting from the system. And in terms of the religious context,
Speaker 1: you've got this trinity. And I was just trying to
Speaker 1: think of other cases in the natural world where we
Speaker 1: see domestication taking this form of a three way symbiosis.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously, like grass converts sunlight into chemical energy
Speaker 1: and then our cattle eat that. But I don't know
Speaker 1: if you'd say that symbiotic for the grass, like does
Speaker 1: the grass benefit from being eaten by cattle in the
Speaker 1: same way that the plants benefit from being pollinated by
Speaker 1: the bees. Yeah, I was, I was trying to think
Speaker 1: of any other examples earlier, and you know, I think
Speaker 1: you can sort of stretch it and apply it to
Speaker 1: to to other organisms, but it's it's hard to think
Speaker 1: of an example where it applies so perfectly and so,
Speaker 1: you know, just so you know, symbolically. But anyway, let's
Speaker 1: get back to bees wax and some some ancient apicultural voodoo. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: so um yeah, So they're using bees wax for a
Speaker 1: number of things, not just magical. They're using it as
Speaker 1: an adhesive, they're using it as an embalming agent, light
Speaker 1: source in the form of candles, and artistic medium. Um.
Speaker 1: But but magic is where it really shines. So it's
Speaker 1: it's malleable, it doesn't break down in water, it doesn't
Speaker 1: discolor unless you put it out in the sun. And
Speaker 1: that actually makes perfect and it makes it work perfectly
Speaker 1: within their magical thinking, right because the rays of ray
Speaker 1: will actually change the color of the sacred sculpture. Uh.
Speaker 1: And it also doesn't lose its shape after being molded
Speaker 1: into its desired form, So you know, wax figures that
Speaker 1: last for centuries when they are actually stored away. One
Speaker 1: of the problems here is that since so many of
Speaker 1: these wax figures from from the Egyptians, they were made
Speaker 1: to burn. So a lot of them were burned. So
Speaker 1: you know, you you find some in tombs here and there,
Speaker 1: but but you know, but but certainly the vast majority
Speaker 1: of of the the amulets and statuettes that were created
Speaker 1: were consumed by fire. It's it's the same reason that
Speaker 1: the future generations of archaeologists aren't going to find all
Speaker 1: that many intact pin yatas to study from our culture exactly.
Speaker 1: So there are a few different different accounts that that
Speaker 1: that Kritsky rolls through that that that help help us
Speaker 1: understand the use of these wax uh magical icons. So
Speaker 1: the Salt Papyrus, that's the one that that original quote
Speaker 1: was from, about the tears of Ray. It describes how
Speaker 1: wax quote could be used to ensure the destruction of Seth,
Speaker 1: the god of confusion, to order in violence and the
Speaker 1: murderer of Osiris unquote. So simply you'd make a bees
Speaker 1: wax likeness of your enemy and you burn them to
Speaker 1: quote kill the name of Seth. That is too cool. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's like I want to do that right now. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this principle is just too good. And it doesn't just
Speaker 1: work for destruction. It can work multiple ways. You might say,
Speaker 1: the wax magic go. It's a two way street. Because
Speaker 1: there's one great story in the Tears of Ray also
Speaker 1: that that recounts the Twelfth Dynasty myth of a priest
Speaker 1: and named web Owner, not Webinar, but web Owner. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I kept reading in my head it's Webinar to who
Speaker 1: and like, like webinars, this guy has some nefarious intentions.
Speaker 1: He makes a wax crocodile and then he throws it
Speaker 1: into a pond where his wife's lover is having a
Speaker 1: nice bath. And then the wax crocodile comes to life,
Speaker 1: eats the person, and then vanishes. And then the priest
Speaker 1: comes back and can summon the crocodile from the pond
Speaker 1: and turn it back into wax. Yeah, and he does
Speaker 1: so in the presence of the Pharaoh. And then the
Speaker 1: Pharaoh observes this and says uh. And after after observing
Speaker 1: this magic, says, oh, well, you're right, there's the lover
Speaker 1: right there. Um oh wait, yeah, so he turned the
Speaker 1: sentence him too death. Sorry we should have said, he
Speaker 1: turns it back into wax, and that what it It
Speaker 1: vomits up the lover. Yeah. And and then the pharaoh says, well,
Speaker 1: there's the lover. Your story checks out. I sentenced him
Speaker 1: to death. And so then, uh, the priest here turns
Speaker 1: the wax crocodile back into a real crocodile. It eats
Speaker 1: the lover and this time vanishes for good into the water.
Speaker 1: So that that is a great myth. That is awesome. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I love it. I mean, you have statues becoming real
Speaker 1: creatures and then turning back into statues and it's a
Speaker 1: it's it's a fun one. In addition to these stories,
Speaker 1: though again he we do find wax amulets, including as
Speaker 1: offering tables, winged sun discs, uh tiets which your iis,
Speaker 1: symbols and collars. Also animals, such as one of the hippo,
Speaker 1: which it said can can be destroyed in order to
Speaker 1: slaughter an actual hippo. What you can burn the wax
Speaker 1: hippo to kill the real hip. Yeah. Some more of this,
Speaker 1: the symbolic magic of burning the uh, the likeness in
Speaker 1: order to harm or destroy the actual thing. You wonder
Speaker 1: how ideas like that persisted if they if they have
Speaker 1: a guarantee. I feel like some some ambiguity had to
Speaker 1: be built into it, because otherwise people would kind of
Speaker 1: observe that they were burning wax hippos and not killing
Speaker 1: their hippo every time. Yeah, I'm thinking it had to.
Speaker 1: You would probably something you would do in addition to
Speaker 1: taking direct physical action against the hippo. Oh, I can
Speaker 1: see that. Yeah, like it increases your chances of defeating
Speaker 1: the hippo with a spear. Yeah. Because there's also a
Speaker 1: thirteenth Dynasty myth that alleges that the pharaoh neck and
Speaker 1: Ebo used rituals and tailing little wax ships to secure
Speaker 1: victories against the Persians. And there's not a lot of
Speaker 1: additional data there, but I can either imagine it a
Speaker 1: as a as a ritual that's carried out in addition
Speaker 1: to military action as a way to sort of bless
Speaker 1: your military action, or I couldn't in the back of
Speaker 1: my mind, I couldn't help but think, well, maybe this
Speaker 1: guy just had like wax models of his units and
Speaker 1: it was like war gaming it out on the table
Speaker 1: before him. And perhaps maybe an onlooker thought, hey, he's
Speaker 1: practicing magic here. Clearly he's using little likenesses of the
Speaker 1: ships in order to magically secure victory. Well, there there
Speaker 1: is a lot of ambiguity, as we've been saying, between
Speaker 1: functional uses and magical uses. And this definitely comes through
Speaker 1: as as we mentioned earlier, in medicine, because like we said,
Speaker 1: they do use honey for a lot of medical practices,
Speaker 1: honey and bees wax both. Yeah, apparently they're they're over
Speaker 1: five hundred documented uh prescriptions that use honey and um.
Speaker 1: A lot of times it's just about making the thing
Speaker 1: that you're eating more palatable. You know, it's a spoonful
Speaker 1: of sugar to make the medicine go down. That's not
Speaker 1: to be discounted. I mean, that is legitimate medical technology
Speaker 1: if it eases the if it eases the application of
Speaker 1: a medicine, and in other times it is you know,
Speaker 1: an active ingredient in the medication. Yeah, there is one
Speaker 1: thing I had to relate from the book that talks
Speaker 1: about how the the Evers Papyrus. You know, this famous
Speaker 1: papyrus from ancient Egypt described several ways of treating constipation,
Speaker 1: which it calls quote to open the belly, which I
Speaker 1: don't know. When I pictured that, I see, uh what
Speaker 1: it is described in Jurassic Park that the velociraptor does
Speaker 1: with its claw, you know, split spills your intestines out everywhere.
Speaker 1: But no, this this is the cure constipation. So one
Speaker 1: of the cures it offers for constipation is this. You
Speaker 1: get some milk, you get some honey, and you get
Speaker 1: notched sycamore figs. Then you boil all that mix you're down,
Speaker 1: and then you run it through a strainer and then
Speaker 1: you drink this for four days. And apparently it worked
Speaker 1: pretty well at caring constipation. But it worked a little
Speaker 1: too well because some patients had their constipation so decisively
Speaker 1: cured that they ended up with a pro lapsed anus. Uh.
Speaker 1: And so what do you do to help this poor
Speaker 1: patient that now has a pro lapsed anus. Well, you
Speaker 1: mix up a bomb of salt, oil and honey and
Speaker 1: then you apply directly to the anus for another four days.
Speaker 1: So again the use of honey. The honey makes the
Speaker 1: anus go out. The honey makes the anus come back in,
Speaker 1: or maybe it doesn't make it come back in, but
Speaker 1: maybe it just eases some of the discomfort us and
Speaker 1: it it's certainly it's even modern studies have documented the
Speaker 1: use of of honey as a way to to treat
Speaker 1: cuts and burns, to alleviate the symptoms and the pain
Speaker 1: they're in. Yeah, it has legitimate medical potential. Yeah, as
Speaker 1: um As Kritsky points out in his book, it has
Speaker 1: osmotic potential. So it's you know, it's this this viscous
Speaker 1: um substance. There's not a lot of liquid in there,
Speaker 1: so it can actually suck the fluid out of bacteria
Speaker 1: and in doing so less than bacterial infections. I mean,
Speaker 1: honey has natural antimicrobial properties. Yeah. Um. I think part
Speaker 1: of this is just due to its pH right as
Speaker 1: low pH, meaning it's acidic, but it also has other
Speaker 1: chemical properties that's right, um, anti microbial activity, and most
Speaker 1: honeyes is due to the enzymatic production of hydrogen peroxi. Okay,
Speaker 1: so the fizzy stuff. Yeah. And I mean additionally to
Speaker 1: you're you're putting honey on a wound, it it can
Speaker 1: it can maintain it maintains a moist wound condition. That
Speaker 1: high viscosity helps to provide a protective barrier to prevent infection.
Speaker 1: If your wound is caked in honey. Uh, nothing's necessarily
Speaker 1: going to get through that that honey layer on top,
Speaker 1: as delicious as it may seem. And uh, you know
Speaker 1: in many warts, um many reports out there of of
Speaker 1: of honey being used very effectively as addressing for wounds, burns,
Speaker 1: skin ulcers, and inflammations. Uh, with the the antibacterial properties
Speaker 1: of honey speeding up the growth of new tissue to
Speaker 1: heal the wound. Studies have actually found that the honey
Speaker 1: can reduce healing times in patients suffering mild to moderate
Speaker 1: burn wounds. That's cool, yeah, But of course, getting back
Speaker 1: to the ancient world, the Ebbers papyrus also has some
Speaker 1: other recommendations because it does prescribe honey for treating urinary
Speaker 1: problems if you p too much or if it hurts
Speaker 1: when you do. Mixtures containing honey were recommended. I don't
Speaker 1: know to what extent that actually would have been effective,
Speaker 1: or if it was, if the honey was what was
Speaker 1: responsible for it. But the honey also was used in
Speaker 1: a mixture of some genuinely gross sounding prophylactic devices for contraception.
Speaker 1: Other ingredients were things like crocodile feces and sour milk
Speaker 1: and essentially it's a female condom made out of this
Speaker 1: the grossest combination of substances you can find, but included honey.
Speaker 1: Um and uh. And I know, Kritsky points out that
Speaker 1: it's possible some studies have suggested that the sour milk
Speaker 1: could have actually had spermocidal properties to it, so this
Speaker 1: may have been partially effective. But this is not a
Speaker 1: recommendation that you try any of these mixtures at home. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't do not, do not try this at home. Um.
Speaker 1: You know. Of course, in talking about all of this too,
Speaker 1: the placebo effect has to be huge too, because we've
Speaker 1: discussed how that this sort of Uh. I think you've
Speaker 1: brought it up that the something happened scenario, right, you
Speaker 1: felt something, right, Uh. In this case, you could just
Speaker 1: be that the sweet sensation of of tasting honey. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I've actually mentioned before. This is something that comes up
Speaker 1: a lot on another podcast I listened to sometimes called Sawbones, Yeah,
Speaker 1: where they talk about weird applications of medicine throughout history.
Speaker 1: In fact, my wife Rachel told me that they have
Speaker 1: an episode on Honey. I haven't had a chance to
Speaker 1: listen to it, but we should. We should check that out.
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, I would love to hear because I I
Speaker 1: know of of a few other uses of honey uh
Speaker 1: in in medicine that are kind of strange. But I
Speaker 1: would love to hear a complete overall examination of different
Speaker 1: cultures in their use of honey. Yeah, and and those
Speaker 1: guys are always pretty funny, so that should be a
Speaker 1: good one, alright. So we have talked about the healing
Speaker 1: power of honey, the magical use of honey, the bee
Speaker 1: keeping techniques that the ancient Egyptians seemed to utilize to
Speaker 1: get the honey and the wax from the bees, and
Speaker 1: before that, we talked about the way the bees produce
Speaker 1: honey to begin with, and why they evolved into this
Speaker 1: curious state. I really am fascinated by the emergence of
Speaker 1: apriculture as as just one incarnation of agriculture and the
Speaker 1: domestication of animals as a technology in human history, because
Speaker 1: I think this is often overlooked when thinking about what
Speaker 1: technology is. I think of technology these days, and I
Speaker 1: just think of electronics, and I always have to remember
Speaker 1: to on in my mind, and and if I try
Speaker 1: to broaden my mind, I go from electronics to other
Speaker 1: mechanical inanimate objects that we use as tools to accomplish
Speaker 1: goals in smart ways, but it really shouldn't even just
Speaker 1: be inanimate objects, because really the control of other living
Speaker 1: organisms to accomplish goals should be thought of as a technology.
Speaker 1: And I think this is one of the most complex
Speaker 1: and fascinating ones that we have. That we've created a
Speaker 1: relationship with a symbiotic relationship in nature that already exists
Speaker 1: between flowers and bees and made it work to our advantage.
Speaker 1: There's something very beautiful and very weird about that. If
Speaker 1: you can just step back for a moment and look
Speaker 1: at this as an alien, would uh that we keep
Speaker 1: insects in containers that fertilize the plants that grow all
Speaker 1: over the earth and make sweet food and medicine for us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's crazy and it's uh and and indeed it is
Speaker 1: a true technology, and it's one that, like like the Pyramids,
Speaker 1: has stood the test of times. As the Kritzky points out,
Speaker 1: you can you can find traditional Egyptian beekeepers to this
Speaker 1: day that are using some of the same techniques that
Speaker 1: that that would have been used in ancient times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I think this is just one more example of
Speaker 1: something that I think is sort of a recent theme
Speaker 1: on this show. Something we like to talk about that
Speaker 1: um that that ancient cultures or cultures that are pre
Speaker 1: modern technology, before electronics, before uh, you know, steam powered
Speaker 1: industry or anything like that. We're not stupid. I think
Speaker 1: it's easy for people to think, oh, that they didn't
Speaker 1: have any of the technology we have, they must have
Speaker 1: been dumb. They weren't at all. They were amazingly clever.
Speaker 1: I think, in many ways, probably more clever than us
Speaker 1: because they didn't have as much easy uh, they didn't
Speaker 1: have an easy foothold like we did to make new advances,
Speaker 1: so that they were working with what they had and
Speaker 1: and when you see the innovations they came up with,
Speaker 1: it's astounding. Indeed. So hey, let's go ahead and get
Speaker 1: uh Mr Chritsky on the phone here and we will
Speaker 1: ask him just a few follow up questions about his book,
Speaker 1: The Tears of Ray. Al Right, Professor Chritsky, thank you
Speaker 1: for joining us here on the podcast to discuss your
Speaker 1: excellent book, The Tears of Ray be Keeping an Ancient Egypt. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think Robert and I both really enjoyed this book,
Speaker 1: so thank you for writing it. In addition to thank
Speaker 1: you for joining us. Well, thank you very much. It's
Speaker 1: a it's great to be here. So just to kick
Speaker 1: things off of how did you first become interested in
Speaker 1: ancient Egyptian beekeeping? Oh, I've been a frustrated historian for many,
Speaker 1: many years. Uh and uh, my my interest in egyptology
Speaker 1: and and insectsalt sort of happened about the same time
Speaker 1: in my early teen years living in Miami, Florida. And Uh,
Speaker 1: I remember walking home, uh and seeing a wild nest
Speaker 1: of honeycomb that had fallen on the ground, and I
Speaker 1: collected out all the ease and put him into I
Speaker 1: was a nerd. I put him in test tubes and
Speaker 1: took him up into my room and watched them develop,
Speaker 1: and ended taking him to the school and they had
Speaker 1: him on display for several days. And that got my
Speaker 1: interest in honeybees. My interest in knegy apology happened a
Speaker 1: few weeks later. I was going to a parochial institution
Speaker 1: that was a very creationist at his orientation, and they
Speaker 1: started talking about Noah's flood and Usher's chronology and said
Speaker 1: that the flood occurred in b C. And that seemed
Speaker 1: kind of interesting to me because I've seen dates that
Speaker 1: pertained to each college, it seemed older. So I looked,
Speaker 1: went and started reading books on on Ancient East, but
Speaker 1: found that the pyramids built five years before the flood.
Speaker 1: And it was a real, uh, real enlightening experience. Like,
Speaker 1: am I the only one that seen this? Must have
Speaker 1: built them very sturdy? Oh? You know that's right that
Speaker 1: you know the flood that created that, that that carved
Speaker 1: out the Grand Canyon didn't destroy the Pyramids. So anyway,
Speaker 1: that that that really got me going. And but I
Speaker 1: also got fascinated with Egyptology at that time, and even
Speaker 1: even while I was working at my PhD in entomology.
Speaker 1: I remember that was when the King Tut exhibit was
Speaker 1: touring for the first time in the late seventies, and
Speaker 1: going to the Egyptology section at the University of Illinois
Speaker 1: Library and just sitting on the floor and pulling off
Speaker 1: every volume one after the other, looking for any kind
Speaker 1: of insect association and insect reference. And that's how it
Speaker 1: started wanting to sort of annoy my high school teachers
Speaker 1: and then getting caught up in the King Tut craze.
Speaker 1: That was when Steve Martin did that wonderful song on
Speaker 1: Saturday Night Live so it was a way to get
Speaker 1: caught up in that as well. So, Dr Krisky, what
Speaker 1: would you say about how the ancient Egyptian treatment of
Speaker 1: bee keeping the apriculture technology. What does that reveal about
Speaker 1: the ancient Egyptian culture? What does their technology say about
Speaker 1: who these people were and what they believed? Well, the
Speaker 1: the aspect, of course, the title of the book is
Speaker 1: the Tears of Ray, and there is a papyrus from
Speaker 1: three UH b c. Which gives the whole story about
Speaker 1: what the Egyptians thought bees were about. And that that
Speaker 1: the the statement that's in this papyrus UH that wrote
Speaker 1: UH that the god Ray wept and the tears from
Speaker 1: his eyes fell on the ground and turned into a bee.
Speaker 1: And the bee made his honeycomb and busied himself with
Speaker 1: the flowers of every plant. And so wax was made
Speaker 1: and also honey out of the tears of Ray. And
Speaker 1: so for the Egyptians, honey was a gift of the
Speaker 1: Sun God, and that made it very very important to them.
Speaker 1: Not only was an important commodity as a sweetener, it
Speaker 1: was used in medicine, it was used in uh and UH.
Speaker 1: The wax was very important and as in medicine as
Speaker 1: well along with honey, but also as a as a
Speaker 1: magical substance. All this came from these these insects that
Speaker 1: were essentially the manifestation of the God's tears, and so
Speaker 1: that that made honey quite valuable from a theological perspective,
Speaker 1: but also from a biological perspective as well. And they're
Speaker 1: even in their their temples, the Sun Temple, for example,
Speaker 1: from the fifth dynoce of no Ausraani, there's this wonderful
Speaker 1: relief that shows beekeeping. And so here's something that I
Speaker 1: don't I've been to a lot of cathedrals and temples
Speaker 1: and churches around the world, and I've not seen displays
Speaker 1: about beekeeping in there. So that puts in a whole
Speaker 1: different perspective. Now in in your research, am I correct
Speaker 1: and reading that you at one point became locked inside
Speaker 1: of a tomb? Yes, that happened though. That was I
Speaker 1: was a Fulbright scholar to Egypt in the early eighties,
Speaker 1: and uh it was. I was teaching in Many at
Speaker 1: many A University, about a hundred fifty miles south of Cairo,
Speaker 1: and as part of my research, I was I was
Speaker 1: just visiting archaeological sites to find any kind of insect
Speaker 1: carving and references to insects and what have you? Visited
Speaker 1: ninety four archaeological sites, and Uh, I was getting so
Speaker 1: well known in the area that I was even asked
Speaker 1: by members of the Forebay Commission if I would meet
Speaker 1: guests and take them on tours. And one instance was
Speaker 1: the American ambassador to Egypt. He Uh, he and his
Speaker 1: wife and their son came down to Minia for a
Speaker 1: tour of the antiquities, and of course his excellency was
Speaker 1: received a government to escort everywhere he was going, and
Speaker 1: and the ambassador's son and I went off on our own.
Speaker 1: And while we were down in an underground acropolis, UH,
Speaker 1: sandstorm blew up, and uh they grabbed the ambassador and
Speaker 1: his wife and escorted them to the rest house, and
Speaker 1: UH we weren't there. And I was told later that
Speaker 1: he looked around and said, where's my son, And this
Speaker 1: military official responded, he is safe, your excellency. He has
Speaker 1: locked in the tomb. And so of course we had
Speaker 1: we had two guards. We were in any real danger,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't like it was like air TI We're
Speaker 1: gonna suffocate, because you actually see through cracks from the door,
Speaker 1: so his son and I started exploring on our own
Speaker 1: while we were waiting. We were there about forty five
Speaker 1: minutes and went down one UH shaft and found a
Speaker 1: small UH coffin that would have held up mummified ibis bird.
Speaker 1: We found a crocodile skull. There was there was mummy
Speaker 1: linen everywhere because this was such a it was an
Speaker 1: important underground, the animal necropolis, So it was quite an
Speaker 1: exciting time. It's one of those few things that Uh,
Speaker 1: I never expected to do, and it's something that doesn't
Speaker 1: happen to a lot of people. You know, the mummified
Speaker 1: animals you mentioned that relates back to something I knew
Speaker 1: you mentioned in the book, but I didn't have a
Speaker 1: time to look up on the side as you mentioned
Speaker 1: the Crocodilopolis, which sounded fascinating to me. What's the deal
Speaker 1: with that crocodile Opolis? Uh. That was a city that
Speaker 1: was prominent during the toll Make period later in an
Speaker 1: ancient uh Egypt UH and UH they were the crocodile
Speaker 1: god was the god so back, and so crocodile Opolis
Speaker 1: was associated with that deity. And the reference in the
Speaker 1: book talked about feeding crocodile, a food that was also
Speaker 1: laced with with honey. Oh yeah. So one of the
Speaker 1: things that you point out in the book, and I
Speaker 1: noticed even before you pointed it out, in several of
Speaker 1: the different artworks and carvings, is the variable number of
Speaker 1: legs in the depictions of bees. Like sometimes you would
Speaker 1: see with apparently three legs, which sort of makes sense
Speaker 1: because it seems like maybe if you're looking from one side,
Speaker 1: each leg could represent a pair. But then other times
Speaker 1: you'd see what looked to me like four legs or
Speaker 1: maybe five legs, depending on how you interpreted, one little
Speaker 1: uh strand coming out the back of the bee. And
Speaker 1: this this rang a bell in my mind. And I
Speaker 1: remember that there is a passage in the Book of
Speaker 1: Leviticus and Leviticus eleven that talks about winged insects with
Speaker 1: four legs, and I just thought that was a kind
Speaker 1: of strange coincidence. Now, there are obviously a lot of
Speaker 1: ways you might explain a glyph of a bee or
Speaker 1: an illustration of a bee in the ancient world having
Speaker 1: a different number of legs, But do you think this
Speaker 1: was a widespread belief in the ancient Near East that
Speaker 1: there were insects with four legs or is this just
Speaker 1: conservation of detail? Well, and in the case of the
Speaker 1: Egyptian honeybee, the most uh exact carvings show the be
Speaker 1: having uh four legs oriented forward and then the hind
Speaker 1: legs actually superimposed on the abdomen, and some instances that
Speaker 1: wasn't drawn in or was very lightly carved in, so
Speaker 1: it doesn't stand out because it's actually almost superimposed on
Speaker 1: the abdomen itself. And uh So on almost all cases
Speaker 1: you're gonna find evidence that they probably had all the
Speaker 1: six legs, but they might not have carved the hind
Speaker 1: leg as detailed enough because of the abdominal structure. Carving
Speaker 1: that that honeybe hieroglyph was quite variable. I have a
Speaker 1: chapter in the book about about how they would go
Speaker 1: about doing this, and it's all for me. It was
Speaker 1: like doing handwriting analysis if you're gonna do forensic handwriting
Speaker 1: analysis for forgery or what have you. And I found
Speaker 1: there were certain certain patterns that were consistent uh certain
Speaker 1: certain bees in certain places of temples, for example. But
Speaker 1: in general, unless if it's a very careful carving, it
Speaker 1: always has evidence of the four legs forward and then
Speaker 1: the hind legs superposed on it, but you wouldn't see
Speaker 1: the other leg on the other side of the ave
Speaker 1: been that case. But so I think you're looking at
Speaker 1: mostly UH not not necessarily being careful for the eye
Speaker 1: of detail. But in some cases these uh, these details
Speaker 1: might have slowly given away during time through time. Interesting,
Speaker 1: So a question this this is something that that maybe
Speaker 1: didn't come up as much in the book, but it
Speaker 1: kind of relates to some previous episodes that we've we've
Speaker 1: done to the podcast the deal with with with Egyptology
Speaker 1: and animals. Did the ancient Egyptians ever use bees as
Speaker 1: a as a weapon in any sense? I didn't didn't
Speaker 1: run across any example of honey bees being used as
Speaker 1: a weapon like you would see, for example, some of
Speaker 1: the UH medieval UH elimited manage strips, some of the
Speaker 1: references to talk about UH skep straw bee hives being
Speaker 1: thrown over castle walls for example, to break up a
Speaker 1: siege and things like that. So I did not find
Speaker 1: any evidence of of bees being used as a weapon
Speaker 1: per se. UH. The difference was in the type of
Speaker 1: hivesriptions were using. They were clay tubes. They would not
Speaker 1: stand to a lot of UH trauma, if you will. Uh.
Speaker 1: They we had fewer bees in each one than than
Speaker 1: we would have an our typical modern box. I probably
Speaker 1: five seven thousand bees as opposed to you know, thirty
Speaker 1: bees in a tall, multi store, multi boxed lank straw.
Speaker 1: Five cool. Uh. And so I've got a couple of
Speaker 1: other ideas. I want to see what you think about
Speaker 1: about the relationship between humans and bees and uh and
Speaker 1: be evolution. So one of the first things I started
Speaker 1: thinking about in this book is that bee keeping seems
Speaker 1: interesting to me and that it might be unique. And
Speaker 1: I wonder if you can think of any other examples
Speaker 1: in that it seems like a truly three way symbiotic
Speaker 1: relationship between the plants that are pollinated, the bees that
Speaker 1: produced the honey, and then the human beekeepers. And I
Speaker 1: was trying to think of another relationship that's equally symbiotic
Speaker 1: three ways, and I couldn't quite but I wondered if
Speaker 1: you had any insight on that. Uh. Well, with regard
Speaker 1: to the bees, uh, I think humans are probably interacting
Speaker 1: with honey bees long before we became Homo sapiens. We
Speaker 1: know now that, for example, chimpanzees will will take sticks
Speaker 1: and fashion them in different thicknesses, for example, to tear
Speaker 1: into a wild honey bee dest and I'll even carry
Speaker 1: these these sticks around with them so they uh, you know,
Speaker 1: if if the chimpanzees are doing that, it's quite likely
Speaker 1: that the hominins, our ancestors are probably doing this as well, uh,
Speaker 1: going back several million years. So this is asociation with
Speaker 1: bees is very ancient in uh, in our species and
Speaker 1: probably definitely predates some modern modern humans. So in that
Speaker 1: case that since honey bees, they're not truly be keeping
Speaker 1: their robbing, but there is the relationship that they're actually
Speaker 1: gonna be taking advantage of of the golden sweet windfall
Speaker 1: of of a bees nest um. And that was probably
Speaker 1: how are our bee keeping originated. There are symbiotic relationships
Speaker 1: that that that might involve with the three organisms, but
Speaker 1: don't necessarily involve humans. I'm trying to think some I'm
Speaker 1: thinking of things like the fig wasps and things like
Speaker 1: that that you you'd see a very specialized relationship between
Speaker 1: the figs humans and and uh the wasps. And in
Speaker 1: those cases, now, in the case of Egypt today, they
Speaker 1: didn't have the fig wasps, so they were actually scarifying
Speaker 1: the fruit to make it ripen. But and and of
Speaker 1: course that would be a three way example as well. Excellent. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I didn't even think about the fig wasps. But that
Speaker 1: that's it's a tremendous example. That is a great question.
Speaker 1: I like, that's that's that that's coming from the side
Speaker 1: that time we thought about for my mind is really
Speaker 1: clicking on that one. Well, well, that leads into the
Speaker 1: next question I wanted to ask, which is about the
Speaker 1: evolutionary relationship we see with other domesticated animals that that
Speaker 1: humans use for their agricultural agriculture for companionships. So we've
Speaker 1: got dogs, we've got cattle, we've got all kinds of
Speaker 1: you know, draft animals, farm animals that in many ways
Speaker 1: have very much diverged evolutionarily from their wild ancestors. And
Speaker 1: I wonder if we see anything like that with domesticated bees,
Speaker 1: or if we ever will in the future. Um, is
Speaker 1: it because we've had a domestication relationship with bees for
Speaker 1: less time if we don't see that, I think there's
Speaker 1: no question that we've had an impact on on honeybee evolution.
Speaker 1: Case in point, in Europe during the last fifteen hundred years,
Speaker 1: when we kept bees so in straw and wicker skep hives,
Speaker 1: the basket hives. It was very common uh in the
Speaker 1: early earlier centuries when you harvested the honey, the beekeeper
Speaker 1: and walk around, pick up the lift the skep, and
Speaker 1: it was really heavy. That would be the one that
Speaker 1: they would harvest. And the how they would harvest it.
Speaker 1: They would dig a pit in the ground filled with
Speaker 1: sulfur and brimstone heavy and start a fire and literally
Speaker 1: knock all the bees into the fire. Now they're what
Speaker 1: they're doing is taking their best producing bees and killing them. Uh.
Speaker 1: Darwin has something to say about that. And and what
Speaker 1: we're seeing is this, we have four centuries slowly been
Speaker 1: killing large numbers of a very good producing colonies. And
Speaker 1: then we tried to some of the be Eventually we
Speaker 1: got the point where they could drive the bees out
Speaker 1: of these wicker basket hives. They would they would take
Speaker 1: the skep hive, put in in the full skep, put
Speaker 1: it upside down and a pail, and then have an
Speaker 1: empty scap next to it, and using pieces of board
Speaker 1: nail sort of hold that empty scap in place. And
Speaker 1: then they banged the daylights out of the side of
Speaker 1: that pail and the bees and walk out of the
Speaker 1: full step up into the empty, empty scap In the
Speaker 1: second they could drive the bees from one hive to
Speaker 1: the next, So that stopped that. We started seeing that
Speaker 1: in good numbers in the late eighteen hundreds and quite
Speaker 1: common during the UH the nineteenth century. But we for
Speaker 1: many many years had been you know, going out and
Speaker 1: and selectively killing good producing bees. And UH a colleague
Speaker 1: of mine, UH Steve Shepard up at the Washington State University,
Speaker 1: has been looking at the diversity of honey bees and
Speaker 1: it's found that all the bees in the United States
Speaker 1: are all of our queens are related to a small
Speaker 1: number of queens. It's a fewer than a thousand. So
Speaker 1: we've we have dramatically reduced the genetic diversity of bees
Speaker 1: over over the years as beekeepers. That may be contributing
Speaker 1: to some of the problems that we we are having.
Speaker 1: And there's a concerned effort now Steve is doing this
Speaker 1: and others to go out all over the world and
Speaker 1: try to improve the genetic diversity by getting hum collecting
Speaker 1: drones and getting semen UH samples to bring back for
Speaker 1: for crosses well, that's really fascinating. So that makes me
Speaker 1: wonder do we already have or do you ever think
Speaker 1: we will have, uh, domesticated bees that are as different
Speaker 1: from the wild original honeybee as say a chihuahua is
Speaker 1: from the gray wolf. Well, we have several, we have
Speaker 1: several strains are are varieties. Now there's the and they're
Speaker 1: all APIs maliferu. But their their subspecies. They all and
Speaker 1: from what we can tell is they all evolved on
Speaker 1: their own. And you know, for example, Italian strain came
Speaker 1: from the the Alps area north and Olian what have you? Uh,
Speaker 1: we are there. It has been attempts. Brother Adam was
Speaker 1: a beekeeper who was trying who uh, selectively breed bees
Speaker 1: that would mature a little faster to help produce it's
Speaker 1: it's a parasite load, for example. So there are efforts
Speaker 1: to do things like that. Uh, I've not seen any
Speaker 1: real overall success that let's say that it's that's uh,
Speaker 1: that it's come to fruition, but that it is quite
Speaker 1: conceivable that we could modify bees through selective breading to
Speaker 1: be something different. M interesting. Well, Robert, did you have
Speaker 1: something else? No, I believe that that's that's a great
Speaker 1: place to leave off. I just wanna I want to
Speaker 1: thank thank you again Professor Chritsky for taking the time
Speaker 1: to chat with us and encourage all of our listeners.
Speaker 1: If you're if you're whether you're interested in history or
Speaker 1: or insects, um, if it's the the ancient Egyptian angle
Speaker 1: or the bee keeping angle that that brings you in
Speaker 1: like this is just a tremendous and accessible read on
Speaker 1: both topics. My if if I can, the shameless plug
Speaker 1: you spoke with Oxford was the quest for the Perfect hive,
Speaker 1: which is the history of the modern beehive and how
Speaker 1: we how we got from these two pies, from the
Speaker 1: Egyptians up to the through basket hives into the those
Speaker 1: white boxes that we see uh out in fields. Now,
Speaker 1: can you tell us what will the hives of the
Speaker 1: future look like? Oh? Well, that's one of the themes
Speaker 1: behind my the book. The question of the perfect hive
Speaker 1: is one of the things that's happened is we've stopped,
Speaker 1: we've stopped inventing. It's beginning to come back a little bit.
Speaker 1: But um, when the during the late nineteenth century into
Speaker 1: the twentieth century, beekeepers were spending a lot of money,
Speaker 1: but to buy equipment that was interchangeable, and they were
Speaker 1: buying extractors and uh uh it was rather it's rather
Speaker 1: expensive to actually retool an entire b operation, honeybe operation.
Speaker 1: And so uh if you went and found a beekeeping
Speaker 1: supply catalog from the nineteen twenties, it would look just
Speaker 1: like our catalogs to day in some cases, except they
Speaker 1: wouldn't have a styro from hives. So here we have
Speaker 1: these we have pre depression Arab bees uh living in
Speaker 1: hives that were invented back that eight twenties, and we
Speaker 1: we've got we have their honey bee geno. And so
Speaker 1: you know, my question always have we found the perfect hive?
Speaker 1: And since the books come out, we're now seeing a
Speaker 1: lot of people invest uh exploring new hives. There's a
Speaker 1: couple that are really quite intriguing. The Omelet Hive out
Speaker 1: of England, which is a wonderful hive for it's it's expensive,
Speaker 1: but it's a wonderful hive for the backyard bee keeper.
Speaker 1: We of course you might have recently heard about the
Speaker 1: flow hive. That's this hive that uh economically extract the
Speaker 1: honey from the hive through hoses and that's that's something
Speaker 1: that's I believe there's a kick Starter campaign to help
Speaker 1: fund UH fund that. Uh. There there's a lot of
Speaker 1: interest in trying to improve UH bee keeping operations to
Speaker 1: encourage more people to keep bees even if they don't
Speaker 1: want to collect the honey, but just keep pollinators around.
Speaker 1: Oh man, the bee hive with the hoses, that sounds
Speaker 1: like an hr geer kind of cold. You should take
Speaker 1: a look at it all. They are actually able to
Speaker 1: split the honey comb and then they they the honey
Speaker 1: then flows out through through UH hoses into containers so
Speaker 1: they don't have to take the high the frames out
Speaker 1: for extracting. Wow. Well that's fascinating. Well, uh, I guess
Speaker 1: we should wrap it up unless there's anything else you
Speaker 1: feel like you would like to say. But but I
Speaker 1: really appreciate you talking to us. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Speaker 1: Thank you for having me. All right, So there you
Speaker 1: have it. That book again is The Tears of Ray
Speaker 1: be Keeping an Ancient Egypt by Gene Kritzky, and that
Speaker 1: is Ray spelled r E. You can find that it
Speaker 1: is available in both physical and digital copies right now
Speaker 1: and will include a link to it on the landing
Speaker 1: page for this uh wet for this episode at stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow your Mind dot com. And if you want
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us about this episode or
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