Bee Sweet

Honey is beloved throughout Africa and Eurasia, though it couldn’t have been the most obvious of foods to begin with; the first person to break into a beehive must have been either incredibly brave or incredibly stupid. But once the principle had been grasped, it could be taught. The ancient Indo-Europeans, not otherwise big shots in food history, apparently introduced honey to the Turks and Mongols, because their word for it, bal, seems to come from the Indo-European melit. Some linguists have even speculated that the Chinese word (mi, which was miet in Old Chinese) comes from another Indo-European word for honey, medhu.

Only four of the 20,000-odd species of bee make honey. Besides the familiar honeybee, Apis mellifera, there’s a variety (A. indica) domesticated in some parts of Asia and two wild honeybees. The giant honeybee of India and Indonesia (A. dorsata) makes honeycombs up to 9 feet in diameter.

No honeybee is native to the Americas. In fact, a Native American who saw a honeybee would shrewdly conclude that foreigners were moving into the neighborhood. However, it has been claimed that there are two native species of honey-producing wasps in California.

That would be strange, since one big difference between bees and wasps is that the latter feed their young insects and spiders, rather than pollen and honey. But if you do find a honey wasp nest and want to break into it, I’ll gladly stand way over here and hold your coat.