Beekeeping

Beekeeping, also called apiculture, is the maintenance of bee colonies, most often in artificial hives, chiefly to collect honey and other hive products such as beeswax, propolis, bee pollen and royal jelly. The western honey bee, in the genus Apis, is the species most commonly kept, though other honey-producing bees such as Melipona stingless bees are also raised, and beekeepers also earn income from crop pollination, raising queens and producing package bees for sale. The earliest evidence of humans collecting honey comes from Spanish cave paintings dated to around 6,000 BCE, while the first evidence of beekeeping itself as a practice comes from Egypt around 3,100 BCE. In the modern era beekeeping is used heavily for crop pollination as well as its traditional products, and it has grown increasingly accessible, with urban beekeeping described as a growing trend as of 2016, in part because city-kept bees have in some studies been found healthier than rural ones owing to fewer pesticides and greater biodiversity.