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By xuaukhje HERNDON
Rappahannock News Contributing Writer
The ancestry of the type of honeybees in Rappahannock County could be traced by scientists back to the age of the dinosaurs some 50 million years ago. The ancestral home of honeybees is thought to have been the Himalaya Mountains in South Asia.
It is possible, some believe, that efforts by the honeybee ancestors to survive the cataclysms that wiped out the dinosaurs may have caused the honeybees to develop two basic characteristics for survival of a species; i.e., ability to store food in times of plenty for use in times of shortage and an ability to control the environment (temperature) in which they live (hives).
These supplement nature’s other two fundamentals for survival of a species: sustenance of life and reproduction through evolveme.nt of the male-female relationship.
While early man depicted honeybees in crude drawings on the walls of caves in Europe, the earliest useful records were discovered when 4,500-year-old tombs were unearthed in Egypt. Bas-reliefs on the walls depicted honey and beeswax in use. Crystallized honey in pots was also found. The honey was still usable.
Honeybees are not native to Virginia or to this country. Early on there were native bees that functioned with other early insects in the pollination process but none of them produced honey. Honeybees were brought to this country in the early 1600s by English explorers who landed in Virginia. The honeybees were from Europe. The so-called Italian bees are the type mostly being used in Rappahannock County today.
How important are honeybees today? More than one-third of the food supply in the world is dependent on honeybees for pollination of grain, fruit, vegetables and grasses for livestock. The U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates the value of food produced in this country alone from honeybee pollination at more than $10 billion. The value of the honey and beeswax crop, however, is only about $65 million.
In Rappahannock County there are several dozen beekeepers who maintain from one to 150 hives each. These local hives produce something in the range of 10 to 12 thousand pounds of honey annually. In Virginia, .«fchere( are.' 4,000- beekeepers
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(<Jr hiveajTjTn the' entire country there are'about 200,000 beekeepers maintaining 4Vfe million colonies. It is estimated there are about 50 million honeybee colonies in the world. Honey production in this country is put at 125,000 tons per year with worldwide production put at 650,000 tons.
Without honeybees, the fruit, vegetable, grain and grasses for
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