n the middle ages, sugar cane was not known in Europe and sugar beet was not yet used for the production of suger. Thus, the use of honey was the only way to sweeten food or drinks in medieval Europe. Honey also was (and still is) one of the main ingredients of mead, which in the 12th century was probably the most popular drink in Germany and northern lands, where wine was still expensive and hard to get and beer was generally considered as to bitter. Thus honey was in high demand and beekeepers, although leading a somewhat remote life, were well respected.

edieval beekeepers did not breed bees in the modern sense of the word. In Germany their bees were wild bees living in the endless forests, somewhat domesticated by the beekeepers by providing ideal nesting places and somehow guiding a new colony to these manmade places. Usually the beekeeper would cut of the top of a suitable tree near the edge of the forest or at the edge of a clearing. The remaining trunk had to be high enough to offer some protection from bears and low enough for the beekeeper to reach the bees without too much trouble. He would then carve a hole big enough for a colony into the trunk or use a natural cavity in the trunk. He would also make sure the sun could shine on the trunk most of the day and thus keep it warm.

Medieval Beekeeping

nce a suitable place was found or prepared, the beekeeper would close most of the opening with wooden planks leaving just enough room for the bees to fly in and out of the nest, while protecting the colony from bears and other honey loving creatures. The honey was usually harvestet ind late spring when nature provided enough food for the bees. The honeycombs were simply broken out to the nests and the wax was separated from the honey.

oth honey and wax were in high demand and used for a multitude of things. Wax was used for candles, mostly for churches, chapels and other places with little air circulation. But wax also had other, less obvious uses: Wax was used to produce the medieval equivalent of a notebook, the wax tablet. These consisted of a thin layer of wax on a plain wooden board and were written on with a wooden or bone stylus. The writeing on these wax tablets could easily be erased by warming and flattening the wax surface.

n the course of the 12th to 14th century people began to make the "not-land" useable - generations spent their entire working life on the destruction of forests and creation of farmable land. This process obviously also reduced the size of the land useable for beekeeping. The consequence was a steady increase on the price of honey and wax and following that an increase on the price of mead. While mead became more and more expensive, beer became more and more popular. Beer was easy enough to brew, rather inexpensive and would keep fresh for much longer than mead - it soon became the most popular drink. (Some - from modern point of view - rather exotic brewing recipies survived until now.)

ith the destruction of the German forests, more suitable land became available for growing of wine - and thus German wine, while not as sweet as wine from Greece or Italy, soon became more available and mead was mostly a "thing of the past" by the 14th century. Sugar on the other hand was not known in northern Europe before the 15th century, when merchants started importing it from the Canary Island and selling it at exceptionally high prices.