Angry Bee Mead, or How Bees Defeated the Roman Legions

Deliciously deceptive, mead is a drink for which I've come to regard with respect. Like champagne, it tastes like you're drinking stars, but should you imbibe too much (an oh, so easy trap to fall into), you'll see stars—and I don't mean the pretty kind.

Bees somehow seem to have a magical quality about them. Hive products have long been associated with longevity and energy. Depending on the type of pollen the bees gather, bee products can impart the healing qualities from plants. On the flip side, just as honey can impart the beneficial properties of plants, so can it also deliver the more harmful effects.

It brings to my mind images of Vikings gathered around a roaring fire in the center of a mead hall, boasting of their exploits and spinning tales to pass a long winter's night. (Beowulf is probably responsible for that impression.)

One of the oldest fermented drinks, the Mayans, Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, Celts, Gauls, and Indians, each made their own version of mead. Atlantis must have had it, too, right? Perhaps it was the Atlanteans who introduced the drink to the rest of the world in the first place?

The mead of the ancient world was, um, shall we say, different from the mead we think of today. Whole hive mead (or angry bee mead, as some call it) was made exactly the way its name suggests. An entire hive was dug up and tossed into a pot—the honey, pollen, comb, propolis, the larvae, and the queen, while the worker bees furiously injected their venom into the mix (eeeeeewwww!). Based on that recipe, it's easy to see why mead was considered a food rather than merely an alcoholic beverage to drink for fun.

I'll just settle for my Really Raw Honey, thank you very much. (By the way, if you haven't tried that before, you haven't tasted real honey! Seriously, that stuff's better than candy!)

By now, you may have deduced just how bees defeated the Roman legions. Yep, poison honey.

Strabo, a Greek geographer and historian, records the event. The Roman general Pompey the Great lost over a thousand of his men in a battle against Heptakometes' tribes in Turkey, after they had eaten “mad honey,” made from bees that had foraged on the pollen of rhododendron flowers. The Romans dug right into the hives, conveniently located along their route, just like I dive into my jar every morning. The rest is history. Yikes! Whoever said biological warfare was a modern concept?

I'm excited to report that my dear hubby has also taken an interest in honey. More specifically, in mead. He's researching how to make the stuff, and plans to start his first batch sometime next year. If all goes well, or perhaps even if it doesn't, I'll blog his progress.

Oh, and I almost forgot, look for Atlantean mead in my books! Cheers—or should I say, buzzzz?

Sources:

Buhner, Stephen Harrod, Sacred and Healing Beers. Boulder, Colorado: Siris Books, 1998.

http://www.foodrepublic.com/2011/09/20/boiled-alive-turning-bees-mead

http://ancientimes.blogspot.com/2012/05/poison-honey-and-importance-of-classics.html

http://www.academia.edu/966648/Mad_Honey_

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_%28mythology%29

http://www.sfgate.com/homeandgarden/thedirt/article/Behold-the-lovely-rhododendron-and-beware-its-2732040.php

Pictures:

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panth%C3%A9on_de_la_mythologie_nordique#mediaviewer/File:Walhall_by_Emil_Doepler.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stories_of_beowulf_queen_poring_wine.jpg

http://www.foodrepublic.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/enlarge/scrapingbees.JPG

#mead #honey #rome #norsesagas #atlantis #ancientclassicalliterature #medievalliterature