Heated vs. unheated honey arguments do seem a bit inconsequential to me too, but Yon made a more important point: most people leave out the fat-and-protein-rich grubcomb when they talk about honey. I don't regularly eat honey and don't advocate it, so I'm not trying to justify the eating of honey and I hope no one gets that misimpression. Some of the following is speculation on my part, but I find speculation to be fun and it sometimes leads me to interesting discoveries, so I’ll have at it and share some of the information I have accumulated on bee hive foods.
The story of honey and the other foods offered by bee hives (including bee eggs, larvae, and pupae, which together make up the brood) is intriguing, so it’s something I have looked into before. The honey/hive story does not seem to be clear-cut, either pro or con, to me. It is one of the more complex and intriguing stories of the foods available in the Stone Age. The seasonality and relative value vs. alternatives (such as megafauna) of bee hive foods appears to be their main limiting factors, rather than difficulty in obtaining them.
Several nonhuman primates have been observed obtaining and eating honeycomb and grubcomb (the comb which contains the bee eggs, larvae and pupae—with the larvae or grubs apparently being the most desired by both humans and nonhuman animals, because of their high fat content):
From
The world history of beekeeping and honey hunting, By Eva Crane:
"Some primates [eat] brood and honey from bees’ nests. Rhesus monkeys (Macaca mulatta) in Asia were seen taking brood from an Apis florae nest. In the Ganges delta ‘monkeys are said to smear the body with a thick layer of silt before approaching the [A. dorsata] combs’ (Chakrabarti & Chaudhuri, 1972). In southern Asia various langurs (Presbytis) behaved similarly. ….
According to the Belanda-Biri people in southern Sudan, chimpanzees 'are great honey thieves' (Brown, 1984). .... The male [chimp] pulled out brood and honey combs with his hands, took a bite--and got a few stings--then threw the rest down to where the others were waiting. They in turn grabbed the combs and enjoyed them. They were stung, and jumped up and down, screaming, and tried to swat the bees stinging their faces. But all seemed to be enjoying the affair thoroughly, except the babies who snuggled their faces into their mothers' chests.
Van Lawick-Goodall (1971), who made extensive studies of chimpanzees in the Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania, watched an adult male and his mother co-operating to get honey. .... The male pushed a short length of thick stick backwards and forwards in the opening of an underground nest, using it as a lever to enlarge the hole. He waited while his mother reached down with her hand and brought out a honey comb; then he took out some crushed comb and ate it."
p. 36 “In parts of Australia, Aborigines found stingless bees … and used their honey and wax…. “
There is a possible rock painting of honey hunting in the caves of Altamira, but it is unclear whether it is or not. Clearer representations of honey hunting are found in Mesolithic rock paintings in Valencia, Spain. One article dates them to 7000 BC (“Bees,”
http://www.the-piedpiper.co.uk/th16.htm), though it provides no references.
The Honeymen Tribehttp://travel.discovery.com/tvlistings/episode.jsp?episode=0&cpi=23114&gid=5726&channel=TRVHoney is the main livelihood of the Shenko people living on the edge of a highland forest in Western Ethiopia. A villager, Miango, owns over 300 hives. To make and fix his hives, he climbs high in the trees, where one slip could mean certain death.
also it's important to realize that honey made in traditional bee boxes does not contain larvae. the box keeps the queen separated from the honeycomb so she can't lay eggs in it. so, a REAL raw wild honey would contain lots of protein and fat from the larvae. that would make it a much more appealing food for paleo men.
Correct. Look at the lengths these people go to get some honeycomb:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRngOJc62oY. No, they are not Stone Agers, of course, but note that they appear to have plenty of sheep that might provide meat (though they likely use them for wool also or even mainly). Note also in that video that there are also some bee larvae or “grubs” in some of the retrieved combs (called grubcomb). Ironically, honey is not the favorite treat of honey bears. Instead, it’s bee larvae, which are rich in fat (
http://genomebiology.com/2008/9/10/R156). No doubt Paleolithic peoples ate rather than picked out the larvae, as honey hunters do today (
http://www2.bc.edu/~morellig/IturiForestPeoplesFund/HTML/honey.htm), so even in honey hunting Stone Agers obtained some fat and protein.
Traditional peoples seem to prefer honeycomb to grubcomb, but eat both. When honeycomb and grubcomb are in season, traditional peoples gorge on them: "After twenty minutes of gorging only about one kilogram of honey is left to take back to camp with the grub comb. This is one of the first trees of the season, and it is not uncommon for the men to eat nearly all the honey, leaving little for the women and children. In good years there is always plenty for everyone and even a large surplus for exchange with the villagers."
So the seasonal eating of honeycomb and grubcomb containing bee grubs as well as honey does not justify eating honey alone today, but it does appear likely that honey and grubcomb were eaten at times by Stone Age peoples, given that hunter-gatherers and other primates have been observed eating it and rock paintings of 5-7,000 years ago in pre-agrarian areas suggest it was eaten prior to agriculture. My guess is that where big game was plentiful, men would value hunting megafauna over hunting hives, and the latter might have been relegated to women and children or even ignored completely in some areas. If meat had been scarce during the last half million to 30,000 years and the only alternative foods had been fruits and vegetables, I’ll bet Stone Age people would have eaten more honeycomb and grubcomb than they probably did. However, again, this is speculation on my part.
