©1987 by The Regents of the University of California
Division of Agriculture and Natural Resources.
The first known evidence that early man robbed honey from bees is a primitive drawing on a cave wall in
eastern Spain dating from 7000 B.C. Throughout recorded history honey’s importance as a food and as
medicine has been realized. English settlers brought the honey bee (Apis mellifera L.) to North America in
about 1622. Thomas Jefferson, in his Notes on the State of Virginia, observed that American Indians called the honey bee “the white man’s fly.” In California, honey bees were introduced in 1853 by Christopher A.
Shelton, who established an apiary of 12 colonies just north of San Jose. Of the 12, only one survived, but it cast three swarms that summer and by 1858 there were at least 150 colonies directly descended from the 8 Shelton hive.