“”With the help of 20 years’ worth of research and thousands of prehistoric shards of pottery, a large group of scientists have presented evidence that the deep relationship between humans and honeybees is far older than we thought — giving us just one more reason to care about the conservation of a species that we’ve relied on for thousands of years.”

Honeybees are a cornerstone of modern agriculture, valued both for their importance as pollinators and for the honey and wax they produce.””

Today, they’re considered the only domesticated insect, commonly kept by humans in managed hives — but it wasn’t always this way. Like all domesticated creatures, honeybees started out as wild animals.