Rock walls spotted across southern Africa have, for thousands of years, been the canvas on which the San people have left testimony of their relationship with honeybees. Bees are rendered as little red ovals with white wings, and their hanging nests as curved red and white structures that disclose the San’s familiarity with brood panels, honey panels, and perhaps even queen cells. Some scenes show men collecting honey, sometimes climbing ladders to reach a nest, while others show people dancing next to nests. It’s an appropriate spot for such lively activity, for bees and their honey symbolize potency to the San people: the honey gives a weary hunter-gatherer a powerful energy boost, while the brood panels provide nutritious fat- and protein-filled grubs, a rich bounty made by bees from nothing but nectar and pollen. The San creation story even tells how a bee, exhausted from carrying a mantis across a river, alighted on a floating flower to die, but not before leaving a seed in the surviving mantis that by morning would produce the first human. In San belief, bees have the power not only to sustain and invigorate life, but also to create it.

Centuries separate most of that rock art from one of the newest depictions of sub-Saharan bees, made by my friend Lynn Katsoulis in collaboration with South Africa’s foremost expert on bee taxonomy, Connal Eardley. Lynn, who runs an environmental education center outside Johannesburg, one day told me she had “made a bee poster”, and thought I might like to see it. Knowing her to excel at everything, I was sure she had included much more than just European honeybees (Apis mellifera), for more than them there certainly are. For instance, in my old garden here in Spain, I used to play hotelier to half a dozen inch-long carpenter bees (Xylocopa violacea) that took up residence in logs I drilled out for them, and on summer evenings I used to look out for carder bees (Anthidium sp) that spent the night with their jaws clamped to the leaflets of a little palm tree, their tail-ends sticking into the air. And where I now live, I often visit a huge colony of yet-to-be-identified bees that make their individual nests by tunneling into a sandy bank facing the sun. But I had no idea Lynn’s poster would reveal sub-Saharan Africa to be home to 2,755 species of bee (with 1,200 in South Africa alone), or that so many pollinated food plants. Neither did I expect to see 150 images representing all the named genera, photographs Connal had taken over his life’s work (Figure 1; collated from The bee genera and subgenera of Sub-Saharan Africa, 2010; Belgium: Abc Taxa), with information about where they nest, where they obtain food, and whether they are solitary or social. The poster is as beautiful in its own way as the paintings of any ancient San artist, and shares the purpose of documenting our knowledge of, and relationship with, bees.

But in Africa that relationship is changing. Certainly, we are destroying the honeybee’s power, well exemplified by the sudden, pesticide-induced death of a million honeybees in Cape Town’s wine-producing region in November 2018. The concern was palpable. How would crops be pollinated if this continued? Was the end of honey approaching? However, when Lynn told me about the stingless bee colonies she had “inherited” from Connal upon his retirement, and how these tiny creatures (of which there are many more species than on the poster) are good pollinators and make a little honey to boot, I began to wonder whether these bees might also have the power to sustain and invigorate life.

It is amazing what can slip by you. A little reading showed that work has been going on for years across Africa to quantify that power by classifying the continent’s stingless bees, recording traditional knowledge of them, identifying the plants they pollinate and whether that might be useful in commercial settings, designing hives suitable for them (in natural settings they make their nests underground or in logs), examining their production of honey (much prized in many parts of Africa for its medicinal properties, and far more expensive than conventional honey) and its physicochemical properties, and assessing the impact such busy insects might make in sustainable economic development programs. A small research site, the International Stingless Bee Centre, was even inaugurated in Ghana, and produced a training manual to help would-be stingless beekeepers set up shop (https://bit.ly/3vcYrlq).

But there’s still much to learn, and stingless beekeeping remains a very small affair in Africa. Continued pesticide misuse, however, plus the threat of colony collapse disorder haunting honeybees everywhere, could change things, requiring we beg stingless bees hurriedly begin wielding whatever power they possess. In this light, I wonder how Lynn might one day have to tweak the information on her poster and, if years from now a San artist were to paint on an overhanging rock, how his relationship with bees might look.

Adrian Burton

数千年来，在南部非洲发现的岩壁一直是桑人留下他们与蜜蜂关系的见证的画布。蜜蜂被渲染成带有白色翅膀的小红色椭圆形，它们悬挂的巢穴是弯曲的红白相间的结构，揭示了 San 对育雏板、蜂蜜板，甚至可能是蜂王室的熟悉程度。一些场景显示男人收集蜂蜜，有时爬梯子到达巢穴，而另一些场景则显示人们在巢穴旁边跳舞。这是进行如此热闹活动的合适地点，因为蜜蜂和它们的蜂蜜对桑人来说象征着力量：蜂蜜为疲惫的狩猎采集者提供强大的能量，而育雏板则提供富含脂肪和蛋白质的营养丰富的幼虫蜜蜂从花蜜和花粉中获得的赏金。San 的创世故事甚至讲述了一只蜜蜂如何在带着螳螂过河而筋疲力尽的情况下，落在一朵漂浮的花上死去，但还没有在幸存的螳螂身上留下一颗种子，第二天早上就会产生第一个人类。在桑人的信仰中，蜜蜂不仅具有维持和振兴生命的能力，而且还具有创造生命的能力。

几个世纪以来，大部分岩石艺术与撒哈拉以南蜜蜂的最新描绘之一分开，由我的朋友 Lynn Katsoulis 与南非最重要的蜜蜂分类学专家 Connal Eardley 合作制作。林恩在约翰内斯堡郊外经营着一家环境教育中心，有一天她告诉我她“制作了一张蜜蜂海报”，并认为我可能会喜欢看它。知道她在所有方面都表现出色，我确信她包括的不仅仅是欧洲蜜蜂（Apis mellifera），因为肯定比它们更多。例如，在我在西班牙的旧花园里，我曾经和酒店经营者玩六英寸长的木蜂（Xylocopa violacea），它们居住在我为它们钻出的原木中，并且在夏天的晚上我常常向外看用于梳蜂蜂（Antidiumsp) 它们的下巴夹在一棵小棕榈树的小叶上过夜，它们的尾端伸向空中。在我现在住的地方，我经常拜访一大群尚未确定身份的蜜蜂，它们通过隧道进入面向太阳的沙岸来筑巢。但我不知道林恩的海报会显示撒哈拉以南非洲有 2,755 种蜜蜂（仅南非就有 1,200 种），或者有这么多授粉的食用植物。我也没有想到会看到 150 张代表所有命名属的图像，康纳一生拍摄的照片（图 1；整理自撒哈拉以南非洲的蜜蜂属和亚属）, 2010; 比利时：Abc Taxa），提供有关它们筑巢地点、获取食物的地点以及它们是独居还是群居的信息。这张海报以自己的方式与任何古代圣人艺术家的画作一样美丽，其目的是记录我们对蜜蜂的了解和与蜜蜂的关系。

但在非洲，这种关系正在发生变化。当然，我们正在摧毁蜜蜂的力量，2018 年 11 月开普敦葡萄酒产区 100 万只蜜蜂因杀虫剂而突然死亡就是很好的例证。这种担忧是显而易见的。如果这种情况持续下去，作物将如何授粉？蜂蜜的末日临近了吗？然而，当林恩告诉我她在康纳尔退休时“继承”了他的无刺蜂群，以及这些微小的生物（其中的物种比海报上的种类多得多）如何成为良好的传粉者并制造一点蜂蜜时，我开始怀疑这些蜜蜂是否也有维持和振兴生命的力量。

能从你身边溜走的东西真是太神奇了。一些阅读表明，非洲各地多年来一直在开展工作，通过对非洲大陆的无刺蜜蜂进行分类、记录它们的传统知识、确定它们授粉的植物以及这是否在商业环境中有用，设计适合他们（在自然环境中在地下或原木中筑巢），检查他们生产的蜂蜜（在非洲许多地方因其药用特性而备受推崇，而且比传统蜂蜜贵得多）及其理化特性，并评估其影响这种忙碌的昆虫可能会参与可持续的经济发展计划。一个小型研究站点，即国际无刺蜜蜂中心，甚至在加纳落成，

但是还有很多东西需要学习，而且无刺养蜂在非洲仍然是一件很小的事情。然而，持续的农药滥用，再加上到处都是蜜蜂的群体崩溃紊乱的威胁，可能会改变事情，要求我们恳求无刺的蜜蜂赶紧开始运用它们拥有的任何力量。有鉴于此，我想知道 Lynn 有一天会如何调整她海报上的信息，如果几年后一位桑族艺术家要在悬垂的岩石上作画，他与蜜蜂的关系会如何。

阿德里安·伯顿