ArcHives

Forager bees are active in the spring and summer, transporting nectar and pollen from flowering plants to the hive, forming wax brood cells for larvae and storage cells for honey. Honey and wax have been an important resource since the Stone Age; an intimate relationship between bees and people that stretches back into deep time. In the past beeswax could be worth eightfold more than honey. Today wax and honey are of equivalent value but together represent only a fraction of the value of bees as pollinators of over 100 commercial crops. 

Beeswax continues to be used as a lubricant, adhesive, for waterproofing, casting and for candles. Beeswax contains plant alkanes, the biomolecules from bees and the metagenome of the beehive. We hypothesise that archaeological and historical beeswax is a proxy for past bee health, populations and beekeeping practices, in addition to recreating past "beescapes". Dated and provenanced by sigillography, medieval seals is made with a mixture of beeswax and rosin. The wax is softened, kneaded and folded before impression, therefore possibly containing the DNA of the individuals named in the documents to which they are attached. 

Beeswax may therefore prove to be one of the most remarkable and yet overlooked biomolecular archives. The chosen source of illumination of the medieval church, beeswax can now shed new light on a domesticated insect, the management of forests, crops and weeds, medieval trade in wax, social networks of people, of rituals associated with exchange, and the bureaucracies and protocols of authentication and security in the medieval world. 

The aim of ArcHives is to use wax as a biomolecular archive to inform upon: 

• the geographic origin of beeswax (and bees)

• the changing diversity of the hive microbiome in modern and historical beeswax

• the DNA of individuals associated with the production of the legal documents trapped in kneaded wax 

ArcHives is funded by Carlsbergfondet Semper Ardens