Scarab is the name I’ve given my very newly acquired laptop. It (I’m still not entirely certain whether it’s a boy or a girl laptop) arrived today in a drab brown box belying the sleek shining treasure hiding inside… Ok so I’m a little bit infatuated with this pretty piece of technology. Who could blame me? Gadgets are a girl’s best friends, don’t you know?

Scarab is a HP Pavilion dv5-1090. If anyone has anything against this particular laptop brand or model, please don’t tell me, because let’s face it - I won’t listen anyway. Scarab will be my constant companion at lectures and seminars and, well, probably pretty much whenever I leave my apartment for an extended period of time. The name was chosen because of the beautiful, shiny black design which immediately reminded me of a beetle.

Now of course this doesn’t mean I’ll abandon Volyova, my trusty gaming rig (named after a character in a scifi trilogy - brownie points to those who can name which one). In fact, it’ll simply mean I can be online and game at the same time without having to alt-tab! *swoon* I’m so happy I could die. This is almost better than Ben & Jerry’s Cheescake Brownie icecream.

No mocking! If you mock me there shall be dire repercussions such as you could never even imagine.

laptops, hp pavilion dv5

PaddyK sent me a link to this interesting story on ancient beekeeping.

Excavations in northern Israel at a huge earthen mound called Tel Rehov revealed the Iron Age settlement. From 2005 to 2007, workers at Tel Rehov uncovered the oldest known remnants of human-made beehives, excavation director Amihai Mazar and colleagues report in the September Antiquity. No evidence of beekeeping has emerged at any other archaeological sites in the Middle East or surrounding regions.

What’s more, the hives they unearthed were part of an apiary that was huge, considering the rather limited technology of the time. 25 hives have been found so far and excavation director Mazar estimates that between 75 and 200 hives fit in the apiary. Today, a lone beekeeper can take care of that many hives, but it’s a full-time job. Of course, I suspect that beekeeping today is rather more “interventionist” and hence more work-heavy than it was back then, but when you have that many hives, you tend not to do much with them other than give them more supers to put honey in. Still, the size of the apiary and its position in the centre of town implies that whomever owned it was quite well-off.

The hives themselves are cylindrical clay structures measuring 80 by 40 centimetres with a small hole for the bees and a lid in one end. Remnants of beeswax have been found by chemical analysis on two of the hives. Mazar estimates that the apiary had a potential annual yield of “500 kilograms of honey and 70 kilograms of beeswax” - rather less honey than we get these days with our improved bees and honey-extraction techniques, but still quite a respectable amount of a substance which must have been worth a lot more then than it is now.

One thing that really confuses me:

Many scholars assume that ancient Israelis made honey from fruits such as figs and dates. Nowhere does the Bible mention beekeeping as a way to produce honey, according to Mazar.

Apparently these scholars have a radically different definition of “honey” to the one used by modern beekeepers. As far as I’m concerned, honey is by definition made by bees. If humans create a mixture of fructose and glucose syrup, that’s what it is - syrup. Honey is defined as a product bees create by digesting nectar and other sugary secretions from plants. In fact, in Sweden, if you add even a tiny bit of fructose to your honey to make it liquid, you’re not allowed to market it as honey anymore.

beekeeping, archaeology, honey