The relationship between humans and honey bees is ancient
and remains the subject of long-standing interest. Today, honey
bees are kept in semi-domesticated conditions by beekeepers, and
the honey of wild bees is harvested (i.e., honey hunting) on all
continents where bees exist (Crane, 1990, 1999). Technical and industrial
aspects of these practices have received detailed attention,
yet the evolutionary aspects of the human-honey bee relationship
have only recently been highlighted, particularly with respect to
the role of honey in human dietary evolution (Crittenden, 2011;
Wrangham, 2011). This topic has broad-ranging implications for
understanding the evolutionary trajectory of the human lineage, in
part because the emergence of human-like intelligence and life
history traits is thought to be associated with specific attributes of
consumed foods (discussed in Kaplan et al., 2000).