Thyme honey was a favorite with Ancient Romans who disregarded heather and granulated honey. Honey served many different purposes, and its bi-product, wax, also had many ingenious uses.



Honey was used like we use sugar, and possibly even more, because Romans loved to mix the sweet and the savory.

They were found of dulcia, honey-based sweets, and Apicius' cookery book mentions honey cakes, bread or wine cakes eaten with honey poured on, egg and honey "custards", and honey treats - like stuffed dates fried in honey.

Honey was a key ingredient in many sauces and dressings. Oxymel, a mixture of honey, vinegar, salt, and water was, for example, was used in preparing vegetables. Honey, rubbed in a criss-cross design in the fat, was also a glaze for ham.

Several drinks were either made of or mixed with honey, like Mulsum, a wine sweetened with honey, drunk at the start and at the end of meals.

Honey was also a preservative for fruits, vegetables or meat, according to the Roman Cookery Book.

Other honey-based preparations, such as hydromel and aqua mulsa, a honey-water, were used as medicine, and oxymel was also a cure for throat and ear troubles.



Like honey, wax could be used as a medicine. Pliny describes white bees wax, obtained by boiling bees wax in salt water, and then given in broth and feed to those with dysentery. This mixture was also a skin softener.

The Romans wrote on a little wooden frames or trays into which hot wax - sometimes with an added pigment to make the letters stand out - was poured. The sharp end of an ivory, bone or metal stylus left a clean mark in the wax, while the other end, often shaped like a little spatula, was made for smoothing away mistakes so they could be corrected. The tablets could be make like new again by remelting the wax and pouring it back into the frame.

The lost-wax process was used to make jewelry and bronze sculptures. The statue was first molded from wax, allowing for a great precision in details. It was then enclosed in a clay mantle, which was dried. Finally, molten bronze was poured in through small holes, melting the wax, and filling the mold. When the clay was removed, one obtained a bronze statue.

Some Romans also had their own statues or death masks made directly in wax. Ovid tells us that waxen figures could even be made for the purpose of doing injury to the people represented.

Wax was still used for other prospects such as a waterproofing agent for painted walls, or as some type of glue: Virgil tells us that Pan, the guardian of the bees, made a flute of reeds held together by bees wax.


Though bees were kept in Italy in great numbers, Rome demanded such huge quantities of honey and wax that they had to be imported from various parts of the empire: Sardinia, Corsica, Spain...
Like Corsica, defeated in 181 BC, or Trebizond, conquered in the first century AD, some subjugated nations even had to pay tributes or taxes in bees wax.

Sources:

http://www.pioneerthinking.com/lw_beeswax.html
Bees Wax: History and Origin
By Lance Winslow

Food in antiquity: a survey of the diet of early peoples, Don R. Brothwell, Patricia Brothwell, JHU Press, 1998, pp78-80

The Sacred Bee in Ancient Times and Folklore, Hilda M. Ransome, Courier Dover Publications, 2004, p88-91

http://www.insecta-inspecta.com/bees/honey/index.html

http://www.jaysromanhistory.com/romeweb/SOCIAL/art3.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beeswax

http://www.essortment.com/lifestyle/romansculpture_sapn.htm