This book offers a vision of the bee and its products from their economic, social, symbolic, religious and cultural perspectives in the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, in chronological order starting in Prehistory and continuing to Late Antiquity, in an analysis supported by a great number of references drawn from literature, epigraphs, numismatics, archaeology and iconography. The work is divided into four sections on the bee, honey, apiculture as a task, a professsion and a technology of Antiquity, based on the descriptions of classical authors and the archaeological register. Finally, there is an analysis of different iconographical representations of the bee derived from a variety of environments and cultures and demonstrating the reach and meaning of this insect in the Mediterranean.