Apiculture began in the forest. Thousands of years ago, people were gathering honey in the same way bears did: they would rip honeycombs from the tree hollows where wild bees lived, destroying the nest while doing so. With time, they realised that taking care of the bee families would bring better results. They started to cut out artificial hollows in trees and invite bees to them. They learned to harvest honeycombs in a way that would not endanger the insects and to leave enough honey for bees to survive. A ‘leziwo’, a rope-and-bench tree-climbing implement, was one of the basic tools of the forest beekeepers that made it easier for them to climb up to the hive. The first beehives that appeared in homesteads were fragments of tree trunks modelled on natural beehives. These are log beehives: standing and lying ones. Beehives woven out of straw and made of boards became popular with time and many of them had the shape of houses or shrines. Log beehives often look like wooden sculptures, homes for bees hidden in the figures of people and animals, including the bear as a well-known lover of honey.