once the sugar beets cultivar is developed, no, is not more difficult to make sugar from beets than is from cane.Are not sugar beets harder to get sugar from?
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Note that the first human source of sugar was certainly honey, not sugar cane.
Giving my two cents, so don't quote me on this, I'm under the impression that honey production requires a decentralized and limited network of hives, regarding both "rivalry" between them and enough avaible nectar.Would be neat to see honey become the main source. Giant bee plantations.
Is more the Later than the former, given enough available nectar, you could have a high concentration of honey combs and bees, but those conditions are extremely rare, localized and short lived so you can not really do a industrialization of the Honey productionGiving my two cents, so don't quote me on this, I'm under the impression that honey production requires a decentralized and limited network of hives, regarding both "rivalry" between them and enough available nectar
Would be neat to see honey become the main source. Giant bee plantations.
Giving my two cents, so don't quote me on this, I'm under the impression that honey production requires a decentralized and limited network of hives, regarding both "rivalry" between them and enough avaible nectar.
On the other hand, you can make whole plantation of sugarcane providing with a more regular supply of sugar, trough cash-crop production : note that it was a fructious but limited production up to the Late Middle-Ages, where Italian financials and Iberian producers went toward a plantation economy.
Among the other alternatives, you had in ancient and medieval times : dates and date honey/syrup, which obviously wouldn't fit British climate;and grape syrup (defrutum and arrope) which really was one of the main sweeteners.
But really, honey was the main source eventually due to its really wide and decentralized presence in Europe.
Date sugar could develop onto industrial scale production in the Maghreb and Levant fairly easily and early on, given the date palm's ability to thrive in those regions close to early civilizations on land that's otherwise not very useful for grain agriculture. As we see from the adoption of major sugar industries in Morocco fairly early on (Their plantation system served as a real template for later Caribbean and other New World sugar plantations) there was certainly a regional demand for sweeteners (Especially after the Islamic conquests and, likely, the popularization of coffee) and it would be connected to the broader Mediterranean trade networks. I could see the Phoenicians and their decedents (Carthage in particular) really helping this take off via trade/tribute with the nomadic and semi-nomadic populations of the hither lands, for whom dates were a staple, and slowly developing larger orchards.
Grape syrup was quite traded in Late Middle-Ages and might have been the second most used sweetener in late medieval Europe.How about increased use of fruit syrups?
Honey was a major medieval trade good, even in the era of collecting it from the wild - at least in Eastern Europe. It was absolutely exported in large quantities. Maybe have someone invent the modern hive which is sparing of the bees earlier, and then afterwards the inertia could carry this onwards for a fairly long time?