Movna U. Beekeeping: Ukrainian ritual context

Object: traditional beekeeping as an integral part of ethnic culture of Ukrainians. Purpose: to outline the vision of beekeeping as a spiritual-ideological system and the phenomenon of Ukrainian ceremonial culture, to establish its ethnic specificity and basic symbolic-semantic aspects on the basis of a scientific-critical analysis of the elaboration of the work of predecessors and on materials of own field observations. Methods: comparative, typological, structural-functional, historical reconstruction, synchronous analysis, generalization, analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, field research, anthropological. Results: for the first time, new sources of materials, such as field recordings of the author, have been introduced to scientific circulation; a comprehensive historical and ethnographic study of the spiritual and ideological phenomenon of traditional beekeeping throughout the ethnic territory as an important component of Ukrainian ethnoculture; established the semantics of beekeeping rituals, their place and role in the general system of folk ritual; the ritual "bee" fragment of the traditional picture of the world of Ukrainians has been reconstructed, its deep sense, functional purpose and internal organization are revealed; the place of bees in the folk tradition is determined and the sacred status of the insect is established; it was proved that the guardians of Ukrainian beekeeping were the Christian saints Oleksiy, Zosim and Savatiy; the symbolic significance of the traditional beekeepers' image is illuminated; the role of beekeeping products (honey and wax) in the ceremonial life of Ukrainians is determined; the regional specificity of the beekeeping ritual of the inhabitants of the main ethnographic regions of Ukraine is outlined; the national, All-Slavic and all-European features of the investigated realities of beekeeping ceremonial culture are revealed; the scientific views on the ambivalence of the popular reception of the traditional beekeeper as a ritual specialist, a source base of studios of the ritual context of traditional beekeeping of Ukrainians have been improved. Scope of application: in the study of Ukrainian and Slavic antiquities, ethnogenesis and ethnical history of Ukrainians, national identity, world perception and worldview, relict forms of Ukrainian ceremonial culture, in the preparation of generalizing works on the history of traditional Ukrainian culture, textbooks and manuals on ethnology, dictionaries of Ukrainian folk culture.