Curious Facts in the History of Insects; Including Spiders and Scorpions. / A Complete Collection of the Legends, Superstitions, Beliefs, and Ominous Signs Connected with Insects; Together with Their Uses in Medicine, Art, and as Food; and a Summary of Their Remarkable Injuries and Appearances.

by Frank Cowan

Apidæ—Bees.

Concerning the piety of Bees, we find the following legends:

“A certaine simple woman having some stals of Bees which

yeelded not vnto her hir desired profit, but did consume and die of the murraine; made her mone to another woman more simple than hir selfe: who gave her councel to get a consecrated host or round Godamighty and put it among them. According to whose advice she went to the priest to receive the host; which when she had done, she kept it in hir month, and being come home againe she tooke it out and put it into one of hir hives. Wherevpon the murraine ceased, and the honey abounded. The woman therefore lifting vp the hive at the due time to take out the honie, sawe there (most strange to be seene) a chapel built by the Bees with an altar in it, the wals adorned by marvelous skil of architecture with windowes conveniently set in their places: also a dore and a steeple with bels. And the host being laid vpon the altar, the Bees making a sweet noise flew round about it.”[602]

Mr. Hawker’s legend is to this effect: A Cornish woman, one summer, finding her Bees refused to leave their “cloistered home” and had “ceased to play around the cottage flowers,” concealed a portion of the Holy Eucharist which she obtained at church:

She bore it to her distant home,

She laid it by the hive

To lure the wanderers forth to roam,

That so her store might thrive;—

’Twas a wild wish, a thought unblest,

Some evil legend of the west.

But lo! at morning-tide a sign

For wondering eyes to trace,

They found above that Bread, a shrine

Rear’d by the harmless race!

They brought their walls from bud and flower,

They built bright roof and beamy tower!

Was it a dream? or did they hear

Float from those golden cells

A sound, as of a psaltery near,

Or soft and silvery bells?

A low sweet psalm, that grieved within

In mournful memory of the sin![603]

The following passage, from Howell’s Parley of Beasts,

furnishes a similar legend of the piety of Bees. Bee speaks:

“Know, sir, that we have also a religion as well as you, and so exact a government among us here; our hummings you speak of are as so many hymns to the Great God of Nature; and there is a miraculous example in Cæsarius Cisterniensis, of some of the Holy Eucharist being let fall in a meadow by a priest, as he was returning from visiting a sick body; a swarm of Bees hard-by took It up, and in a solemn kind of procession carried It to their hive, and their erected an altar of the purest wax for it, where it was found in that form, and untouched.”[604]

Butler, quoting Thomas Bozius, tells us the following:

“Certaine theeves (thieves) having stolen the silver boxe wherein the wafer-Gods vse to lie, and finding one of them there being loath, belike, that he should lie abroad all night, did not cast him away, but laid him under a hive: whom the Bees acknowledging advanced to a high roome in the hive, and there insteade of his silver boxe made him another of the whitest wax: and when they had so done, in worshippe of him, and set howres they sang most sweetly beyond all measure about it: yea the owner of them took them at it at midnight with a light and al. Wherewith the bishop being made acquainted, came thither with many others: and lifting vp the hive he sawe there neere the top a most fine boxe, wherein the host was laid, and the quires of Bees singing about it, and keeping watch in the night, as monkes do in their cloisters. The bishop therefore taking the host, carried it with the greater honour into the church: whether many resorting were cured of innumerable diseases.”[605]

Another legend, from the School of the Eucharist, is as follows:

“A peasant swayed by a covetous mind, being communicated on Easter-Day, received the Host in his mouth, and afterwards laid it among his bees, believing that all the Bees of the neighborhood would come thither to work their wax and honey. This covetous, impious wretch was not wholly disappointed of his hopes; for all his neighbors’ Bees came indeed to his hives, but not to make honey, but to render there the honours due to the Creator. The issue of their

arrival was that they melodiously sang to Him songs of praise as they were able; after that they built a little church with their wax from the foundations to the roof, divided into three rooms, sustained by pillars, with their bases and chapiters. They had there also an Altar, upon which they had laid the precious Body of our Lord, and flew round about it, continuing their musick. The peasant … coming nigh that hive where he had put the H. Sacrament, the Bees issued out furiously by troops, and surrounding him on all sides, revenged the irreverence done to their Creator, and stung him so severely that they left him in a sad case. This punishment made this miserable wretch come to himself, who, acknowledging his error, went to find out the parish priest to confess his fault to him.…” etc.[606]

We quote also another from the School of the Eucharist:

“A certain peasant of Auvergne, a province in France, perceiving that his Bees were likely to die, to prevent this misfortune, was advised, after he had received the communion, to reserve the Host, and to blow it into one of the hives. As he tried to do it, the Host fell on the ground. Behold now a wonder! On a sudden all the Bees came forth out of their hives, and ranging themselves in good order, lifted the Host from the ground, and carrying it in upon their wings, placed it among the combes. After this the man went out about his business, and at his return found that this advice had succeeded ill, for all his Bees were dead.…”[607]

We will close this series of legends with one from the Lives of the Saints:

“When a thief by night had stolen St. Medard’s Bees, they, in their master’s quarrel, leaving their hive, set upon the malefactor, and eagerly pursuing him which way soever he ran, would not cease stinging of him until they had made him (whether he would or no) to go back again to their master’s house; and there, falling prostrate at his feet, submissly to cry him mercy for the crime committed. Which being done, so soon as the Saint extended unto him the hand of benediction, the Bees, like obedient servants, did forthwith stay from persecuting him, and evidently yielded

themselves to the ancient possession and custody of their master.”[608]

By the Greeks, Bees were accounted an omen of future eloquence;[609] the soothsayers of the Romans, however, deemed them always of evil augury.[610] They afforded also to the Romans presages of public interest, “clustering, as they do, like a bunch of grapes, upon houses or temples; presages, in fact, that are often accounted for by great events.”[611] The instances of happy omens afforded by swarms of Bees are the following:

“It is said of Pindar,” we read in Pausanias’ History of Greece, “that when he was a young man, as he was going to Thespia, being wearied with the heat, as it was noon, and in the height of summer, he fell asleep at a small distance from the public road; and that Bees, as he was asleep, flew to him and wrought their honey on his lips. This circumstance first induced Pindar to compose verses.”[612]

A similar incident is mentioned in the life of Plato:

“Whilst Plato was yet an infant carried in the arms of his mother Perictione, Aristo his father went to Hymettus (a mountain in Attica eminent for abundance of Bees and Honey) to sacrifice to the Muses or Nymphs, taking his Wife and Child along with him; as they were busied in the Divine Rites, she laid the Child in a Thicket of Myrtles hard by; to whom, as he slept (in cunis dormienti) came a Swarm of Bees, Artists of Hymettian Honey, flying and buzzing about him, and (as it is reported) made a Honeycomb in his mouth. This was taken for a presage of the singular sweetness of his discourse; his future Eloquence foreseen in his infancy.”[613]

From Butler’s Lives of the Saints we have the following:

“The birth of St. Ambrose happened about the year 340 B.C., and whilst the child lay asleep in one of the courts of

his father’s palace, a swarm of Bees flew about his cradle, and some of them even crept in and out at his mouth, which was open; and at last mounted up into the air so high, that they quite vanished out of sight. This,” concludes the Reverend Alban, “was esteemed a presage of future greatness and eloquence.”[614]

Another instance is mentioned in the Feminine Monarchie, printed at Oxford in 1634, p. 22.

“When Ludovicus Vives was sent by Cardinal Wolsey to Oxford, there to be a public professor of Rhetoric, being placed in the College of Bees, he was welcomed thither by a swarm of Bees; which sweet creatures, to signifie the incomparable sweetnesse of his eloquence, settled themselves over his head, under the leads of his study, where they have continued to this day.… How sweetly did all things then accord, when in this neat μουσαῖον newly consecrated to the Muses, the Muses’ sweetest favorite was thus honoured by the Muses’ birds.”[615]

Moufet, in his Theater of Insects, and Topsel, in almost the same words in his History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents, gives the following list of remarkable omens drawn from Bees:

“Whereas the most high God did create all other creatures for our use; so especially the Bees, not only that as mistresses they might hold forth to us a patern of politick and œconomic vertues, and inform our understanding; but that they might be able as extraordinary foretellers, to foreshew the success and event of things to come; for in the years 90, 98, 113, 208, before the birth of Christ, when as mighty huge swarms of Bees did settle in the chief market-place, and in the beast-market upon private citizens’ houses, and on the temple of Mars, there were at that time stratagems of enemies against Rome, wherewith the whole state was like to be surprised and destroyed. In the reign of Severus, the Bees made combes in his military ensigns, and especially in the camp of Niger. Divers wars upon this ensued between both the parties of Severus and Niger, and battels of doubtful event, while at length the Severian faction prevailed. The statues also of Antonius Pius placed

here and there all over Hetruria, were all covered with swarms of Bees; and after that settled in the camp of Cassius; what great commotions after followed Julius Capitolinus relates in his history. At what time also, through the treachery of the Germans in Germany, there was a mighty slaughter and overthrow of the Romans. P. Fabius, and Q. Elius being consuls in the camp of Drusus in the tent of Hostilius Rutilus, a swarm of Bees is reported to have sate so thick, that they covered the rope and the spear that held up the tent. M. Lepidus, and Munat. Plancus being consuls, as also in the consulship of L. Paulus, and C. Metellus, swarms of Bees flying to Rome (as the augurs very well conjectured) did foretell the near approach of the enemy. Pompey likewise making war against Cæsar, when he had called his allies together, he set his army in order as he went out of Dyrrachium, Bees met him and sate so thick upon his ensigns that they could not be seen what they were. Philistus and Ælian relate, that while Dionysius the tyrant did in vain spur his horse that stuck in the mire, and there at length left him, the horse quitting himself by his own strength, did follow after his master the same way he went with a swarm of Bees sticking on his mane; intimating by that prodigy that tyrannical government which Dionysius affected over the Galeotæ. In the Helvetian History we read, that in the year 1385, when Leopoldus of Austria began to march towards Sempachum with his army, a swarm of Bees flew to the town and there sate upon the tyles; whereby the common people rightly foretold that some forain force was marching towards them. So Virgil, in 7 Æneid:

The Bees flew buzzing through the liquid air:

And pitcht upon the top o’ th’ laurel tree;

When the Soothsayers saw this sight full rare,

They did foretell th’ approach of th’ enemie.

That which Herodotus, Pausanias, Dio Cassius, Plutarch, Julius Cæsar, Julius Capitolinus, and other historians with greater observation then reason have confirmed. Saon Acrephniensis, when he could by no means finde the oracle Trophonius; Pausanias in his œticks saith he was lead thither by a swarm of Bees. Moreover, Plutarch, Pausanias, Ælian, Alex. Alexandrinus, Theocritus and Textor are authors that Jupiter Melitæus, Hiero of Syracuse, Plato,

Pindar, Apius Comatus, Xenophon, and last of all Ambrose, when their nurses were absent, had honey dropt into their mouths by Bees, and so were preserved.”[616]

In East Norfolk, England, if Bees swarm on rotten wood, it is considered portentous of a death in the family.[617] This superstition is as old at least as the time of Gay, for, among the signs that foreshadowed the death of Blonzelind, it is mentioned:

Swarmed on a rotten stick the Bees I spy’d

Which erst I saw when Goody Dobson dy’d.[618]

In Ireland, the mere swarming of Bees is looked upon as prognosticating a death in the family of the owner.

In parts of England it is believed, that if a swarm of Bees come to a house, and are not claimed by their owner, there will be a death in the family that hives them.[619]

It is a very ancient superstition that Bees, by their acute sense of smell, quickly detect an unchaste woman, and strive to make her infamy known by stinging her immediately. In a pastoral of Theocritus, the shepherd in a pleasant mood tells Venus to go away to Anchises to be well stung by Bees for her lewd behavior.

Now go thy way to Ida mount—

Go to Anchises now,

Where mighty oaks, where banks along

Of square Cypirus grow,

Where hives and hollow trunks of trees,

With honey sweet abound,

Where all the place with humming noise

Of busie Bees resound.

Incontinence in men, as well as unchastity in women, was thought to be punished by these little insects. Thus in the lines of Pindarus:

Thou painful Bee, thou pretty creature,

Who honey-combs six angled, as the be,

With feet doest frame, false Phœcus and impure,

With sting has prickt for his lewd villany.[620]

Pliny says: “Certain it is, that if a menstruous woman do no more but touch a Bee-hive, all the Bees will be gone and never more come to it again.”[621]

In Western Pennsylvania, it is believed that Bees will invariably sting red-haired persons as soon as they approach the hives.

It is a common opinion that Bees in rough and boisterous weather, and particularly in a violent storm, carry a stone in their legs, in order to preserve themselves by its weight against the power of the wind. Its antiquity is also great, for in the writings of Plutarch we find an instance of this remarkable wisdom. “The Bees of Candi,” says this philosopher, “being about to double a point or cape lying into the sea, which is much exposed to the winds, they ballase (ballast) themselves with small grit or petty stones, for to be able to endure the weather, and not be carried away against their wills with the winds through their lightness otherwise.”[622]

Virgil, too, about a century earlier, mentions this curious notion in the following lines:

And as when empty barks on billows float,

With sandy ballast sailors trim the boat;

So Bees bear gravel stones, whose poising weight

Steers through the whistling winds their steady flight.[623]

Swammerdam, who has noticed this belief of the ancients, makes the following remarks: “But this, as Clutius justly observes, has not been hitherto remarked by any Bee-keeper, nor indeed have I myself ever seen it. Yet I should think that there may be some truth in this matter, and probably a certain observation, which I shall presently mention, has given rise to the story. There is a species of wild Bees not unlike the smallest kind of the Humble-Bee, which, as they are accustomed to build their nests near stone walls, and construct their habitations of stone and clay, sometimes carry such large stones that it is scarcely credible by what means so tender insects can sustain so great a load, and that even flying while they are obliged also to support their own body.

Their nest by this means is often so heavy as to weigh one or two pounds.”[624]

It was the general opinion of antiquity that Bees were produced from the putrid bodies of cattle. Varro says they are called Βουγόναι by the Greeks, because they arise from petrified bullocks. In another place he mentions their rising from these putrid animals, and quotes the authority of Archelaus, who says Bees proceed from bullocks, and wasps from horses.[625] Virgil, however, is much more satisfactory, for he gives us the recipe in all its details for producing these insects:

First, in a place, by nature close, they build

A narrow flooring, gutter’d, wall’d, and til’d.

In this, four windows are contriv’d, that strike

To the four winds oppos’d, their beams oblique.

A steer of two years old they take, whose head

Now first with burnished horns begins to spread:

They stop his nostrils, while he strives in vain

To breathe free air, and struggles with his pain.

Knock’d down, he dies: his bowels bruis’d within,

Betray no wound on his unbroken skin.

Extended thus, in his obscene abode,

They leave the beast; but first sweet flowers are strow’d

Beneath his body, broken boughs and thyme,

And pleasing Cassia, just renew’d in prime.

This must be done, ere spring makes equal day,

When western winds on curling waters play;

Ere painted meads produce their flowery crops,

Or swallows twitter on the chimney tops.

The tainted blood, in this close prison pent,

Begins to boil, and thro’ the bones ferment.

Then wond’rous to behold, new creatures rise,

A moving mass at first, and short of thighs;

Till shooting out with legs, and imp’d with wings,

The grubs proceed to Bees with pointed stings:

And more and more affecting air, they try

Their tender pinions and begin to fly.[626]

This absurd notion was also promulgated by the great English chronicler, Hollingshed; for, says this author, “Hornets, waspes, Bees, and such like, whereof we have

great store, and of which an opinion is conceived, that the first doo breed of the corruption of dead horses, the second of pears and apples corrupted, and the last of kine and oxen; which may be true, especiallie the first and latter in some parts of the beast, and not their whole substances, as also in the second, sith we never have waspes but when our fruit beginneth to wax ripe.”[627]

To conclude the history of this belief, the following remarks of the learned Swammerdam will not be inappropriate. He says: “It is probable that the not rightly understanding Samson’s adventure of the Lion, gave rise to the popular opinion of Bees springing from dead Lions, Oxen, and Horses; and this opinion may have been considerably strengthened, and indeed in a manner confirmed, by the great number of Worms that are often found during the summer months in the carcasses of such animals, especially as these Worms somewhat resemble those produced from the eggs of Bees. However ridiculous this opinion must appear, many great men have not been ashamed to adopt and defend it. The industrious Goedaert has ventured to ascribe the origin of Bees to certain dunghill Worms, and the learned de Mei joins with him in this opinion; though neither of them had any observation to ground their belief upon, but that of the external resemblance between the Bee and a certain kind of Fly produced from these Worms.”[628]

The opinion that stolen Bees will not thrive, but pine away and die, is almost universal.[629] It is, too, of reverend antiquity, for Pliny mentions it: “It is a common received opinion, that Rue will grow the better if it be filched out of another man’s garden; and it is as ordinarie a saying that stolen Bees will thrive worst.”[630]

In South Northamptonshire, England, there is a superstition that Bees will not thrive in a quarrelsome family.[631] It might be well to promulgate this and the next preceding superstition. This prevails among us.

In Hampshire, England, it is a common saying that Bees are idle or unfortunate at their work whenever there are

wars. A very curious observer and fancier says that this has been the case from the time of the movements in France, Prussia, and Hungary, up to the present time.[632]

In Bishopsbourne, England, there prevails the singular superstition of informing the Bees of any great public event that takes place, else they will not thrive so well.[633]

In Monmouthshire, England, the peasantry entertain so great a veneration for their Bees, that, says Bucke, some years since, they were accustomed to go to their hives on Christmas eve at twelve o’clock, in order to listen to their humming; which elicited, as they believed, a much more agreeable music than at any other period; since, at that time, they celebrated, in the best manner they could, the morning of Christ’s nativity.[634]

Sampson, in his Statistical Survey of the County of Londonderry, 1802, p. 436, says that there “Bees must not be given away, but sold; otherwise neither the giver nor the taker will have luck.”[635]

A clergyman in Devonshire, England, informs us that when any Devonian makes a purchase of Bees, the payment is never made in money, but in things (corn, for instance) to the value of the sum agreed upon; and the Bees are never removed but on a Good Friday.[636] In western Pennsylvania, it is thought by some of the old farmers that the vender of the Bees must be away from home when the hive is taken away, else the Bees will not thrive.

Another superstition is that if a swarm of Bees be met with in an open field away from any house, it is useless to hive them, for they will never do a bit of good.

In many parts of England, a popular opinion is that when Bees remove or go away from their hives, the owner of them will die soon after.[637]

It is commonly believed among us that if Bees come to a house, it forebodes good luck and prosperity; and, on the contrary, if they go away, bad luck.

A North German custom and superstition is, that if the master of the house dies, a person must go to the Beehive,

knock, and repeat these words: “The master is dead, the master is dead,” else the Bees will fly away.[638] This superstition prevails also in England, Lithuania, and in France.[639]

[Some years since, observes a correspondent of the Athenæum, quoted by Brande, a gentleman at a dinner table happened to mention that he was surprised, on the death of a relative, by his servant inquiring “whether his master would inform the Bees of the event, or whether he should do so.” On asking the meaning of so strange a question, the servant assured him that Bees ought always to be informed of a death in a family, or they would resent the neglect by deserting the hive. This gentleman resides in the Isle of Ely, and the anecdote was told in Suffolk; and one of the party present, a few days afterward, took the opportunity of testing the prevalence of this strange notion by inquiring of a cottager who had lately lost a relative, and happened to complain of the loss of her Bees, “whether she had told them all she ought to do?” She immediately replied, “Oh, yes; when my aunt died I told every skep (i.e. hive) myself, and put them.…

“Into mourning.” I have since ascertained the existence of the same superstition in Cornwall, Devonshire (where I have seen black crape put round the hive, or on a small black stick by its side), and Yorkshire. It probably exists in every part of the kingdom.… The mode of communicating is by whispering the fact to each hive separately.… In Oxford I was told that if a man and wife quarreled, the Bees would leave them.][640]

“In some parts of Suffolk,” says Bucke, “the peasants believe, when any member of their family dies, that, unless the Bees are put in mourning by placing a piece of black cloth, cotton or silk, on the top of the hives, the Bees will either die or fly away.

“In Lithuania, when the master or mistress dies, one of the first duties performed is that of giving notice to the Bees, by rattling the keys of the house at the doors of their hives. Unless this be done, the Lithuanians imagine the

cattle will die; the Bees themselves perish, and the trees wither.”[641]

At Bradfield, if Bees are not invited to funerals, it is believed they will die.[642]

In the Living Librarie, Englished by John Molle, 1621, p. 283, we read: “Who would beleeve without superstition (if experience did not make it credible), that most commonly all the Bees die in their hives, if the master or mistress of the house chance to die, except the hives be presently removed into some other place? And yet I know this hath hapned to folke no way stained with superstition.”[643]

A similar superstition is, that Beehives belonging to deceased persons should be turned over the moment when the corpse is taken out of the house.[644] No consequence is given for the non-performance of this rite.

The following item is clipped from the Argus, a London newspaper, printed Sept. 13, 1790: “A superstitious custom prevails at every funeral in Devonshire, of turning round the Bee-hives that belonged to the deceased, if he had any, and that at the moment the corpse is carrying out of the house. At a funeral some time since, at Columpton, of a rich old farmer, a laughable circumstance of this sort occurred: for, just as the corpse was placed in the hearse, and the horsemen, to a large number, were drawn in order for the procession of the funeral, a person called out, ‘Turn the Bees,’ when a servant who had no knowledge of such a custom, instead of turning the hives about, lifted them up, and then laid them down on their sides. The Bees, thus hastily invaded, instantly attacked and fastened on the horses and their riders. It was in vain they galloped off, the Bees as precipitately followed, and left their stings as marks of indignation. A general confusion took place, attended with loss of hats, wigs, etc., and the corpse during the conflict was left unattended; nor was it till after a considerable time that the funeral attendants could be rallied, in order to proceed to the interment of their deceased friend.”[645]

After the death of a member of a family, it has frequently

been asserted that the Bees sometimes take their loss so much to heart as to alight upon the coffin whenever it is exposed. A clergyman told Langstroth, that he attended a funeral, where, as soon as the coffin was brought from the house, the Bees gathered upon it so as to excite much alarm. Some years after this occurrence, being engaged in varnishing a table, the Bees alighted upon it in such numbers as to convince the reverend gentleman that love of varnish, rather than sorrow or respect for the dead, was the occasion of their conduct at the funeral.[646]

The following is an extract from a Tour through Brittany, published in the Cambrian Quarterly Magazine, vol. ii. p. 215: “If there are Bees kept at the house where a marriage feast is celebrated, care is always taken to dress up their hives in red, which is done by placing upon them pieces of scarlet cloth, or one of some such bright color; the Bretons imagining that the Bees would forsake their dwellings if they were not made to participate in the rejoicings of their owners: in like manner they are all put into mourning when a death occurs in a family.”[647]

In the Magazine of Natural History we find the following instance of singing psalms to Bees to make them thrive: “When in Bedfordshire lately, we were informed of an old man who sang a psalm last year in front of some hives which were not doing well, but which, he said, would thrive in consequence of that ceremony. Our informant could not state whether this was a local or individual superstition.”[648]

It is commonly said that if you sing to your Bees before they swarm, it will prevent their leaving your premises when they do swarm.

Peter Rotharmel, a western Pennsylvanian, had a singular notion that no man could have at one time a hundred hives of Bees. He declared he had often as many as ninety-nine, but could never add another to them.[649] I have since

learned that this is not an individual superstition, but one that pretty generally prevails.

The Apiarians of Bedfordshire, England, have a custom of, as they call it, ringing their swarms with the door-key and the frying-pan; and if a swarm settles on another’s premises, it is irrecoverable by the owner, unless he can prove the ringing, but it becomes the property of that person upon whose premises it settles.[650]

The practice of beating pans, and making a great noise to induce a swarm of Bees to settle, is, at least, as old as the time of Virgil. He thus mentions it:

But when thou seest a swarming cloud arise,

That sweeps aloft, and darkens all the skies:

The motions of their hasty flight attend;

And know to floods, or woods, their airy march they bend.

Then melfoil beat, and honey-suckles pound,

With these alluring savors strew the ground,

And mix with tinkling brass the cymbal’s drowning sound.[651]

But concerning this practice, Langstroth says: “It is probably not a whit more efficacious than the hideous noises of some savage tribes, who, imagining that the sun, in an eclipse, has been swallowed by an enormous dragon, resort to such means to compel his snakeship to disgorge their favorite luminary.”[652]

Dr. Toner, the author of that very interesting little work, “Maternal Instinct or Love,” informs me that when a boy he witnessed a mode of alluring a swarm of Bees to settle, performed by a German man and his wife, which struck him at the time as being remarkable, and which was as follows: Having first put some pig-manure upon the hive into which

they wished the Bees to go, they ran to and fro under the swarm, singing a monotonous German hymn; and this they continued till the Bees were settled and hived.

Another strange mode of alluring Bees into a new hive is practiced near Gloucester, England, but only when all the usual ways of preparing hives fail; it is this: When a swarm is to be hived, instead of moistening the inside of the hive with honey, or sugar and water, the Bee-master throws into it, inverted, about a pint of beans, which he causes a sow to devour, and immediately then, it is said, will the Bees take to it.[653]

Pliny, as follows, incidentally mentions another curious mode of preparing the hives to best suit the Bees: “Touching Baulme, which the Greeks call Melittis or Melissophyllon: if Bee-hives be rubbed all over and besmeared with the juice thereof, the Bees will never go away; for there is not a flower whereof they be more desirous and faine than of it.”[654]

Borlase, in his Antiquities of Cornwall, p. 168, tells us of another strange practice in the hiving of Bees. He says: “The Cornish, to this day, invoke the spirit of Browny, when their Bees swarm; and they think that their crying Browny, Browny, will prevent them from returning into the former hive, and make them pitch and form a new colony.”[655]

The Rev. Thomas P. Hunt, of Wyoming, Pa., has devised an amusing plan, by which he says he can, at all times, prevent a swarm of Bees from leaving his premises. Before his stocks swarm, he collects a number of dead Bees, and, stringing them with a needle and thread, as worms are strung for catching eels, makes of them a ball about the size of an egg, leaving a few strands loose. By carrying—fastened to a pole—this “Bee-bob” about his Apiary, when the Bees are swarming, or by placing it in some central position, he invariably secures every swarm.[656]

The barbarous practice of killing Bees for their honey, not yet entirely abolished, did not exist in the time of Aristotle, Varro, Columella, and Pliny. The old cultivators

took only what their Bees could spare, killing no stocks except such as were feeble or diseased. The following epitaph, taken from a German work, might well be placed over every pit of these brimstoned insects:

Here Rests,
CUT OFF FROM USEFUL LABOR,
A COLONY OF
INDUSTRIOUS BEES,
BASELY MURDERED
BY ITS
UNGRATEFUL AND IGNORANT
OWNER.

To the epitaph also may be appended Thomson’s verses:

Ah, see, where robbed and murdered in that pit,

Lies the still heaving hive! at evening snatched,

Beneath the cloud of guilt-concealing night,

And fixed o’er sulphur! while, not dreaming ill,

The happy people, in their waxen cells,

Sat tending public cares.

Sudden, the dark, oppressive steam ascends,

And, used to milder scents, the tender race,

By thousands, tumble from their honied dome

Into a gulf of blue sulphureous flame![657]

It is considered very cruel in Africa, as Campbell observes, to kill Bees in order to obtain their honey, especially as from flowers being there at all seasons, and most in winter, they can live comfortably all the year round. A Hottentot, who was accustomed to kill the Bees, was often reasoned with by the humane to give up so cruel a practice, yet he persisted in it till a circumstance occurred which determined him to relinquish it. He had a water-mill for grinding his corn, which went very slowly, from the smallness of the stream which turned it; consequently the flour dropped very gently. For some time much less than usual came into the sack, the cause of which he could not discover. At length he found that a great part of his flour, as it was ground, was carried off by the Bees to their hives: on examining this, he

found it contained only his flour, and no honey. This robbery made him resolve to destroy no more Bees when their honey was taken, considering their conduct in robbing him of his property as a just punishment to him for his cruelty. The gentleman who related this story, Mr. Campbell says, was a witness to the Bees robbing the mill.[658]

An old English proverb, relative to the swarming of Bees, is,—

A swarm of Bees in May,

Is worth a load of hay;

A swarm of Bees in June,

Is worth a silver spoon;

A swarm of Bees in July,

Is not worth a fly.[659]

In Tusser’s Five Hundred Points of Husbandry, under the month of May, are these lines:

Take heed to thy Bees, that are ready to swarme,

The losse thereof now is a crown’s worth of harme.

On which is the following observation in Tusser Redivivus, 1744, p. 62: “The tinkling after them with a warming-pan, frying-pan, kettle, is of good use to let the neighbors know you have a swarm in the air, which you claim wherever it lights; but I believe of very little purpose to the reclaiming of the Bees, who are thought to delight in no noise but their own.”

Ill fortune attends the killing of Bees,—a common saying. This, doubtless, arose from the thrift and usefulness of these insects.

That swarms of Bees, or fields, houses, stalls of cattle, or workshops, may not be affected by enchantment, Leontinus says: “Dig in the hoof of the right side of a sable ass under the threshold of the door, and pour on some liquid pitchy resin, salt, Heracleotic origanum, cardamonium, cumin, some fine bread, squills, a chaplet of white or of crimson wool, the chaste tree, vervain, sulphur, pitchy torches; and lay on some amaranthus every month, and lay on the mould; and, having scattered seeds of different kinds, let them remain.”[660]

To cure the stings of Bees, we have the following remedies: “Rue,” says Pliny, “is an hearbe as medicinable as the best … and is available against the stings of Bees, Hornets, and Wasps, and against the poison of the Cantharides and Salamanders.[661]

“Yea, and it is an excellent thing for them that be stung, to take the very Bees in drinke; for it is an approved cure.[662]

“Baulme is a most present remedy not only against their stings, but also of Wespes, Spiders, and Scorpions.[663]

“The Laurell, both leafe, barke, and berrie, is by nature hot; and applied as a liniment, be singular good for the pricke or sting of Wasps, Hornets, and Bees.[664]

“For the sting of Bees, Wasps, and Hornets, the Howlat (owlet) is counted a soveraigne thing, by a certaine antipathie in nature.[665]

“Moreover, as many as have about them the bill of a Woodspeck (Woodpecker) when they come to take honey out of the hive, shall not be stung by Bees.”[666]

It is said that if a man suffers himself to be stung by Bees, he will find that the poison will produce less and less effect upon his system, till, finally, like Mithridates of old, he will appear to almost thrive upon poison itself. When Langstroth first became interested in Bees, according to his statement, a sting was quite a formidable thing, the pain being often intense, and the wound swelling so as sometimes to obstruct his sight. But, at length, however, the pain was usually slight, and, if the sting was quickly extracted, no unpleasant consequences ensued, even if no remedies were used. Huish speaks of seeing the bald head of Bonner, a celebrated practical Apiarian, covered with stings, which seemed to produce upon him no unpleasant effects. The Rev. Mr. Kleine advises beginners to suffer themselves to be stung frequently, assuring them that, in two seasons, their systems will become accustomed to the poison. An old English Apiarian advises a person who has been stung, to

catch as speedily as possible another Bee, and make it sting on the same spot.[667]

It is generally believed among our boys that if the part stung by a Bee be rubbed with the leaves of three different plants at the same time, the pain will be relieved.

Willsford, in his Nature’s Secrets, p. 134, says: “Bees, in fair weather, not wandering far from their hives, presage the approach of some stormy weather.… Wasps, Hornets, and Gnats, biting more eagerly than they used to do, is a sign of rainy weather.”[668]

The prognostication drawn from a flight of Bees, in which there is doubtless much truth, appears from the following lines to have been known to Virgil:

Nor dare they stay,

When rain is promised, or a stormy day:

But near the city walls their watering take,

Nor forage far, but short excursions make.[669]

Bees were employed as the symbol of Epeses; they are common also on coins of Elyrus, Julis, and Præsus.[670]

One of the most remarkable facts in the history of Bees is that passage in the Bible[671] about the swarm of these insects and honey in the carcass of the lion slain by Samson. Some look upon it as a paradox, others as altogether incredible; but it admits of easy explanation. The lion had been dead some little time before the Bees had taken up their abode in the carcass, for it is expressly stated that “after a time,” Samson returned and saw the Bees and honey in the carcass, so that “if,” as Oedman has well observed, “any one here represents to himself a corrupt and putrid carcass, the occurrence ceases to have any true similitude, for it is well known in these countries, at certain seasons of the year, the heat will in twenty-four hours so completely dry up the moisture of dead animals, and that without their undergoing decomposition, that their bodies long remain, like mummies, unaltered, and entirely free from offensive odor.” To the foregoing quotation we may add that very probably the larvæ of flies, ants, and other insects,

which at the time when Bees swarm, are to be found in great numbers, would help to consume the carcass, and leave perhaps in a short time little else than a skeleton.[672]

An instance of Bees tenanting a dead body is found in the following passage from the writings of Herodotus: “Now the Amathusians, having cut off the head of Onesilus, because he had besieged them, took it to Amatheus, and suspended it over the gates; and when the head was suspended, and had become hollow, a swarm of Bees entered it, and filled it with honey-comb. When this happened, the Amathusians consulted the oracle respecting it, and an answer was given them, ‘that they should take down the head and bury it, and sacrifice annually to Onesilus, as to a hero; and if they did so, it would turn out better for them.’ The Amathusians did accordingly, and continued to do so until my time.”[673]

Another singular instance is mentioned by Napier in his Excursions on the shores of the Mediterranean: “Among this pretty collection of natural curiosities (in the cemetery of Algesiras), one in particular attracted our attention; this was the contents of a small uncovered coffin in which lay a child, the cavity of the chest exposed and tenanted by an industrious colony of Bees. The comb was rapidly progressing, and I suppose, according to the adage of the poet, they were adding sweets to the sweet, if not perfume to the violet.”[674]

Butler, in his Feminine Monarchie, narrates the following curious story: “Paulus Jovius affirmeth that in Muscovia, there are found in the woods & wildernesses great lakes of honey, which the Bees have forsaken, in the hollow truncks of marvelous huge trees. In so much that hony & waxe are the most certaine commodities of that countrie. Where, by that occasion, he setteth down the storie reported by Demetrius a Muscovite ambassador sent to Rome. A neighbor of mine (saith he) searching in the woods for hony slipt downe into a great hollow tree, and there sunk into a lake of hony vp to his brest: where when he had stucke faste two daies calling and crying out in vaine for helpe, because

no bodie in the meane while came nigh that solitarie place; at length when he was out of all hope of life, hee was strangely delivered by the means of a great beare: which coming thither about the same businesse that he did, and smelling the hony stirred with his striving, clambered vp to the top of the tree, & thence began to let himselfe downe backward into it. The man bethinking himself, and knowing the worst was but death, which in that place he was sure of, beclipt the beare fast with both his hands aboit the loines, and withall made an outcry as lowd as he could. The beare being thus sodainely affrighted, what with the handling, & what with the noise, made vp againe withal speed possible: the man held, & the beare pulled, vntil with main force he had drawne Dun out of the mire: & then being let go, away he trots more afeard than hurt, leaving the smeered swaine in a joyful feare.”[675]

By the Chinese writers, the composition of the characters for the Bee, Ant, and Mosquito, respectively, denote the awl insect, the righteous insect, and the lettered insect; referring thereby to the sting of the first, the orderly marching and subordination of the second, and the letter-like markings on the wings of the last.[676]

In May, 1653, the remains of Childeric, King of the Franks, who died A.D. 481, and was buried at Tournay, were discovered; and among the medals, coins, and books, which were found in his tomb, were also found above three hundred figures of, as Chiflet says, Bees, all of gold. Some of these figures were toads, crescents, lilies, spear-heads, and such like, but Chiflet, after much labor and research, was fully convinced they were Bees; and, more than that, determines them to be the source whence the Fleur de lis in the Arms of France were afterward derived. Montfaucon, however, did not hesitate to say they were nothing more than ornaments of the horse-furniture.[677]

Napoleon I. and II. are said to have had their imperial robes embroidered with golden Bees, as claiming official descent from Carolus Magnus, who is said to have worn them on his coat of arms.[678]

On a Continental forty-five dollar bill, issued on the 14th of January, 1779, is represented an Apiary in which two Beehives are visible, and Bees are seen swarming about. The motto is “Sic floret Respublica—Thus flourishes the Republic.” It conveys the simple lesson that by industry and frugality the Republic would prosper.[679]

Bees in the heroic ages it appears were not confined in hives; for, whenever Homer describes them, it is either where they are streaming forth from a rock,[680] or settling in bands and clusters on the spring flowers. Hesiod, however, soon after makes mention of a hive where he is uncourteously comparing women to drones:

As when within their well-roof’d hives the Bees

Maintain the mischief-working drones at ease,

Their task pursuing till the golden sun

Down to the western wave his course hath run,

Filling their shining combs, while snug within

Their fragrant cells, the drones, with idle din

As princes revel o’er their unpaid bowls,

On others’ labors cheer their worthless souls.[681]

It may be surprising to many to know that Bees were not originally natives of this country. But such is the case; the first planters never saw any. The English first introduced them into Boston, and in 1670, they were carried over the Alleghany Mountains by a hurricane.[682] Since that time, it has been remarked they betray an invariable tendency for migrating southward.[683]

Bees for a long time were known to our Indians by the name of “English Flies;”[684] and they consider them, says Irving, as the harbinger of the white man, as the buffalo is of the red man, and say that in proportion as the Bee advances, the Indian and the buffalo retire.[685]

Longfellow, in his Song of Hiawatha, in describing the advent of the European to the New World, makes his Indian warrior say of the Bee and the white clover:

Wheresoe’er they move, before them

Swarms the stinging fly, the Ahmo,

Swarms the Bee, the honey-maker;

Wheresoe’er they tread, beneath them

Springs a flower unknown among us,

Springs the White Man’s Foot in blossom.

Many Apiarians contend that newly-settled countries are most favorable to the Bee; and an old German adage runs thus:

Bells’ ding dong,

And choral song,

Deter the bee

From industry:

But hoot of owl,

And “wolf’s long howl”

Incite to moil

And steady toil.[686]

Hector St. John, in his Letters, gives the following curious account of the method which he employed in discovering Bees in our woods in early times: Provided with a blanket, some provisions, wax, vermilion, honey, and a small pocket compass, he proceeded to such woods as were at a considerable distance from the settlements. Then examining if they abounded with large trees, he kindled a small fire on some flat stones, close by which putting some wax, and, on another stone near by, dropping distinct drops of honey, which he encircled with the vermilion. He then retired to carefully watch if any Bees appeared. The smell of the burnt wax, if there were any Bees in the neighborhood, would unavoidably attract them; and, finding the honey, would necessarily become tinged with the vermilion, in attempting to get at it. Next, fixing his compass, he found out the direction of the hives by the flight of the loaded Bees, which is invariably straight when they are returning home. Then timing with his watch the absence of the Bee till it would come back for a second load, and recognizing it by the vermilion, he could generally guess pretty closely to the distance traversed by it in the given time. Knowing then the direction and the probable distance, he seldom failed in going directly to the right tree. In this way he sometimes found as many as eleven swarms in one season.[687]

The shepherds of the Alps, as we learn from Sausure quoted in the Insect Miscellanies, as soon as the snows are melted on the sides of the mountains, transfer their flocks from the

valleys below to the fresh pasture revived by the summer sun, in the natural parterres and patches of meadow-land formed at the foot of crumbling rocks, and sheltered by them from mountain storms; and so difficult sometimes is this transfer to be accomplished, that the sheep have to be slung by means of ropes from one cliff to another before they can be stationed on the little grass-plot above.[688] A similar artificial migration (if we may use the term), continues the author of the Miscellanies, is effected in some countries by the proprietors of Beehives, who remove them from one district to another, that they may find abundance of flowers, and by this means prolong the summer. Sometimes this transfer is performed by persons forming an ambulatory establishment, like that of a gipsy horde, and encamping wherever flowers are found plentiful. Bee-caravans of this kind are reported to be not uncommon in some districts of Germany;[689] and in parts of Greece,[690] Italy, and France,[691] the transportation of Bees was practiced from very early times. But a more singular practice in such transportation was to set the Beehives afloat in a canal or river, and we are informed that, in France, one Bee-barge was built of capacity enough for from sixty to one hundred hives, and by floating gently down the river, the Bees had an opportunity of gathering honey from the flowers along the banks.[692]

An instance of Bees being kept in this singular manner is found in the following quotation from the London Times, 1830: “As a small vessel was proceeding up the Channel from the coast of Cornwall, and running near the land, some of the sailors observed a swarm of Bees on an island; they steered for it, landed, and took the Bees on board; succeeded in hiving them immediately, and proceeded on their voyage;

as they sailed along shore, the Bees constantly flew from the vessel to the land, to collect honey, and returned again to their moving hive; and this was continued all the way up the Channel.”[693]

In Lower Egypt, observes M. Maillet in his Description of Egypt, where the blossoming of flowers is about six weeks later than in the upper districts, the practice of transporting Beehives is much followed. The hives are collected from different villages along the banks, each being marked and numbered by individual proprietors, to prevent future mistakes. They are then arranged in pyramidal piles upon the boats prepared to receive them, which, floating gradually down the river, and stopping at certain stages of their passage, remain there a longer or a shorter time, according to the produce afforded by the surrounding country within two or three leagues. In this manner the Bee-boats sail for three months; the Bees, having culled the honey of the orange-flowers in the Said, and of the Arabian jasmine and other flowers in the more northern parts, are brought back to the places whence they had been carried. This procures for the Egyptians delicious honey and abundance of wax. The proprietors in return pay the boatmen a recompense proportioned to the number of hives which have been thus carried about from one extremity of Egypt to the other.[694] The celebrated traveler Niebuhr saw upon the Nile, between Cairo and Damietta, a convoy of 4000 hives in their transit from Upper Egypt to the coast of the Delta.[695]

In the Bienenzeitung for 1854, p. 83, appears the following statements: “Mr. Kaden, of Mayence, thinks that the range of the Bee’s flight does not usually extend more than three miles in all directions. Several years ago, a vessel, laden with sugar, anchored off Mayence, and was soon visited by the Bees of the neighborhood, which continued to pass to and from the vessel from dawn to dark. One morning, when the Bees were in full flight, the vessel sailed up the river. For a short time, the Bees continued to fly as numerously as before; but gradually the number diminished, and, in course of half an hour, all had ceased to follow the vessel, which had, meanwhile, sailed more than four miles.”[696]

Aristomachus of Soli, says Pliny, made Bees his exclusive study for a period of fifty-eight years; and Philiocus, the Thracian, surnamed Agrius—“Wildman”—passed his life in desert spots tending swarms of Bees.[697]

Schomburgk says he saw, in his journey to the sources of the Takutu, an Indian, who was the conjuror or piaiman of his tribe, merely approach a nest of the wild Wampang-bees (Wampisiana camniba), and knocking with his fingers against it, drive out all the Bees without a single one injuring him. The piaiman, Schomburgk remarks, drew his fingers under the pits of his arms before he knocked against the hive.[698]

Brue, in his first voyage to Siratic, in Africa, met with what he called a “phenomenon” in a person entitling himself the “King of the Bees.” His majesty accordingly came to the boat of the traveler entirely covered with these insects, and followed by thousands, over which he appeared to exercise the most absolute authority. These Bees were never known to injure either himself or those whom he took under his protection.[699]

Mr. Wildman, the most celebrated Bee-tamer, frequently asserted that armed with his friendly Bees he was defensible against the fiercest mastiffs; and, it is said, he actually did, at Salisbury, encounter three yard-dogs one after the other. The conditions of the engagement were, that he should have notice of the dog being set at him. Accordingly the first mastiff was set loose; and as he approached the man, two Bees were detached, which immediately stung him, the one on the nose, the other on the flank; upon receiving the wounds, the dog retired very much daunted. After this, the second dog entered the lists, and was foiled with the same expedition as the first. The third dog was at last brought against the champion, but the animal observing the ill success of his brethren, would not attempt to sustain a combat; so, in a cowardly manner, he retired with his tail between his legs.

Many other remarkable anecdotes are told of this gentleman, illustrating his wonderful control over Bees. He could also, indeed, tame wasps and hornets, with almost the same ease as he could Bees, and an instance is mentioned of his

hiving a nest of hornets which hung at the top of the inside of a high barn. He, however, was stung twice in this undertaking.

Mr. Wildman frequently exhibited himself with his head and face almost covered with Bees, and with such a swarm of them hanging down from his chin as to resemble a venerable beard. In this extraordinary dress he was once brought through the City of London sitting in a chair. Before Earl Spencer, Mr. Wildman also made many wonderful performances.[700]

Says Dr. Evans:

Such was the spell, which round a Wildman’s arm

Twined in dark wreaths the fascinated swarm,

Bright o’er his breast the glittering legions led,

Or with a living garland bound his head.

His dexterous hand, with firm but hurtless hold,

Could seize the chief, known by her scales of gold,

Prune, ’mid the wondering throng, her filmy wing,

Or o’er her folds the silken fetter fling.[701]

“Long experience has taught me,” says Mr. Wildman himself, “that as soon as I turn up a hive, and give some taps on the sides and bottom, the queen immediately appears. Being accustomed to see her, I readily perceive her at the first glance; and long practice has enabled me to seize her instantly, with a tenderness that does not in the least endanger her person. Being possessed of her, I can, without exciting any resentment, slip her into my other hand, and returning the hive to its place, hold her, till the Bees, missing her, are all on the wing and in the utmost confusion.” It was then, by placing the queen in view, he could make them light wherever he pleased, from their great attachment to her, and sometimes using a word of command to mystify the spectators, he would cause them to settle on his head, and to hang to his chin like a beard, from which he would order them to his hand, or to an adjacent window. But, however easy such feats may appear in theory, Mr. Wildman cautions (probably with a view to deter rivals) those who are inexperienced not to put themselves in danger of attempting to imitate him. A liberated Roman slave, C. F. Cnesinus, being accused before the tribunals of witchcraft, because his

crops were more abundant than those of his neighbors, produced as his witnesses some superior implements of husbandry, and well fed oxen, and pointing to them said: “These, Romans! are my instruments of witchcraft; but I cannot show you my toil, my perseverance, and my anxious cares.” “So,” says Wildman, “may I say, These, Britons! are my instruments of witchcraft; but I cannot show you my hours of attention to this subject, my anxiety and care for these useful insects; nor can I communicate to you my experience acquired during a course of years.”[702]

Butler mentions two instances where the stings of Bees have been fatal to “cattaile”:

“A horse,” he informs us, “in the heate of the day looking over a hedge, on the other side whereof was a staule of Bees, while hee stood nodding with his head, as his manner is, because of the flies, the Bees fell vpon him and killed him. Likewise I heard of a teeme that stretching against a hedge overthrew a staule on the other side, and so two of the horses were stung to death.”[703]

Mungo Park and his party were twice seriously attacked by large swarms of Bees. The first attack is mentioned in the account of his first journey; the second in the account of his second. The latter singular accident befell them in 1805, and is thus narrated in his journal: The coffle had halted at a creek, and the asses had just been unloaded, when some of his guide Isaaca’s people, being in search of honey, unfortunately disturbed a large swarm of Bees near their resting-place. The Bees came out in immense numbers, and attacked men and beasts at the same time. Luckily, most of the asses were loose, and galloped up the valley; but the horses and people were very much stung, and obliged to scamper off in all directions. The fire which had been kindled for cooking, being deserted, spread, and set fire to the bamboos, and the baggage had like to have been burned. In fact, for half an hour the Bees seemed to have completely put an end to the journey. In the evening when they became less troublesome, and the cattle could be collected, it was found that many of them were very much stung, and swollen about the head. Three asses were missing; one died in the course of the evening, and one next

morning, and they were forced to leave one behind the next day. Altogether six were lost, besides which, the guide lost his horse, and many of the people were much stung about the face and hands.[704]

But in the Treasvrie of Avncient and Moderne Times, we find the following: “Anthenor, writing of the Isle of Crete (with whom also ioyneth Ælianus) saith, that a great multitude of Bees chased al the dwellers out of a City, and vsed their Houses instead of Hives.”[705]

Montaigne mentions the following singular assistance rendered by Bees to the inhabitants of Tamly: The Portuguese having besieged the City of Tamly, in the territory of Xiatine, the inhabitants of the place brought a great many hives, of which there are great plenty in that place, upon the wall; and with fire drove the Bees so furiously upon the enemy that they gave over the enterprise, not being able to stand their attacks and endure their stings: and so the citizens, by this new sort of relief, gained liberty and the victory with so wonderful a fortune, that at the return of their defenders from the battle they found they had not lost so much as one.[706]

Lesser tells us that in 1525, during the confusion occasioned by a time of war, a mob assembling in Hohnstein (in Thuringia) attempted to plunder the house of the minister of Elende; who having spoken to them with no effect, as a last resort ordered his domestics to bring his Beehives, and throw them in the midst of the furious mob. The desired effect was instantaneous, for the mob dispersed immediately.[707]

Bees have also been employed as an article of food. Knox tells us that the natives of Ceylon, when they meet with a swarm of Bees hanging on a tree, hold burning torches under them to make them drop; and so catch and carry them home, where they boil and eat them, in their estimation, as excellent food.[708]

Peter Martyr, speaking of the Caribbean Islands, says:

“The Inhabitantes willingly eate the young Bees, rawe, roasted, and sometimes sodden.”[709]

Bancroft tells us that when the negroes of Guiana are stung by Bees, they in revenge eat as many as they can catch.[710]

The following account of the Bee-eater of Selborne, England, is by the Reverend, and very accurate naturalist, Gilbert White: “We had in this village,” says he, “more than twenty years ago (about 1765), an idiot boy, whom I well remember, who, from a child, showed a strong propensity to Bees: they were his food, his amusement, his sole object; and as people of this cast have seldom more than one point in view, so this lad exerted all his few faculties on this one pursuit. In the winter he dozed away his time, within his father’s house, by the fireside, in a kind of torpid state, seldom departing from the chimney corner; but in the summer he was all alert, and in quest of his game in the fields and on sunny banks. Honey-bees, Humble-bees, and Wasps were his prey, wherever he found them: he had no apprehensions from their stings, but would seize nudis manibus, and at once disarm them of their weapons, and search their bodies for the sake of their honey-bags. Sometimes he would fill his bosom between his shirt and his skin with a number of these captives; and sometimes would confine them in bottles. He was a very Merops apiaster, or Bee-bird, and very injurious to men that kept Bees; for he would slide into their Bee-gardens, and, sitting down before the stools, would rap with his finger on the hives, and so take the Bees as they came out. He has been known to overturn hives for the sake of honey, of which he was passionately fond. Where metheglin was making, he would linger round the tubs and vessels, begging a draught of what he called Bee-wine. As he ran about he used to make a humming noise with his lips, resembling the buzzing of Bees. This lad was lean and sallow, and of a cadaverous complexion; and, except in his favorite pursuit, in which he was wonderfully adroit, discovered no manner of understanding.”[711]

There is a peculiar substance formed by a species of Bee

in the Orinoco country, which, says Captain Stedman, the roosting tribes burn incessantly in their habitations, and which effectually protects them from all winged insects. They call it Comejou; Gumilla says it is neither earth nor wax.[712]

Concerning the medicinal virtues of Bees, Dr. James says: “Their salts are very volatile, and highly exalted; for this reason, when dry’d, powder’d, and taken internally, they are diuretic and diaphoretic. If this powder is mixed in unguents, with which the head is anointed, it is said to cure the Alopecia, and to contribute to the growth of hair upon bald places.”[713]

Another, an old writer, says: “If Bees, when dead, are dried to powder, and given to either man or beast, this medicine will often give immediate ease in the most excruciating pain, and remove a stoppage in the body when all other means have failed.” A tea made by pouring boiling water upon Bees has recently been prescribed, by high medical authority, for violent strangury; while the poison of the Bee, under the name of apis, is a great homœopathic remedy.[714]

Concerning wax, Dr. James says: “All wax is heating, mollifying, and moderately incarning. It is mixed in sorbile liquors as a remedy for dysentery; and ten bits, of the size of a grain of millet, swallowed, prevent the curdling of milk in the breast of nurses.”[715]

[If we might credit the history of former times, says Jamieson, in his Scottish Dictionary, sub. Walx, iv. 642–3, there must have been a considerable demand for this article (wax) for the purpose of witchcraft. It was generally found necessary, it would seem, as the medium of inflicting pain on the bodies of men.

“To some others at these times he teacheth, how to make pictures of waxe or clay, that by the wasting thereof, the persons that they beare the name of, may be continually melted or dried away by continuall sickenesse.” K. James’s Dæmonologie, B. II. c. 5.

In order to cause acute pain in the patient, pins, we are

told, were stuck in that part of the body of the image, in which they wished the person to suffer.

The same plan was adopted for inspiring another with the ardor of love.

Then mould her form of fairest wax,

With adder’s eyes and feet of horn;

Place this small scroll within its breast,

Which I, your friend, have hither borne.

Then make a blaze of alder wood,

Before your fire make this to stand;

And the last night of every moon

The bonny May’s at your command.

Hogg’s Mountain Bard, p. 35.

Then it follows:

With fire and steel to urge her weel,

See that you neither stint nor spare;

For if the cock be heard to crow,

The charm will vanish into air.

The wounds given to the image were supposed to be productive of similar stounds of love in the tender heart of the maiden whom it represented.

A female form, of melting wax,

Mess John surveyed with steady eye,

Which ever an anon he pierced,

And forced the lady loud to cry.—P. 84.

The same horrid rites were observed on the continent. For Grilland (de Sortilegiis) says: Quidam solent apponere imaginem cerae juxta ignem ardentem, completis sacrificiis, de quibus supra, & adhibere quasdam preces nefarias, & turpia verba, ut quemadmodum imago illa igne consumitur & liquescit, eodem modo cor mulieris amoris calore talis viri feruenter ardeat, etc. Malleus Malefic. T. H., p. 232.

It cannot be doubted that these rites have been transmitted from heathenism. Theocritus mentions them as practiced by the Greeks in his time. For he introduces Samoetha as using similar enchantments, partly for punishing, and partly for regaining her faithless lover.

But strew the salt, and say in angry tones,

“I scatter Delphid’s, perjured Delphid’s bones.”

—First Delphid injured me, he raised my flame,

And now I burn this bough in Delphid’s name;

As this doth blaze, and break away in fume,

How soon it takes, let Delphid’s flesh consume,

Iynx, restore my false, my perjured swain,

And force him back into my arms again.—

As this devoted wax melts o’er the fire,

Let Mindian Delphy melt in warm desire!

Idylliums, p. 12, 13.

Samoetha burns the bough in the name of her false lover, and terms the wax devoted. With this the more modern ritual of witchcraft corresponded. The name of the person, represented by the image, was invoked. For according to the narrative given concerning the witches of Pollock-shaws, having bound the image on a spit, they “turned it before the fire,—saying, as they turned it, Sir George Maxwell, Sir George Maxwell; and that this was expressed by all of them.” Glanvil’s Sadducismus, p. 391.

According to Grilland, the image was baptized in the name of Beelzebub. Malleus, ut. sup., p. 229.

There is nothing analogous to the Grecian rite, mentioned by Theocritus, of strewing salt. For Grilland asserts that, in the festivals of the witches, salt was never presented. Ibid., p. 215. It was perhaps excluded from their infernal rites as having been so much used as a sacred symbol.]

The following are among the twenty-eight “singular vertues” attributed by Butler to Honey: “… It breedeth good blood, it prolongeth old age … yea the bodies of the dead being embalmed with honey have been thereby preserved from putrefaction. And Athenæus doth witness it to be as effectual for the living, writing out of Lycus, that the Cyrneans, or inhabitants of Corsica, were therefore long-lived, because they did dailie vse to feed on honey, whereof they had abundance: and no marvaile: seeing it is so soveraigne a thing, and so many waies available for man’s health, as well being outwardly as inwardly applied. It is drunke against the bite of a serpent or mad dogs: and it is good for them having eaten mushrooms, or drunke popy, etc.”[716]

In the Treasvrie of Avncient and Moderne Times,[717] there are two chapters devoted to the “Vertues of Honey.”

There is a story, that a man once came to Mohammed, and told him that his brother was afflicted with a violent pain in his belly; upon which the prophet bade him give him some honey. The fellow took his advice; but soon after coming again, told him that the medicine had done his brother no manner of service: Mohammed answered, “Go and give him more honey, for God speaks truth, and thy brother’s belly lies.” And the dose being repeated, the man, by God’s mercy, was immediately cured.[718]

In the sixteenth chapter of the Koran, Mohammed has likewise mentioned honey as a medicine for men.[719]

Athenæus tells us that Democritus, the philosopher of Abdera, after he had determined to rid himself of life on account of his extreme old age, and when he had begun to diminish his food day by day, when the day of the Thesmophonian festival came round, and the women of his household besought him not to die during the festival, in order that they might not be debarred from their share of the festivities, was persuaded and ordered a vessel full of honey to be set near him: and in this way he lived many days with no other support than honey; and then some days after, when the honey had been taken away, he died. But Democritus, Athenæus adds, had always been fond of honey; and he once answered a man, who had asked him how he could live in the enjoyment of the best health, that he might do so if he constantly moistened his inward parts with honey and his outward man with oil. Bread and honey was the chief food of the Pythagoreans, according to the statement of Aristoxenus, who says that those who ate this for breakfast were free from disease all their lives.[720]

“The gall of a vulture,” says Moufet, quoting Galen, in Euporist, “mingled with the juice of horehound (twice as much in weight as the gall is) and two parts of honey cures the suffusion of the eyes. Otherwise he mingles one part of the gall of the sea-tortoise, and four times as much honey, and anoints the eyes with it. Serenus prescribes such a receipt to cause one to be quick-sighted:

Mingle Hyblæan honey with the gall

Of Goats, ’tis good to make one see withall.”[721]

We are told in the German Ephemerides, that a young country girl, having eaten a great deal of honey, became so inebriated with it, that she slept the whole day, and talked foolishly the day following.[722]

Bevan, in his work on the Honey-Bee, mentions the following instances of a curious use to which propolis is sometimes put by the Bees: A snail, says he, having crept into one of Mr. Reaumur’s hives early in the morning, after crawling about for some time, adhered, by means of its own slime, to one of the glass panes. The Bees, having discovered the snail, surrounded it, and formed a border of propolis round the verge of its shell, and fastened it so securely to the glass that it became immovable.

Forever closed the impenetrable door;

It naught avails that in its torpid veins

Year after year, life’s loitering spark remains.

Evans.

Maraldi, another eminent Apiarian, states that a snail without a shell having entered one of his hives, the Bees, as soon as they observed it, stung it to death; after which, being unable to dislodge it, they covered it all over with an impervious coat of propolis.

For soon in fearless ire, their wonder lost,

Spring fiercely from the comb the indignant host,

Lay the pierced monster breathless on the ground,

And clap in joy their victor pinions round:

While all in vain concurrent numbers strive

To heave the slime-girt giant from the hive—

Sure not alone by force instinctive swayed,

But blest with reason’s soul-directing aid,

Alike in man or bee, they haste to pour,

Thick, hard’ning as it falls, the flaky shower;

Embalmed in shroud of glue the mummy lies,

No worms invade, no foul miasmas rise.

Evans.[723]

Xenophon tells us that all the soldiers, who ate of the honey-combs, found in the villages on the mountains of the

Colchians, lost their senses, and were seized with such violent vomiting and purging, that none of them were able to stand upon their legs: that those who ate but little, were like men very drunk, and those who ate much, like madmen, and some like dying persons. In this condition, this writer adds, great numbers lay upon the ground, as if there had been a defeat, and a general sorrow prevailed. The next day, they all recovered their senses, about the same hour they were seized; and, on the third and fourth days, they got up as if they had taken physic.[724]

Pliny accounts for this accident by saying there is found in that country a kind of honey, called from its effects, Thænomenon, that is, that those who eat it are seized with madness. He adds, that the common opinion is that this honey is gathered from the flowers of a plant called Rhododendros, which is very common in those parts. Tournefort thinks the modern Laurocerasus is the Rhododendros of Pliny, from the fact that the people of that country, at the present day, believe the honey that is gathered from its flowers will produce the effects described by Xenophon.[725]

The missionary Moffat in South Africa found some poisonous honey, which he unknowingly ate, but with no serious consequences. It was several days, however, before he got rid of a most unpleasant sensation in his head and throat. The plant from which the honey had been gathered was an Euphorbia.[726]

“In Podolia,” says the chronicler Hollingshed, “which is now subject to the King of Poland, their hives (of Bees) and combes are so abundant, that huge bores, overturning and falling into them, are drowned in the honie, before they can recover & find the meanes to come out.”[727]

Honey was offered up to the Sun by the ancient Peruvians.[728]

Dr. Sparrman has described a Hottentot dance, which he calls the Bee-dance. It is in imitation of a swarm of Bees; every performer as he jumps around making a buzzing noise.[729]

“To have a Bee in one’s bonnet” is a Scottish proverbial phrase about equivalent to the English, “To have a maggot in one’s head”—to be hair-brained. Kelly gives this with an additional word: “There’s a Bee in your bonnet-case.” In Scotland, too, it is said of a confused or stupefied man, that his “head is in the Bees.”[730] These proverbial expressions were also in vogue in England.[731]

The following beautiful epigram, on a Bee inclosed in amber, is from the pen of Martial: “The Bee is inclosed, and shines preserved, in a tear of the sisters of Phaëton, so that it seems enshrined in its own nectar. It has obtained a worthy reward for its great toils; we may suppose that the Bee itself would have desired such a death.

The Bee inclosed, and through the amber shown,

Seems buried in the juice that was her own.

So honor’d was a life in labor spent:

Such might she wish to have her monument.”[732]

The Septuagint has the following eulogium on the Bee in Prov. vi. 8, which is not found in the Hebrew Scriptures: “Go to the Bee, and learn how diligent she is, and what a noble work she produces, whose labors kings and private men use for their health; she is desired and honored by all, and though weak in strength, yet since she values wisdom, she prevails.”[733]

In Spain Bees are in great estimation; and this is evinced by the ancient proverb:

Abeja y oveja,

Y piedra que traveja,

Y pendola trans oreja,

Y parte en la Igreja,

Desea a su hija, la vieja——

The best wishes of a Spanish mother to her son are, Bees, sheep, millstones, a pen behind the ear, and a place in the church.[734]

The following anecdote in the history of the Humble-bee

(Bombus) is from the account of Josselyn of his voyages to New England, printed in 1674: “Near upon twenty years since there lived an old planter near Blackpoint, who on a Sunshine day about one of the clock lying upon a green bank not far from his house, charged his Son, a lad of 12 years of age, to awaken him when he had slept two hours; the old man falls asleep, and lying upon his back gaped with his mouth wide open enough for a Hawke to —— into it; after a little while the lad sitting by spied a Humble-bee creeping out of his Father’s mouth, which taking wing flew quite out of sight, the hour as the lad guest being come to awaken his Father, he jagged him and called aloud Father, Father, it is two o’clock, but all would not rouse him, at last he sees the Humble-bee returning, who lighted upon the sleeper’s lip and walked down as the lad conceived into his belly, and presently he awaked.”[735]

The following, on the different species of Humble-bees, is one of the popular rhymes of Scotland:

The todler-tyke has a very gude byke,

And sae has the gairy Bee;

But weel’s me on the little red-doup,

The best o’ a’ the three.[736]

When the Archbishop of St. Andrews was cruelly murdered in 1679, “upon the opening of his tobacco box a living humming bee flew out,” which was explained to be a familiar or devil. A Scottish woman declared that a child was poisoned by its grandmother, who, together with herself, were “in the shape of bume-bees,” that the former carried the poison “in her cleugh, wings, and mouth.” A great Bee constantly resorted to another after receiving the Satanic mark, and rested on it.[737]

An anecdote is related by M. Reaumur respecting the thimble-shaped nest, formed of leaves, of the Carpenter-bee (Apis centuncularis?), which is a striking instance of the ridiculous superstition which prevails among the uneducated, and which even sometimes has no slight influence on those of better understandings. “In the beginning of July, 1736, the learned Abbé Nollet, then at Paris, was surprised

by a visit from an auditor of the chamber of accounts, whose estate lay at a distant village on the borders of the Seine, a few leagues from Rouen. This gentleman came accompanied, among other domestics, by a gardener, whose face had an air of much concern. He had come to Paris in consequence of having found in his master’s ground many rows of leaves, unaccountably disposed in a mystical manner, and which he could not but believe were there placed by witchcraft, for the secret destruction of his lord and family. He had, after recovering from his first consternation, shown them to the curate of the parish, who was inclined to be of a similar opinion, and advised him without delay to take a journey to Paris, and make his lord acquainted with the circumstance. This gentleman, though not quite so much alarmed as the honest gardener, could not feel himself at perfect ease, and therefore thought it advisable to consult his surgeon upon the business, who, though a man eminent in his profession, declared himself utterly unacquainted with the nature of what was shown him, but took the liberty of advising that the Abbé Nollet, as a philosopher, should be consulted, whose well-known researches in natural knowledge might perhaps enable him to elucidate the matter. It was in consequence of this advice that the Abbé received the visit above mentioned, and had the satisfaction of relieving all parties from their embarrassment, by showing them several nests formed on a similar plan by other insects, and assuring them that those in their possession were the work of insects also.”[738]

In an English paper, the Observer, of July 25, 1813, there is an account of a “swarm of Bees resting themselves on the inside of a lady’s parasol.” They were hived without any serious injury to the lady.

In the Annual Register, 1767, p. 117, there was published by M. Lippi, Licentiate in Physic of the army of Paris, an account of a petrified Beehive, discovered on the mountains of Siout, in Upper Egypt. Broken open it disclosed the larvæ of Bees in the cells, hard and solid, and Bees themselves dried up like mummies. Honey was also found in the cells![739] The account is curious, but not entitled to much credit.

In the Liverpool Advertiser, and Times, of Nov. 24, 1817, there is a lengthy account of three Bees being found in a state of animation in a huge solid rock from the Western Point Quarry. Scientific attention was attracted, and as appears from the above-mentioned papers of Dec. 5, 1817, the mystery was cleared up by discovering in the rock “a sand hole” through which the insects had made their way.[740]

ORDER VI.
LEPIDOPTERA.