He was feeling particularly disagreeable on the morning when Orpheus began playing his lute near his farm. And when Eurydice, whom Orpheus so loved, approached him to ask for a comb of his delicious honey for dinner for the two, Aristaeus entirely lost his temper. He not only refused the nymph, which no one but a very stingy person could have done, for she smiled at him so winningly and asked for it so politely; but he chased Eurydice off his farm.
No one had treated Eurydice so rudely in all her life before. Even Pan had gathered flowers for her to twine into garlands and had refrained from teasing her as he did almost all the other nymphs. And here she was, a long distance from Orpheus and pursued by an ugly tempered country man! Eurydice ran like the wind, the bee-man coming fast behind her. She was much fleeter than he and would have reached the woods safely, but she stepped suddenly on a snake that she had not seen as it lay coiled up in the grass. The snake stung Eurydice's bare feet and she dropped down on the ground.
"It serves her right!" the bee-man said, not going to see how badly she was hurt. And with that he went back to his bees.
Aristaeus was the very first bee-man, the myths tell us. When the gods made the little creatures of the earth they made also the honey bees and taught them how to build themselves homes in hollow trees or holes in the rocks, to find the nectar in the flowers, and make from it their thick, golden honey. Aristaeus was the son of the water-nymph Cyrene, and he came to Arcadia with the remembrance of the music of the waters and the brightness of the sun in his heart, but when he discovered how to attract the bees to his farm and take their honey away from them and sell it, he forgot everything except his business. That was when he began to dislike Orpheus and to become blind to the fair country in which he lived.
"Three hives are swarming to-day," the bee-man thought as he came home. "I ought to be able to get a good sum for the honey." Then, as he reached the orchard where his hives were placed on the wall, he looked about him in amazement. Hives, bees, all were gone. Not a buzz, a sting, or a single drop of honey was left!
Aristaeus looked throughout the entire countryside for his bees for days, but he could not find a single one. At last he gave up the search and did what a good many boys and girls would be apt to do in the same emergency. He went to ask the advice of his mother, the sea-nymph Cyrene.
He went to the edge of the river where he knew she lived and called her.
"O mother, the pride of my life is taken away from me. I have lost my precious bees. My care and skill have availed me nothing. Can you turn from me this blow of misfortune?"
His mother heard these complaints as she sat in her palace at the bottom of the river with her attendant nymphs around her. They were busy spinning and weaving beautiful designs in water weeds and painting pebbles while another told stories to amuse the rest. But the sad voice of the bee-man interrupted them and one put her head above the water. Seeing Aristaeus, she returned and told his mother, who ordered that he be brought down to her.