[CHAPTER XXIV.]
DISEASES OF BEES.
I suspect that much which has been written upon this subject is fanciful, and that most of the ailments of bees originate from want of cleanliness or want of food; for if bees be not kept clean, and be not supplied with food in backward springs, particularly in those which succeed mild winters, a mortality among them is usually experienced; and it is in spring that their alleged maladies prevail.
“For late the lynx-ey’d scout, in nice survey,
Had mark’d the ravage of ungenial May,
Where the lorn bee-herd wail’d his empty shed,
Its stores exhausted, and its tenants dead.”
“So mourn’d Arcadia’s swain[H] his honey’d host,
By keen disease or keener famine lost.
Till his fond mother, on her glassy throne,
Heard through deep Peneus’[I] wave the filial moan.”
Evans.
[H] Aristæus, the son of Apollo and the nymph Cyrene, to whom mankind were said to be indebted for the art of curdling milk, managing bees, making hives, and cultivating olives; on which account he was worshipped as a God by the Greeks. He was the father of the unfortunate Actæon.
[I] A river of Thessaly.