A rather exaggerated account of the excellence of honey is given by Butler:—
"Honey cutteth and casteth up phlegmatic matter, and therefore sharpeneth the stomachs of them which by reason thereof have little appetite; it purgeth those things which hurt the clearness of the eyes; it nourisheth very much; it breedeth good blood; it stirreth up and preserveth natural heat, and prolongeth old age; it keepeth all things uncorrupt which are put into it; and therefore physicians do temper therewith such medicines as they mean to keep long."
In an article in the Quarterly Review it is stated:—
"In such esteem was it held, that one of the old Welsh laws ran thus:—'There are three things in court which must be communicated to the king before they are made known to any other person:—1st Every sentence of the Judge. 2nd. Every new song. 3rd. Every cask of Mead.' Queen Bess was so fond of it, that she had some made for her own especial drinking every year; and Butler, who draws a distinction between Mead and Metheglin, making Hydromel the generic term, gives a receipt for the latter and better drink, the same used by 'our renowned Queen Elizabeth of happy memory.'"
A PRAIRIE HUNT.
A bee-hunt in the prairies is thus described by Washington Irving:—
"We had not been long in the camp, when a party set out in quest of a bee-tree, and being curious to witness the sport, I gladly accepted an invitation to accompany them. The party was headed by a veteran bee-hunter, a tall lank fellow in homespun garb, that hung loosely about his limbs, and a straw hat, shaped not unlike a bee-hive; a comrade, equally uncouth in garb, and without a hat, straddled along at his heels, with a long rifle on his shoulder. To these succeeded half-a-dozen others, some with axes, and some with rifles; for no one stirs from the camp without fire-arms, so that he may be ready either for wild deer or wild Indian. After proceeding some distance, we came to an open glade on the skirts of the forest. Here our leader halted, and then advanced quietly to a low bush, on the top of which I perceived a piece of honey-comb. This, I found, was the bait or lure for the wild bees. Several were humming about it, and diving into its cells. When they had laden themselves with honey, they would rise up in the air, and dart off in one straight line, almost with the velocity of a bullet. The hunters watched attentively the course they took, and then set off in the same direction, stumbling along over twisted roots and fallen trees, with their eyes turned up to the sky. In this way they traced the honey-laden bees to their hive, in the hollow trunk of a blasted oak, where, after buzzing about for a moment, they entered a hole about sixty feet from the ground. Two of the bee-hunters now plied their axes vigorously at the foot of the tree, to level it with the ground. The mere spectators and amateurs, in the meantime, drew off to a cautious distance, to be out of the way of the falling of the tree and the vengeance of its inmates. The jarring blows of the axe seemed to have no effect in alarming or agitating this most industrious community. They continued to ply at their usual occupations—some arriving full-freighted into port, others sallying forth on new expeditions, like so many merchantmen in a money-making metropolis, little suspicious of impending bankruptcy and downfall; even a loud crack, which announced the disrupture of the trunk, failed to divert their attention from the intense pursuit of gain: at length down came the tree with a tremendous crash, bursting open from end to end, and displacing all the hoarded treasures of the commonwealth. One of the hunters immediately ran up with a wisp of lighted hay, as a defence against the bees. The latter, however, made no attack, and sought no revenge; they seemed stupified by the catastrophe, and, unsuspicious of its cause, remained crawling and buzzing about the ruins, without offering us any molestation. Every one of the party now fell to, with spoon and hunting-knife, to scoop out the flakes of honey-comb with which the hollow trunk was stored. Some of them were of old date, and a deep brown colour; others were beautifully white, and the honey in their cells was almost limpid. Such of the combs as were entire were placed in camp-kettles, to be conveyed to the encampment; those which had been shivered in the fall were devoured upon the spot. Every stark bee-hunter was to be seen with a rich morsel in his hand, dripping about his fingers, and disappearing as rapidly as a cream-tart before the holiday appetite of a schoolboy. Nor was it the bee-hunters alone that profited by the downfall of this industrious community. As if the bees would carry through the similitude of their hahits with those of laborious and gainful man, I beheld numbers from rival hives, arriving on eager wing, to enrich themselves with the ruins of their neighbours. These busied themselves as eagerly and cheerily as so many wreckers on an Indiaman that has been driven on shore—plunging into the cells of the broken honey-combs, banqueting greedily on the spoil, and then winging their way full-freighted to their homes. As to the poor proprietors of the ruin, they seemed to have no heart to do anything, not even to taste the nectar that flowed around them, but crawled backwards and forwards, in vacant desolation, as I have seen a poor fellow, with his hands in his pockets, whistling vacantly and despondingly about the ruins of his house that had been burned. It is difficult to describe the bewilderment and confusion of the bees of the bankrupt hive who had been absent at the time of the catastrophe, and who arrived, from time to time, with full cargoes from abroad. At first they wheeled about in the air, in the place where the fallen tree had once reared its head, astonished at finding all a vacuum. At length, as if comprehending their disaster, they settled down in clusters on a dry branch of a neighbouring tree, from whence they seemed to contemplate the prostrate ruin, and to buzz forth doleful lamentations over the downfall of their republic. It was a scene on which the 'melancholy Jaques' might have moralised by the hour."—Tour in Prairies, ch. ix.
BEE TEMPERS.
"Bees, however, as we have already observed, are not usually ill-tempered; and, if not molested, are generally inoffensive. Thorley relates, that a maid-servant who assisted him in hiving a swarm, being rather afraid, put a linen cloth as a defence over her head and shoulders. When the bees were shaken from the tree on which they had alighted, the queen probably settled upon this cloth, for the whole swarm covered it, and then getting under it, spread themselves over her face, neck, and bosom, so that when the cloth was removed, she was quite a spectacle. She was with great difficulty kept from running off with all the bees upon her. But at length her master quieted her fears, and began to search for the queen. He succeeded, and expected that when he put her into the hive the bees would follow. He was, however, in the first instance disappointed, for they did not stir. Upon examining the cluster again, he found a second queen, or probably the former one, which had flown back to the swarm. Having seized her, he placed her in the hive, and kept her there. The bees soon missed her, and crowded into the hive after her, so that, in two or three minutes, not one remained on the poor frightened girl. After this escape she became quite a heroine, and would undertake the most hazardous employment about the hives."—Lardner.