Bee-hives in Virgil’s day—as we can gather from certain ancient Roman bas-reliefs still in existence—were of a high, peaked, dome pattern, and they were made of stitched bark, or wattled osiers, as he himself tells us. Many of the directions he gives as to their situation and surroundings are still golden rules for every bee-keeper. The bee-garden, he says, must be sheltered from winds, and placed where neither sheep nor butting kids may trample down the flowers. Trees must be near for their cool shade, and to serve as resting-places when “the new-crowned kings lead out their earliest swarms in the sweet spring-time.” He tells us to place our hives near to water, or where a light rivulet speeds through the grass; and we are to cast into the water “large pebbles and willow-branches laid cross-wise, that the bees, when drinking, may have bridges to stand on, and spread their wings to the summer sun.”
Virgil’s method of hiving a swarm is almost identical with that followed by old-fashioned beemen to this day. The hive is to be scoured with crushed balm and honeywort, and then you are to “make a tinkling round about, and clash the cymbals of the Mother”—that is, of the goddess Cybele. The bees will forthwith descend, he tells us, and occupy the prepared nest. When the honey-harvest is taken, you are first to sprinkle your garments and cleanse your breath with pure water, and then to approach the hives “holding forth pursuing smoke in your hand.” And the old-time bee-man of to-day takes his mug of small-beer as a necessary rite, and washes himself before handling his hives.
But perhaps the great charm of the fourth Georgic consists, not in its nearness to truth about bee-life, but in the continual reference to the beautiful myths, and hardly less attractive errors, of immemorial times, copied so faithfully by mediæval writers, but not apt to be heard of by the learner of to-day unless he reads the old books.
Virgil begins his poem by speaking of “heaven-born honey, the gift of air,” in allusion to the belief that the nectar in flowers was not a secretion of the plant itself, but fell like manna from the skies. He seriously warns his readers of the disastrous effect of echoes on the denizens of a hive, and of the hurtful nature of burnt crab-shells; and tells us that in windy weather bees will carry about little pebbles as counterpoises, “as ships take in sand-ballast when they roll deep in the tossing surge.”
He was a firm believer in the Divine origin of bees. To all the ancients the honey-bee was a perpetual miracle, as much a sign and token of an omnipotent Will, set in the flowery meadows, as is the rainbow, to modern pietists, set in the sky. While all other creatures in the universe were seen to produce their kind by coition of the sexes, these mysterious winged people seemed to be exempt from the common law. Virgil, copying from much older writers, says, “they neither rejoice in bodily union, nor waste themselves in love’s languors, nor bring forth their young by pain of birth; but alone from the leaves and sweet-scented herbage they gather their children in their mouths, thus sustaining their strength of tiny citizens.”
Just as marvellous, however—at least to the modern entomologist—will appear the belief, widespread among the ancients, and shared by Virgil, that swarms of bees can be spontaneously generated from the decaying carcass of an ox. Virgil professes to derive his account of the matter from an old Egyptian legend, and he gives careful directions to bee-keepers of what he seems never to doubt is an excellent method for stocking an apiary. There is a very old translation of the passage in the fourth book of the Georgics relating to these self-generated bees, which is worth quoting, if only on account of its quaint mediæval savour. “First, there is found a place, small and narrowed for the very use, shut in by a leetle tiled roof and closed walles, through which the light comes in askant through four windowes, facing the four pointes of the compass. Next is found a two-year-old bull-calf, whose crooked horns bee just beginning to bud; the beast his nose-holes and breathing are stopped, in spite of his much kicking; and after he hath been thumped to death, his entrails, bruised as they bee, melt inside his entire skinne. This done, he is left in the place afore-prepared, and under his sides are put bitts of boughes, and thyme, and fresh-plucked rosemarie. And all this doethe take place at the season when the zephyrs are first curling the waters, before the meades bee ruddy with their spring-tide colours, and before the swallow, that leetle chatterer, doethe hang her nest again the beam. In time, the warm humour beginneth to ferment inside the soft bones of the carcase; and wonderful to tell, there appear creatures, footless at first, but which soon getting unto themselves winges, mingle together and buzz about, joying more and more in their airy life. At last, burst they forth, thick as rain-droppes from a summer cloude, thick as arrowes, the which leave the clanging stringes when the nimble Parthians make their first battel onset.”
For a study in the persistence of delusions, this affords us some very promising material. In the first place, the generation of bees from putrescent matter is, and must always have been, an impossibility. If there is one thing that the honey-bee abhors more than another, it is carrion of any description. Indeed, putrid odours will often induce a stock of bees to forsake its hive altogether; so it cannot even be supposed that bees would venture near the scene of Virgil’s malodorous experiment, and thus give rise to the belief that they were nurtured there. But not only was this practice a recognised and established thing in Virgil’s time, but entire credence was placed in it throughout the Middle Ages down, in fact, to so late a time as the seventeenth century. It is on record that the experiment was carried through with complete success by a certain Mr. Carew, of Anthony, in Cornwall, at an even later date still.
The practice, moreover, was of infinitely greater antiquity than even Virgil supposed. He was probably right in giving it an Egyptian origin, and this alone may date it back thousands of years. In Egypt the custom had a curious variant. The ox was placed underground, with its horns above the surface of the soil. Then, when the process of generation was presumed to be complete, the tips of the horns were sawn off, and the bees are said to have issued from them, as out of two funnels.
Nearly all the ancient writers, with the exception of Aristotle, mention the practice in some form or other. Varro, writing half a century before Virgil, says, “it is from rotten oxen that are born the sweet bees, the mothers of honey.” Ovid gives the story of the Egyptian shepherd Aristæus as enlarged upon by Virgil, and adds some speculations of his own. He suggests that the soul of the ox is converted into numberless bee-souls as a punishment to the ox for his lifelong depredations amongst the flowers and herbage, the bee being a creature that can only do good to, and cannot injure, vegetation.
Manifestly, where there is so general, and so widely independent a corroboration of a story, some explanation must exist, which will alike bear out the truth and condone, or at least extenuate, the error. A careful examination of the various accounts of bee-swarms having been produced from decaying animal matter reveals one common omission in regard to them. All the writers are agreed that dense clouds of bee-like insects are evolved; and speak of these as escaping into the air and flying off, presumably in the immediate quest of honey. But no one bears testimony to honey having been actually gathered by these insects, nor is it recorded that they were ever induced to take possession of a hive, as ordinary swarms of bees will readily do. They are spoken of more as enriching the neighbourhood generally, by augmenting the number of bees abroad, than as conducing to the well-being of any particular bee-owner.