The Lore of the Honey-Bee

by Tickner Edwardes

They seem to have been, in the main, agreed on the point that the ordinary generative principle, otherwise universal throughout creation, was miraculously dispensed with in the single case of the honey-bee. Moses Rusden, who was bee-master to King Charles the Second, and who published his “Further Discovery of Bees” so late as the year 1679, believed that the worker-bees gathered from the flowers not only the germs of life, but the actual corporeal substance, of the young bees.

He pointed triumphantly to the little globular lumps of many-coloured pollen which bees so industriously fetch into the hives during the breeding-season, and asserted that these were the actual bodily matter from which the young bees developed. He also maintained that every hive was ruled over by a king, but here Rusden was evidently trying to serve two masters. No doubt he was a true “Abhorrer,” and heartily detested anything at variance with the doctrine of the divine right of monarchs. He had faithfully copied from Virgil as to the gathering of this generative substance from the flowers; but he felt that, as the King’s Bee-Master, it was incumbent on him to put in a good word for the restored monarchy if he could. There were still many in the realm who were altogether opposed to the Restoration, and probably more who were waverers between the faiths. And Rusden, doubtless, saw that if he could point to any parallel instance in Nature where the system of monarchy was the divinely ordained state, he would be furnishing his patron with a magnificent argument in favour of his kingship, and one, moreover, which would especially appeal to the ignorant and superstitious masses. No doubt, however, in taking up this position, Rusden was only echoing the belief immemorially established among the beemen of the past.

The single large bee, which all knew to exist in each hive, was generally looked upon as the absolute ruler of the community. It is variously described as a king or queen by writers in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, but only in the sense of a governor; and the word chosen largely depended on the sex of the august person who happened to occupy the English throne at the time. Thus Rusden very wisely discarded the notion of a queen-bee when he had to deal with Charles the Second. Butler, perhaps the most learned of the mediæval writers on the honey-bee, as astutely forbore to mention the word king, his book being published in the reign of Queen Anne. He calls it “The Feminine Monarchie,” but seems to have no more suspected the truth that the large bee was really the mother of the whole colony than any of his predecessors. Almost alone in his day, however, he refuses to accept the flower theory of bee-generation, and asserts that the worker-bees and drones are the females and males respectively. But, he says, they “engender not as other living creatures; onely they suffer their Drones among them for a season, by whose Masculine virtue they strangely conceive and breed for the preservation of their sweet kinde.” He gets over the difficulty of there being no drones in the hive for nine months in the year, during part of which time breeding goes actively forward, by asserting that the worker-bees immaculately conceive of the drones for the season, their summer impregnation sufficing until the drones reappear in the May of the following year. Thus, without guessing it, he was very near the discovery of one of the most astounding facts in Nature—that the queen-bee of a hive, after a single traffic with a drone, continues to produce fertile eggs for the rest of her life, which may extend to as long as three, or even four, years.

Butler’s book is rich in the quaint bee-lore of his times. He tells us the queen-bee has under her “subordinate Gouvernours and Leaders. For difference from the rest they beare for their crest a tuft or tossel, in some coloured yellow, in some murrey, in manner of a plume; whereof some turne downward like an Ostrich-feather, others stand upright like a Hern-top. In less than a quarter of an hour,” he assures us, “you may see three or foure of them come forth of a good stall; but chiefly in Gemini, before their continuall labour have worne these ornaments.” And any warm spring or summer morning, if you watch a hive of bees at work, you may chance upon much the same thing. In some flowers, notably the evening primrose, the pollen-grains have a way of clinging together in threads; and these festoons often catch in the antennæ of the foraging bees, giving much the same appearance of a plume, or tassel, as Butler saw in his day.

He gives some advice as to the deportment of a good bee-master which is well worth quoting. “If thou wilt have the favour of thy Bees that they sting thee not, thou must avoid such things as offend them: thou must not be unchaste or uncleanely: for impurity and sluttishnesse (themselves being most chaste and neat) they utterly abhore: thou must not come among them smelling of sweat, or having a stinking breath, caused either through eating of Leekes, Onions, Garleeke, and the like; or by any other meanes: the noisomenesse whereof is corrected with a cup of Beere: and therefore it is not good to come among them before you have drunke: thou must not be given to surfeiting and drunkennesse: thou must not come puffing and blowing unto them, neither hastily stir among them, nor violently defend thy selfe when they seeme to threaten thee; but softly moving thy hand before thy face, gently putting them by: and lastly, thou must be no Stranger unto them. In a word, thou must be chaste, cleanly, sweet, sober, quiet, and familiar: so will they love thee, and know thee from all other.” Thus, the good bee-master, according to Butler, is necessarily a compendium of all the virtues; and nothing more seems to be wanted to bring about the millennium than to induce all mankind to become keepers of bees.

Writers on the honey-bee in mediæval times vied with each other in their testimony to the extraordinary powers and intelligence of their hive-people. But perhaps a story, gravely related by Butler, outdoes them all. He prefaces it by declaring that “Bees are so wise and skilful, as not onely to discrie a certaine little God amightie, though he came among them in the likenesse of a Wafer-cake; but also to build him an artificial chappell.” He goes on to relate that “a certaine simple woman, having some stals of Bees that yeelded not unto hir hir desired profit, but did consume and die of the murraine; made hir mone to an other Woman more simple than hir selfe; who gave her counsell to get a consecrated Host, 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 mouth, and being come home againe she took it out, and put it into one of hir hives. Whereupon the murraine ceased, and the Honie abounded. The Woman, therefore, lifting up the Hive at the due time to take out the Honie, saw there (most strange to be seene) a Chappell built by the Bees, with an altar in it, the wals adorned by marvellous skill of Architecture, with windowes conveniently set in their places: also a doore and a steeple with bells. And the Host being laid upon the altar, the Bees making a sweet noise, flew around it.”

This story is only paralleled by another, equally ancient, wherein it is related that some thieves broke into a church, and stole the silver casket in which the holy wafers were kept. They found one wafer in the box, and this they hid under a hive before making off with the more intrinsically valuable part of their booty. In the night, it seems, the owner of the hive was awakened by the most ravishing strains of music, coming at set intervals from the direction of his bee-garden. He went out with a lantern to ascertain the cause of it, and discovered it to proceed from the interior of one of his hives. Full of perturbation at this miracle, he went and roused the Bishop, and acquainted him with the extraordinary state of affairs; and the Bishop coming with his retinue and lifting up the hive, they found that the bees had taken possession of the consecrated wafer, and placed it in the upper part of their hive, having first made for it a box of the whitest wax, an exact replica of the one stolen. And all around this box there were choirs of bees singing, and keeping watch over it, as monks do in their chapel. “With which story,” adds the narrator prophetically, “I doubt not but some incredulous people will quarrell.”

In their directions for hiving a swarm, the medieval bee-masters were always quaintly explicit. The dressing of the skep which was to receive the swarm was a particularly elaborate process. When the skep was new, you were recommended to scour it out with a handful of sweet herbs, such as thyme, marjoram, or hyssop; and this was to be followed by a second dressing of honey and water, or milk and salt. But the preparation of an old skep must have been a rather disgusting affair. You were to put “two or three handfuls of mault, or pease, or other come in the hive, and let a Hogge eat thereof. Meanwhile, doe you so turne the Hive, that the fome or froth, which the Hogge maketh in eating, may goe all about the Hive. And then wipe the Hive lightlie with a linnen cloth, and so will the Bees like this Hive better than the new.”

When the swarm was up, and “busie in their dance,” you were to “play them a fit of mirth on a Bason, Warming-pan, or Kettle, to make them more speedily light.” We are assured that the swarm would fly faster, or slower, according to the noise made. If the fit of mirth were in rapid measure, the bees would fly fast and high; but with a soft leisurely music, they would go slowly, and soon descend. This curious custom of “ringing the bees” is undoubtedly of Roman origin; but whether it was introduced by Cæsar’s followers, or those of Claudius in the first century, or whether the old English bee-masters themselves derived it from their classic reading, is hard to determine. It is still to be heard in many country districts, and its exponents seem to retain all the faith of their forefathers in its efficacy. Probably, in mediæval times, when bee-gardens were much more plentiful than they are now, the custom had at least one undeniable merit: it proclaimed to the various hive-owners in the vicinity that a swarm was in the air, and that its rightful owner was on the alert. In this way, no doubt, dishonest claims to its possession were largely prevented, or, at least, discouraged.