"Bees naturally are many times sick; and that do they shew most evidently: a man shall see it in them by their heavie looks and by their unlustines to their businesse: ye shall marke how some will bring forth others that be sicke and diseased into the warme sunne, and be readie to minister unto them and give them meat. Nay, ye shall have them to carie forth their dead, and to accompanie the corps full decently, as in a solemne funerall. If it chaunce that the king be dead of some pestilent maladie, the commons and subjects mourne, take thought, and grieve with heavie cheere and sad countenance: idle they be, and take no joy to do any thing: they gather in no provision: they march not forth: onely with a certain doleful humming they gather round about his corps, and will not away.
"Then requisite it is and necessarie to sever and part the multitude, and so to take away the bodie from them: otherwise they would keepe a looking at the breathlesse carcasse, and never go from it, but still mone and mourne without end. And even then also they had need be cherished and comforted with good victuals, otherwise they would pine away and die with hunger."—Lib. XI. cap. xviii.
"We bury our dead with great solemnity; at the king's death there is a generall mourning and fasting, with a cessation from labour, and we use to go about his body with a sad murmur for many daies. When we are sick we have attendants appointed us, and the symptoms when we be sick are infallible, according to the honest, plain poet:
"If bees be sick (for all that live must die),
That may be known by signes most certainly;
Their bodies are discoloured, and their face
Looks wan, which shows that death comes on apace.
They carry forth their dead, and do lament,
Hanging o' th' dore, or in their hives are pent.'"
Howell, p. 138.
Of bees especially the proverb holds good, that "Truth is stranger than fiction." The discoveries of Huber, Swammerdam, Reaumur, Latreille, Bonnet, and other moderns, read more like a fairy-tale than anything else, and yet the subject is far from being exhausted. At the same time modern naturalists have substantiated the accuracy of the ancients in many statements which were considered ridiculous fables. The ancients
anticipated us so far as even to have used glass hives, for the purpose of observing the wonderful proceedings of this winged nation. Bochart, quoting an old writer, says:
"Fecit illis Aristoteles Alveare Vitreum, ut introspiceret, qua ratione ad opus se accingerent. Sed abnuerunt quidquam operari, donec interiora vitri luto oblevisset."—Hierozoicon, Lond. 1663, folio, Part II. p. 514.
Eirionnach.
Footnote 1:[(return)]
The bee is praised for her pious labours in the offices of the Roman Church, "as the unconscious contributor of the substance of her paschal light." "Alitur enim liquantibus ceris, quas in substantiam pretiosæ hujus lampadis Mater Apia eduxit."—Office of Holy Saturday.