The excellent publications of Langstroth, Cowan, Cheshire, Neighbour, Hunter, Taylor and Wood will supply all details intentionally omitted from the present treatise. To several of the above writers, and to some others mentioned at the end of [Chapter I]., the author desires to express his obligations for numerous facts.
Many of the most important illustrations in Chapters [XI.] and [XIV.], and the whole of those in [Chapter XXVI.] have been taken, by permission, from the diagrams published by the British Bee-keepers' Association. These diagrams are reductions from drawings made by Mr. Frank Cheshire, who is so well known as having devoted many years to the study of apiculture, especially on its scientific side. To the same gentleman is also due the discovery of many of the physiological marvels given in Chapters [XI.] and [XIV.], and of the chief facts embodied in the chapter on "Bees in relation to Flowers."
CHAPTER I.
HISTORIC SKETCH.
Holy Scriptures—Vedas—Egyptian Monuments—The Koran—Etymological Considerations—Literature of Subject—Aristotle—Philiscus—Pliny—Virgil—Columella—Other Classical Authors—Shakespeare—Modern Writers.
Far back in historic time there are records that man had learnt the value of the bee. The book of Job—probably the oldest of our sacred Scriptures—contains a reference to honey. The Pentateuch, the Chronicles of the Israelites, the Psalms, the works of Solomon, and nearly all the later books of the Old Testament, speak of these wonderful insects or their produce. They are referred to in the Vedas of Hindostan, the monuments of Egypt, the poems of Homer and Euripides, and the narrative of Xenophon's expedition into Persia.
Throughout the ancient civilised world the virtues of honey were celebrated, and the habits of the bee served to point a moral for human conduct. It is remarkable that in the Koran we find Mahomet representing the Almighty as addressing this insect alone of all the creatures He had made: "The Lord spake by inspiration unto the bee, saying, 'Provide thee houses in the mountains and in the trees, and of those materials wherewith men build hives for thee; then eat of every kind of fruit, and walk in the beaten paths of thy Lord.' There proceedeth from their bellies a liquor of various colours, wherein is a medicine for men. Verily, herein is a sign unto people who consider."
The ancient Egyptians must have known much of the domestic economy of the hive, for they took the figure of the insect to symbolise a people governed by a sovereign, and this so far back as the twelfth dynasty, or 2080-1920 B.C.
It has been argued on etymological grounds that in a much remoter period still, the human race had domesticated the bee; for in Sanskrit ma means honey, madhupa honey drinker, and madhukara honey maker. Madhu is evidently the origin of our word mead. Again, mih or mat, in Chinese, signifies honey; and it can hardly be a mere coincidence which has brought about so close a resemblance between the Turanian and the Indo-European terms above mentioned. We have rather the indication of the survival of a name in two branches of a still older language than either of the Asiatic tongues, from which so large a proportion of modern speech has flowed, thus carrying us back to an enormously remote period in the history of man. The Latin mel, and French miel, both meaning honey, are, of course, the offspring of the Greek; and all the above words, according to some authorities, point to the circumstance of the constructive power of the insect having impressed the minds of men emphatically.
In the Teutonic languages biene, bee, &c., are evidently connected with by—a termination met with in many English towns, and signifying "a dwelling"; and so we see that it was not so much the sweet liquid procured and stored by the insects, as the skill and beauty with which they fashioned their combs, which struck their human observers; and though we cannot with certainty affirm that men domesticated them in these remote times, it seems probable that races who, before the historic period, had learnt to make use of most of the animals now under immediate subjection to the wants and purposes of man, saw the convenience and wisdom of turning to account the nectar-collecting habits of the bee. Jacob, seventeen centuries before Christ, told his sons to take "a little honey" among their presents to the lord of Egypt. Again, the land of Canaan was pictured by God to Moses as "a land flowing with milk and honey." We should, therefore, probably be justified in inferring that, as the one liquid was derived from herds under the people's control, so, too, the other came from domesticated insects. It may be that no hives were used at so early a period as the sixteenth century before Christ, and the reference in Ps. lxxxi. 16—"with honey out of the rock should I have satisfied thee"—would seem to indicate that, at a much later date, the bees were left at large in their native haunts. Still, the numerous references of the earlier Scriptures make it plain that honey was an article of common use, and was obtainable at the discretion of those in Palestine who wished for it.
With regard to the ancient literature of our subject, the first treatise on the bee now extant is that of Aristotle in his History of Animals, written about 330 B.C. Observations of a scientific kind had, however, been made with regard to these insects by a philosopher of Asia Minor, who is said to have devoted a long lifetime to watching their habits. Unfortunately, the records of his studies in this department of entomology have not survived to our day. We have also to regret that later ages lost the benefit of the labours of Philiscus of Thasos, who is said to have abandoned the abodes of men for a forest life, that he might learn all that was possible of the nature and work of these creatures, which seemed to him so marvellous in their structure and their doings. It is Pliny the Elder—the well-known Roman man of science, who lived near the beginning of the Christian era—to whom we are indebted for notices of the workers in natural history just mentioned, while he himself devotes some considerable space in his own book to a description of the bee.