Borlase, in his Antiquities of Cornwall, p. 168, tells us of another strange practice in the hiving of Bees. He says "The Cornish, to this day, invoke the spirit of Browny, when their Bees swarm; and they think that their crying Browny, Browny, will prevent them from returning into the former hive, and make them pitch and form a new colony."
The Rev. Thomas P. Hunt, of Wyoming, Pa., has devised an amusing plan, by which he says he can, at all times, prevent a swarm of Bees from leaving his premises. Before his stocks swarm, he collects a number of dead Bees, and, stringing them with a needle and thread, as worms are strung for catching eels, makes of them a ball about the size of an egg, leaving a few strands loose. By carrying — fastened to a pole — this "Bee-bob" about his Apiary, when the Bees are swarming, or by placing it in some central position, he invariably secures every swarm.
The barbarous practice of killing Bees for their honey, not yet entirely abolished, did not exist in the time of Aristotle, Varro, Columella, and Pliny. The old cultivators took only what their Bees could spare, killing no stocks except such as were feeble or diseased. The following epitaph, taken from a German work, might well be placed over every pit of these brimstoned insects:
Here Rests,
cut off from useful labor, a colony of INDUSTRIOUS BEES, BASELY MURDERED BY ITS UNGRATEFUL AND IGNORANT OWNER.
To the epitaph also may be appended Thomson's verses:
Ah, see, where robbed and murdered in that pit, Lies the still heaving hive! at evening snatched, Beneath the cloud of guilt-concealing night, And fixed o'er sulphur! while, not dreaming ill, The happy people, in their waxen cells, Sat tending public cares. Sudden, the dark, oppressive steam ascends, And, used to milder scents, the tender race, By thousands, tumble from their honied dome Into a gulf of blue sulphureous flame!
It is considered very cruel in Africa, as Campbell observes, to kill Bees in order to obtain their honey, especially as from flowers being there at all seasons, and most in winter, they can live comfortably all the year round. A Hottentot, who was accustomed to kill the Bees, was often reasoned with by the humane to give up so cruel a practice, yet he persisted in it till a circumstance occurred which determined him to relinquish it. He had a water-mill for grinding his corn, which went very slowly, from the smallness of the stream which turned it; consequently the flour dropped very gently. For some time much less than usual came into the sack, the cause of which he could not discover. At length he found that a great part of his flour, as it was ground, was carried off by the Bees to their hives: on examining this, he found it contained only his flour, and no honey. This robbery made him resolve to destroy no more Bees when their honey was taken, considering their conduct in robbing him of his property as a just punishment to him for his cruelty. The gentleman who related this story, Mr. Campbell says, was a witness to the Bees robbing the mill.
An old English proverb, relative to the swarming of Bees, is,
A swarm of Bees in May, Is worth a load of hay; A swarm of Bees in June, Is worth a silver spoon; A swarm of Bees in July, Is not worth a fly.
In Tusser's Five Hundred Points of Husbandry, under the month of May, are these lines:
Take heed to thy Bees, that are ready to swarme, The losse thereof now is a crown's worth of harme.
On which is the following observation in Tusser Redivivus, 1744, p. 62: "The tinkling after them with a warming-pan, frying-pan, kettle, is of good use to let the neighbors know you have a swarm in the air, which you claim wherever it lights; but I believe of very little purpose to the reclaiming of the Bees, who are thought to delight in no noise but their own."
Ill fortune attends the killing of Bees, — a common saying. This, doubtless, arose from the thrift and usefulness of these insects.
That swarms of Bees, or fields, houses, stalls of cattle, or workshops, may not be affected by enchantment, Leontinus says: "Dig in the hoof of the right side of a sable ass under the threshold of the door, and pour on some liquid pitchy resin, salt, Heracleotic origanum, cardamonium, cumin, some fine bread, squills, a chaplet of white or of crimson wool, the chaste tree, vervain, sulphur, pitchy torches; and lay on some amaranthus every month, and lay on the mould; and, having scattered seeds of different kinds, let them remain."
To cure the stings of Bees, we have the following remedies: "Rue," says Pliny, "is an hearbe as medicinable as the best . . . and is available against the stings of Bees, Hornets, and Wasps, and against the poison of the Cantharides and Salamanders."
- "Yea, and it is an excellent thing for them that be stung, to take the very Bees in drinke; for it is an approved cure."
- "Baulme is a most present remedy not only against their stings, but also of Wespes, Spiders, and Scorpions."
- "The Laurell, both leafe, barke, and berrie, is by nature hot; and applied as a liniment, be singular good for the pricke or sting of Wasps, Hornets, and Bees."
- "For the sting of Bees, Wasps, and Hornets, the Howlat (owlet) is counted a soveraigne thing, by a certaine antipathic in nature."
- "Moreover, as many as have about them the bill of a Woodspeck (Woodpecker) when they come to take honey out of the hive, shall not be stung by Bees."
It is said that if a man suffers himself to be stung by Bees, he will find that the poison will produce less and less effect upon his system, till, finally, like Mithridates of old, he will appear to almost thrive upon poison itself. When Langstroth first became interested in Bees, according to his statement, a sting was quite a formidable thing, the pain being often intense, and the wound swelling so as sometimes to obstruct his sight. But, at length, however, the pain was usually slight, and, if the sting was quickly extracted, no unpleasant consequences ensued, even if no remedies were used. Huish speaks of seeing the bald head of Bonner, a celebrated practical Apiarian, covered with stings, which seemed to produce upon him no unpleasant effects. The Rev. Mr. Kleine advises beginners to suffer themselves to be stung frequently, assuring them that, in two seasons, their systems will become accustomed to the poison. An old English Apiarian advises a person who has been stung, to catch as speedily as possible another Bee, and make it sting on the same spot.
It is generally believed among our boys that if the part stung by a Bee be rubbed with the leaves of three different plants at the same time, the pain will be relieved.
Willsford, in his Nature's Secrets, p. 134, says: "Bees, in fair weather, not wandering far from their hives, presage the approach of some stormy weather. . . . Wasps, Hornets, and Gnats, biting more eagerly than they used to do, is a sign of rainy weather."
The prognostication drawn from a flight of Bees, in which there is doubtless much truth, appears from the following lines to have been known to Virgil:
Nor dare they stay, When rain is promised, or a stormy day: But near the city walls their watering take, Nor forage far, but short excursions make.
Bees were employed as the symbol of Ephesus; they are common also on coins of Elyrus, Julis, and Prassus.
One of the most remarkable facts in the history of Bees is that passage in the Bible about the swarm of these insects and honey in the carcass of the lion slain by Samson. Some look upon it as a paradox, others as altogether incredible; but it admits of easy explanation. The lion had been dead some little time before the Bees had taken up their abode in the carcass, for it is expressly stated that "after a time," Samson returned and saw the Bees and honey in the carcass, so that "if," as Oedman has well observed, "any one here represents to himself a corrupt and putrid carcass, the occurrence ceases to have any true similitude, for it is well known in these countries, at certain seasons of the year, the heat will in twenty-four hours so completely dry up the moisture of dead animals, and that without their undergoing decomposition, that their bodies long remain, like mummies, unaltered, and entirely free from offensive odor." To the foregoing quotation we may add that very probably the larvae of flies, ants, and other insects, which at the time when Bees swarm, are to be found in great numbers, would help to consume the carcass, and leave perhaps in a short time little else than a skeleton.
An instance of Bees tenanting a dead body is found in the following passage from the writings of Herodotus: "Now the Amathusians, having cut off the head of Onesilus, because he had besieged them, took it to Amathus, and suspended it over the gates; and when the head was suspended, and had become hollow, a swarm of Bees entered it, and filled it with honey-comb. When this happened, the Amathusians consulted the oracle respecting it, and an answer was given them, 'that they should take down the head and bury it, and sacrifice annually to Onesilus, as to a hero; and if they did so, it would turn out better for them.' The Amathusians did accordingly, and continued to do so until my time."
Another singular instance is mentioned by Napier in his Excursions on the shores of the Mediterranean: "Among this pretty collection of natural curiosities (in the cemetery of Algesiras), one in particular attracted our attention: this was the contents of a small uncovered coffin in which lay a child, the cavity of the chest exposed and tenanted by an industrious colony of Bees. The comb was rapidly progressing, and I suppose, according to the adage of the poet, they were adding sweets to the sweet, if not perfume to the violet."
Butler, in his Feminine Monarchie, narrates the following curious story: "Paulus Jovius affirmeth that in Muscovia, there are found in the woods & wildernesses great lakes of honey, which the Bees have forsaken, in the hollow trunks of marvelous huge trees. In so much that honey & waxe are the most certaine commodities of that countrie. Where, by that occasion, he setteth down the storie reported by Demetrius a Muscovite ambassador sent to Rome. A neighbor of mine (saith he) searching in the woods for honey slipt downe into a great hollow tree, and there sunk into a lake of honey up to his brest: where when he had stucke faste two days calling and crying out in vaine for helpe, because no bodie in the meane while came nigh that solitarie place; at length when he was out of all hope of life, hee was strangely delivered by the means of a great beare: which coming thither about the same businesse that he did, and smelling the honey stirred with his striving, clambered up to the top of the tree, & thence began to let himselfe downe backward into it. The man bethinking himself, and knowing the worst was but death, which in that place he was sure of, beclipt the beare fast with both his hands about the loines, and withall made an outcry as lowd as he could. The beare being thus sodainely affrighted, what with the handling, & what with the noise, made up againe with all speed possible: the man held, & the beare pulled, until with main force he had drawne Dun out of the mire: & then being let go, away he trots more afeard than hurt, leaving the smeared swaine in a joyful feare."