Dec. 1, 1870.] 



HARDWICKE'S SCIENCE-GOSSIP. 



269 



A BRIEF GOSSIP ABOUT BEES. 



YOUR correspondent W. Holland is perfectly 

 correct in disclaiming the credit of having 

 been the first to discover that bees collect honey 

 from only one kind of flower during the same jour- 

 ney ; for I well remember seeing this fact noticed 

 several years ago (long before the letters of the 

 Times Bee Master appeared), in an old article 

 entitled, I think, "A curious collection of facts 

 respecting Bees." I am not perfectly sure about the 

 title, but 1 am as to the circumstance; and I have a 

 vague idea that Huber was mentioned as the dis- 

 coverer. The fact itself is noticed in Chambers's 

 " Encyclopaedia," published ten years back ; and I 

 was exceedingly amused when Dr. Cumming's 

 letters were first printed, by some of the remarks 

 he made relative to the important part played by 

 these wise little insects in the fertilization of plants. 

 The worthy Bee Master seemed, from the way in 

 which he worded his observations, quite oblivious 

 of certain natural laws regulating the hybridizing 

 of plants, laws which would, I imagine, have pre- 

 vented the monstrous results he anticipated as 

 likely to occur, if Providence had not endowed the 

 bees with the instinct of confining themselves to 

 one species of flower during each ramble. 



The wise man has said "there is nothing new under 

 the sun," and of a truth one feels disposed to endorse 

 his remark, when, after looking at all the novel in- 

 ventions and appliances used by modern Apiarians, 

 a glance is taken in the direction of those ancient 

 Bee Masters who gave bygone ages the benefit of 

 their practicahexperience. 



When I was a little girl — I don't care, gossip as I 

 am, to say how long ago — I was taken from Bryn 

 Moe, by a party of my mother's friends, to see some 

 wonderful glass hives at the ferry side, belonging to 

 Dr. Bevan. I had heard so much of the learned 

 Doctor, who had " written a book about his Bees," 

 that I really believe I was quite as anxious to see 

 him as I was to view his wonderful insects ; and I 

 can as safely assert that I firmly believed the kind 

 old gentleman in the blue-flowered dressing-gown, 

 who gave me such an ample supply of cake, had 

 invented the lovely glass houses I saw the bees at 

 work in ; until some years afterwards, I read that 

 " a man of consular dignity, near Rome, had his 

 hives made of transparent lantern-horn," in the 

 days of Pliny. The same authority also informed me 

 that "many persons have hives made of mirror 

 stone for the purpose of watching the bees at work 

 within." 



" Bees must have lived a long time," was ouce 

 said to me by an old Welshwoman, " for they are 

 spoken about in the Bible." 



"The Amorites came out against, you, and chased 

 you as bees do," is the text referred to ; but what 

 the old dame intended to express by " lived a long 



time," was slightly puzzling ; for I knew that had 

 any one ventured to tell her there were folks in the 

 world who thought that certain forms of animal 

 life had existed on it before the Grand Old Gar- 

 dener and his wife came upon the scene, she would 

 have deemed them "worse than Papists" (this was 

 another favourite expression of hers) ; therefore 

 it was impossible to imagine, she thought, there 

 had been any more recent creatures than those in 

 Eden, and almost equally so to suppose she believed 

 the bees alluded to in Deuteronomy, had not been 

 fumigated to death long ago : however, she quoted 

 the earliest notice made of bees in the Bible quite 

 correctly, and Homer makes use of a like compari- 

 son when he describes the Greek forces. 



It is customary in some parts of Scotland to 

 remove the hives at the end of the season on to the 

 moors, in order that the bees may gather honey 

 from the heather bloom ; and all readers of Pliny 

 will no doubt remember Hostilia, the village on the 

 banks of the Po, whose inhabitants took their bees 

 up the river in boats at night, to seek for fresh pas- 

 ture-grounds in the morning. 



It is a strange thing that, although many of the 

 ancients wrote about bee-culture very fully, they 

 all mistook the reigning powers' sex (the Romans 

 always spoke of the King Bee), until the time of 

 Swammerdam, whq, in 1669, published his "History 

 of Insects ;" and there states that from one female, 

 the only one in the hive, all these kinds of bees are 

 produced. 



Aristotle had said that the Basileus of the 

 bees was the parent, and Basileus is best interpreted 

 by our word monarch ; but Aristotle decidedly 

 deemed the Basileus of the hive to be a female. 

 This is evident from some of his observations ; 

 although he would have settled the point beyond 

 all dispute had he written Basileia, which is syn- 

 onymous with our word queen ; thus the credit of 

 discovering the sex of the ruler is given to 

 Swammerdam. 



The extensive notice we find of "Mead" and 

 " Metheglin," in the days of the Druids^ would lead 

 us to believe that bees were domesticated by the 

 Britons ; but we have no authentic information on 

 this point, and the honey used in their drinks may 

 have been stored by wild bees. The Romans, when 

 they came over, no doubt taught the Britons how 

 to hive and domesticate ; for we have sure record 

 that the Anglo-Saxon successors of the Romans 

 were Bee Masters, since, by the laws of one of their 

 kings, it was ruled that every " ten hides of laud 

 shall furnish ten vessels of honey." 



The mead made in South Wales in the present 

 day is not so potent as that drunk when King Ethel- 

 wold restricted the monks of his monastery to a 

 certain quantum to be drunk between twelve of the 

 brethren at supper. 



Howel Dhu, who was king of Wales in a.d. 910, 



