278 ILLINOIS STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Mr. George Thompson, of Geneva, upon request of the President, 

 read the following paper, written for the Society : 



THE HONEY-BEE. 



Much has been said and written upon the insect enemies of the 

 tillers of the soil, and as mankind are more inclined to look upon the 

 evils they have to contend with it is well, I think, at times, to look at the 

 good or the benefits arising from our friends in insect life. It was this 

 thought that induced me to draw your attention to the honey-bee as one 

 of your best friends. 



The bee, like all other things, whether animate or inanimate, has a 

 history; and in order to find out a beginning we must go away back 

 thousands of years before the advent of man upon the earth and look 

 into the great book of Nature and there ascertain in what period of the 

 world's history the bee and its kindred, the hymenopterous or honey- 

 eating insects, made their appearance. Now, we all know these could 

 not have had any existence previous to fruits, flowers and forest trees, 

 such as we have to-day, and these we are informed made their appearance 

 about the beginning of the great tertiary division. Miller says the first 

 bee made its appearance in the dawn of this period, and as time advanced 

 bees and butterflies rapidly increased. In speaking of the bee he says: 

 " Her entombed remains testify to the gradual fitting up of our earth as 

 a place of habitation and particularly marks the introduction of the 

 stately forest trees and the arrival of the delicious flowers." Agassiz 

 remarks: " It was not till near the latter end of the tertiary ages the 

 apple, pear, plum, peach, quince, cherry, raspberry and the various bram- 

 ble-berries made their appearance." This is the testimony of the rocks 

 regarding the honey-bee and the plants from which it drew its subsistence. 



In our own history the bee or its products are very early mentioned. 

 The first notice we have of 'it is when Jacob is sending down a present to 

 the ruler in Egypt; honey is one of the articles mentioned. It is also 

 mentioned in the books of Exodus, Leviticus and Deuteronomy, and in 

 Judges we have an account of the swarm of bees that Samson found in 

 the carcass of the lion that he killed. The land of Canaan is always 

 spoken of as a land flowing with milk and honey. This may be poetical 

 language, nevertheless it is recorded that when Saul and his army were 

 going through the woods the honey was so plenty that it dropped to the 

 ground. The most of the Jewish writers speak about honey either as an 

 article of diet or commerce, for we find them trading off" their surplus 

 honey six hundred years before the Christian era down in the great city of 

 Tyre. The old poets and philosophers outside of the Jewish nation, such 

 as Homer, Solon, Virgil, Aristole, Pliny, Herodotus and many others wrote 

 and sang in the praise of the bee or its products. In Egypt, Greece and 

 Rome bee-keeping was extensively practiced ; a great amount of honey 

 was used in making cakes for the feasts of the gods, also for medicine, 

 embalming of the dead, in making vinegar, mead, metheglin and all 

 kinrk of wine. For the past eighteen hundred years bee-keeping has 



