FIFTEENTH ANXTTAL YEAR BOOK — PART VIII. 499 



In mythology, we find Jupiter, king of gods, born in the Island of Crete, 

 fed upon honey from golden bees by a nymph called Melissa. The Greek 

 word "meli" dignifies. Hence came the names of various plants producing 

 sweets or honey: Melica, melilotus, melissa. 



The fabulous story of Aristaeus, king of Arcadia, which shows him as 

 obtaining swarms of bees from the bodies of slain bulls and heifers, is 

 the first where the teaching of bee culture is suggested. Aristaeus was a 

 lover and teacher of agriculture. But his method of securing swarms 

 from the bodies of slain animals is criticized in our day, by Jules De 

 Soignies, a Belgian writer, who merrily suggests that it was probably 

 from this most extraordinary source that foul brood originated. Decaying 

 flesh is hardly the proper conveyer of swarms of bees. 



When we seek outside of fabulous folk-lore, for the first writers on bees 

 and their culture, we find the Greek Aristotle, the teacher of Alexander 

 the Great, 384 years before the Christian Era. Later Latin writers, 

 Varro, Virgil, Pliny, who died in Pompei by the eruption of Vesuvius, 

 Columella, who wrote a treatise on agriculture entitled "De Re Rustica" 

 (About Rustic Things). But none of these writers knew much about tha 

 natural history of bees. Their teachings were much mixed with the mys- 

 tic and fabulous beliefs of the time. Most of them believed that bees gath- 

 ered their eggs from the blossoms which they visited. They called honey 

 "the dew of heaven." They asserted that from it was made the "am- 

 brosia," the food of the gods. Similarly "nectar," the drink of the gods, 

 was thought to be brewed from honey. That is why, to this day, the 

 liquid sweet taken by the bee from the blossom is still called by us 

 "nectar." 



The best honey was said to be produced on Mount Hymettus, in Greece, 

 from aromatic plants, like thyme, and orange blossoms. The directions 

 for bee keeping were confined to the methods of hiving swarms and taking 

 the honey. But Virgil had already noticed that there were bees of a ygl- 

 lower color than others, in some districts, and wrote about it. 



During the dark ages, many unimportant writers mentioned the honey 

 bee and gave directions for its culture. Bees were of much more im- 

 portance than at present, since sugar did not exist and honey was the 

 only sweet produced, with the exception of the juice of some fruits and 

 plants, which served mainly for fermented drinks. Beeswax was also 

 greatly appreciated. It was used for candles for divine service. Then 

 the ancients used tablets covered with a light coat of it for writing, with 

 a stylus. The stylus was an instrument shaped like a pencil, sharp at 

 one end and blunt and flattened at the other. The sharp end served to 

 write upon the wax, the flat end to erase what had been written, so that 

 the tablet might be used indefinitely. Hence the Latin expression em- 

 ployed to advise pupils to often correct their work: "saepe stylum vertas" 

 (often invert the stylus.) 



It was not until 1609 that an English writer, Butler, affirmed the exist- 

 ence of a queen, or mother bee. Until then she was called "king." The 

 purpose of the drones was unknown, although some asserted that they 

 were intended to keep the brood warm and hatch it, just like sitting hens. 



