79 
HyMENOPTERA.—Shakespeare’s ideas of the honey-bee seem to have been 
somewhat confused. He was misled probably by the old-world learning newly 
revived in his day; and, in his allusions to the ° ‘magnanimous leaders, the man- 
ners and employments, the tribes and battles of the race,” he seems to have fol- 
lowed in the footsteps of Virgil (Georgics, Book IV.), or of writers who were 
acquainted with Virgil. His Archbishop of Canterbury in King Henry V. speaks 
of the head of the hive as a “ King.” The passage in which this occurs is very 
fine; and I am tempted to give it in its entirety. 
So work the honey-bees ; 
Creatures, that, by a rule in nature, teach 
The act of order to a peopled kingdom. 
They have a king, and eHicara of sorts: 
Where some, like magistrates, correct at home: 
Others, like merchants, venture trade abroad ; 
Others, like soldiers, arme] in their stings 
Make boot upon the summer’s velvet buds ; 
Which pillage they with merry march bring home 
To the tent-royal of their emperor : 
Who, busied in his majesty, surveys 
The singing masons building roofs of gold ; 
The civil citizens kneading up the honey ; 
The poor mechanic porters crowding in 
Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate ; 
The sad ey’d justice, with his surly hum, 
Delivering o’er to executor’s pale 
The lazy yawning drone. 
Act I. se. 1. 
It would seem too that the strange story told by Virgil—how Aristzeus, son 
of Cyrene, sacrificed cattle and left the carcases exposed till, “ wondrous to relate, 
bees through all the belly hum amidst the putrid bowels of the cattle, pour forth 
with fermenting juices from the burst sides, and in immense clouds roll along, 
then swarm together on a top of a tree and hang down from the bending boughs” 
(Georgies, Bk. [V.)—had left an impression upon his mind, for he puts in the 
mouth of King Henry IV., who is lamenting the behaviour of Prince Henry of 
Monmouth, the words: 
Tis seldom when the bee doth leave the comb 
In the dead carrion. 
Act IV., sc. 4. 
His observations of the bees however were, in many points, correct. He 
noticed that they “ gather’d honey from the weed” (Henry V., Act IV., se. 1); 
that they took “ toll from every tlower” (2nd Part K. Henry IV., Act IV., se. 4); 
that “drones” rob the hives (Pericles, Prince of Tyre, Act IL, sc. 1; Merchant of 
Venice, Act II., se. 5; 2nd Part K. Henry VI., Act IV., sc. 1); that the wasps 
steal the honey and kills the bees (Two Gent. of Verona, Act I., sc. 2, and Titus 
Andronicus, Act II., se. 3); that the swarm deprived of its leader becomes vindic- 
tive: 
The commons like an angry hive of bees 
That want their leader, scatter up and down 
And care not who they sting in his revenge. 
2nd Part K. Henry VI1., Act III., sc. 2. 
With the methods pursued by the bee-masters of his day he was acquainted. 
Bolingbroke says: 
like the bee tolling from every flower the virtuous sweets, 
Our thighs pack’d with wax, our mouths with honey 
We bring it to the hive; and like the bees 
Are murder’d for our pains. 
2nd Part K. Henry IV., Act IV., sc. 4 
And Talbot in Ist Part of K. Henry VI., Act L., sc. 5: 
So bees with smoke and doves with noisome stench 
Are from their hives and houses driven away. 
The “ Red-hipped humble-bee” of Shakespeare is Bombus lapidarius. This 
