184 The New Forest : its History and its Scenery. 



Nor must we forget the bees which are largely kept through- 

 out the Forest, feeding on the heather, leading Fuller to remark 

 that Hampshire produced the best and worst honey in England. 

 The bee-season, as it is called, generally lasts, on account of the 

 heath, a month longer than on the Wiltshire downs. A great 

 quantity of the Old-English mead medu is still made, and it 

 is sold at much the same value as with the Old-English, being 

 three or four times the price of common beer, with which it is 

 often drunk. The bees, in fact, still maintain an important 

 place in the popular local bye-laws. Even in Domesday the 

 woods round Eling are mentioned as yearly yielding twelve 

 pounds' weight of honey. As may therefore be expected, when 

 we remember that the whole of England was once called the 

 Honey Island, here, as elsewhere, plenty of provincialisms occur 

 concerning the bees.* 



The drones are here named "the big bees," the former word 

 being in some parts seldom used. The young are never said 

 to swarm, but "to play," the word taking its origin from their 

 peculiar flight at the time : as Patmore writes, 



" Under the chestnuts new bees are swarming, 

 Falling and rising like magical smoke." 



The caps of straw which are placed over the " bee-pots," to 

 protect them from wet, are known as the "bee-hackles," or 

 " bee-hakes." This is one of those expressive words which 

 is now only found in this form, and that, in the Midland 

 Counties, of " wheat hackling," that is, covering the sheaves with 

 others in a peculiar way, to shelter them from the rain. About 



* By a decree of the Court of Exchequer, in tne twenty- sixth year of 

 Elizabeth, the keepers were allowed to take all the honey found in the 

 trees in the Forest. 



