AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL. 



EDITED AND PUBLISHED BY SAMUEL WAGNER, WASHINGTON, D. C. 



AT TWO DOLLAKS PER ANNTJM, PAYABLE IN ADVANCE. 



Vol. VII. 



A.XJGXJST, IS'ri. 



No. 2. 



[Translated for the American Bee Journal] 



The Age of the Honey Bee. 

 By Prop. A. Menzel. 



Like the greater number of domestic animals 

 and cultivated plants, we find the honey bee a 

 companion of man already in the earliest periods 

 of history. The most ancient records mention 

 her presence on the islands and coasts of the 

 Mediterranean and the Black Sea, and speak of 

 her as being almost universally diffused in the 

 interior of the continents of Europe, Asia, and 

 Africa, so far the travels, the trade, and the 

 military expeditions of the ancients extended — 

 as in Egypt, Syria, Greece, Italy, Gaul, Germany, 

 Thrace, »Sicily, itc. Everywhere, too, is the 

 honey bee spoken of as indigenous in those coun- 

 tries, and nowhere in the annals of antiquity are 

 we told that this highly useful and interesting 

 insect was transferred from one country to 

 another by human intervention or instrumen- 

 tality. 



Still further back, in the dim dawnings of 

 history, partly in the era of the sagas, we are 

 assured of the existence of the bee, by the 

 accounts given us of the already general use 

 made of honey, the product of the unwearied 

 gathering and storing impulse of this insect — a 

 product at once aromatic, refreshing, and in- 

 vigorating, and which, in connection with milk, 

 has ever been regarded as an evidence alike of 

 the fertility of the soil and of the happy con- 

 dition of the human family in those early days — 

 the Golden Age. In the mythology of the 

 Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, the bee occu- 

 pied a distinguished place, and it is significant 

 of the intinutte relations which must at one 

 period have subsisted between the earliest civil- 

 ized nations, that common popular faith in each 

 of them held that the honey bee originated from 

 the putrefying carcasses of oxen, and that the 

 name of the sacred bull of the Egyptians is per- 

 petuated in tlie Latin word api". Tlie first 

 traces of bee-culture, also, are found everywhere 

 back in the saga period. Thus in Spain, the 

 Cunetes, dwelling near Tartessus, ascribed the 

 invention of the art of procuring honey to their 

 ancient fabulous King Gargoris, while the Greeks 

 and Romans attributed tliis merit, as well as 

 that of first placing bees in prepared habitations, 



and domesticating them, to their gods or the de- 

 scendants of their fancied deities — to Dionysos 

 or Bacchus, the son of Zeus and Semele, or to 

 Aristaeus, the son of Apollo and the nymph Gy- 

 rene — regarding Thessaly as the scene of these 

 important improvements. 



Again, yet further back in prehistoric times, 

 from which no written records, reports, names , or 

 dates survive, but of which remains of weapons, 

 implements and utensils, of buildings and build- 

 ing materials, of garments and personal orna- 

 ments, of animal and vegetable comestibles, and 

 of human bones, furnish intimations of the state 

 of civilization among the inhabitants, we find 

 unmistakable indications that the honey bee was 

 then already very commonly and extensively 

 cultivated. From the stone age and the period 

 of the Helvetian pile structures, utensils of clay, 

 regularly perforated, and more or less well pre- 

 served, have come down to us, which, according 

 to the judgment of the best antiquarians, were 

 used in diaiiiing honey from the comb, in the 

 manner still practised by the peasantry in many 

 districts of Switzerland— though others incline 

 to think they were used in the manufacture of 

 cheese. The fossil organic remains frequently 

 found in the same localities, point out con- 

 clusively the same classes of plants and animals 

 which are found at this day still in intimate con- 

 nection with the life and habits of the honey bee. 



And again, still further back in the abysm of 

 time, in those remote eras in the progress of tlie 

 development of the earth, which preceded the 

 elevation of the Alps, and which by their various 

 remains of fossil organisms, demonstrate that a 

 subtropical climate, with a medium temperature 

 of 66" once prevailed in what is now Switzerland. 

 In the upper miocene we find beside the petrified 

 remains of various flowering plants, of lioney-i)i o- 

 ducing or honey-loving insects, and of enemies 

 of the bee and her pi-oducts, belonging to other 

 families of the animal kingdom, a fossil honey 

 bee also of that special family of which only one 

 variety has ever been cultivated — namely the 

 apis mellijica. The only specimen of the honey 

 bee in a fossil state hitherto found, occurred in 

 the insect-bearing stratum of the quarries of 

 Oeningen. It was first recognized as an apis by 

 Prof. Heer, from the nervures of its wings, and 

 named apia adamitira by him, as it diff"ers in this 

 respect from the apis dorsuta Fabr., besides being 



