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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE 



OCTOBKR, 1922 



I 



c 



Beekeeping as a Side Line 



Grace Allen 



LJ 



^^^^^^^^ 



T was in De- 

 cember, 1919, 

 that I asked a 

 question in 

 Gleanings that 

 no one answered. 

 I had become 

 enamored of the 

 old English 18th 

 century scholar 



and naturalist, Gilbert White, of Selborne, 

 who in one of his letters refutes the asser- 

 tion of Vergil— "a strange notion," as he 

 scornfully calls it— that echoes are harmful 

 to bees; and, in partial support of his own 

 position, affirms that "bees, in good sum- 

 mers thrive well in my outlet, where the 

 echoes are very strong." Which established 

 him as a sideline beekeeper, and landed him 

 squarely in this department, where, m his 

 very own words, we caught that delightful 

 picture of the lovable old Oxford scholar 

 testing the hearing of his own bees ''with 

 a large speaking-trumpet, held close to_ their 

 hives, and with such an exertion of voice as 

 would have hailed a sli% at the distance of 

 a mile ! ' ' 



My own enthusiastic interest was by no 

 means limited to his few references to bees, 

 but responded— whose would not?— to the 

 whole range of his countless rich notes, 

 charming comments and wealth of quiet in- 

 cidents, with the conclusions that "a per- 

 son with a thinking turn of mind" might 

 derive therefrom. Everything that came and 

 went in the parish of Selborne wasobserved 

 by his quick eye arid set down in his letters, 

 so quaint in the antique manner of his grace- 

 fully formal style. Through these letters one 

 sees and hears the coming of the Engbsh 

 bii-fls—swallows and swifts and martins and 

 starlings, the cuckoo and the curlew and 

 the "tame brown owl." the larks and night- 

 ingales and a host of lovely others; there 

 are trees, elms and great oaks, pollard-ash 

 and "wych hazel," "Portugal laurels and 

 American junipers"; there are rocks and 

 lizards, gipsies and echoes and wonderful 

 cobwebs, frosts and storms and "the rush- 

 ing and roaring of the hail"; there are sim- 

 ple pictures, such as the one of good Queen 

 Anne, stopping "as she was journeying on 

 the Portsmouth "Road . - • and repos- 

 ino- herself on a bank smoothed for the pur- 

 pose . . • still called Queen 's-bank," 

 io view a great herd of 500 red deer, 

 "brought by the keepers along the vale be- 

 fore her." Tt is the kind of book one 

 browses through, lingeringly, nibbling deli- 

 cious bits all along the way. 



But the only letters T quoted from in 

 Gleanings were two containing references to 

 bees. One of these, copied entire, was about 

 an idiot boy whoso life in winter was passed 

 in almost complete lethargy by his father's 

 fireside, but who in summer waked up, as it 

 were, and became keenly interested in bees. 

 A strange, distorted interest it was, of 

 course— poor boy — mnnifpstiug itself in va- 



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rious abnormal 

 ways : seizing 

 them bare-hand- 

 ed (nudis mani- 

 bus, says the old 

 Latin scholar) 

 and sucking their 

 bodies for the 

 sake of the hon- 

 ey sac; putting 

 them in bottles or even inside his own 

 clothes; slipping into apiaries and there sit- 

 ting down in front of hives to tap with 

 his fingers and catch the bees as they came 

 out; even turning the hives over, sometimes, 

 to get the honey; his lips making a hum- 

 ming noise like a bee as he ran about. 



Toward the end of the letter, before the 

 concluding statement of the boy's death be- 

 fore maturity, White says, in effect, that if 

 the poor little bee lover had been smart, he 

 might have been as great a beekeeper as 

 any of the moderns who made people won- 

 der at their feats with bees. (But O the 

 old fashioned saying of it that was his!) And 

 he ended thus: "and we may justly say of 

 him now, 



. . . . "Thou, 



Had thy presiding star propitious shone. 

 Should 'st Wildman be." . . . . 



In spite of the painfully unmusical com- 

 bination, propitious shone (especially follow- 

 ed by shonld'st), these lines interested me 

 greatly; the thing that puzzled me chiefly 

 that uninformed day when I copied the let- 

 ter for Gleanings was — who was Wildman? 

 Then, too, from what poem or poet was the 

 extract quoted? So I asked if anyone could 

 enlighten me as to those lines. No one 

 did. Now I can answer part of my own 

 question. Though I don't yet know where 

 the extract comes from — White himself 

 quotes it. Who first wrote those words, I 

 wonder, and to whom? 



Tn a very modern manilla envelope, post- 

 marked in a very modern city, there comes 

 to me occasionally — and by the same token 

 must come to other lovers of bees and books 

 — a list of old bee books. "Old-Time Bee 

 Books — Bare and Interesting," read^; the too 

 alluring heading. The authors' names run 

 alphabetically, from Adair to Worlidge. 

 Third and fourth from the last are two Wild- 

 mans, Daniel and Thomas. They were con- 

 temporaries of White's. They published in 

 London, and perhaps lived near there, while 

 Selborne was only 50 miles away. The Sel- 

 borne naturalist may have known them per- 

 sonally; at least, he must have known their 

 books and somewhat of their work and rank. 

 So I feel sure that I understand the name 

 Wildman in the lines that Gilbert White 

 ouoted in 1775 to his friend the Honorable 

 Daines Barrington, in his letter about the 

 poor bee-loving idiot boy. 



The fir^t edition of Thomas Wildman 's 

 book, "A Treatise on the Management of 

 Bees," was published in Jjondou in 17fiS. 



