1918 



AMERICAN BEE JOURNAL 



235 



Greeks and Armenians had buildings 

 and olive yards. Around the Jaffa 

 gate and the Tower of Hippicus a 

 deep ditch with a luxurious growth 

 of honey-plants embellished this 

 part, at least from the bees' point of 

 view. From Tancred's Heights (the 

 part whence Jerusalem was stormed 

 in 1099 A. DJ to the Forth of the 

 Storks, the ditch was in good condi- 

 tion and afforded plenty of food for 

 birds and beasts. 



As carcases were thrown in, dogs, 

 ravens and vultures found food by 

 day; jackals and hyenas carried off 

 what they could by night. The land 

 was manured and gave plenty of 

 honey-plants. Skeletons were left 

 to bleach in the sun forever. From 

 Stephen's Gate to the corner of Mo- 

 riah the ditch was transformed into 

 a Moslem cemetery, where they re- 

 pose near their sanctuary till Judg- 

 ment Day. Olive trees grow on the 

 slopes toward the Cedron, and in- 

 numerable squills (Scillu maratima) 

 grow around the Moslem and Jewish 

 cemeteries beyond Cedron. 



Squills begin to bloom about the 

 15th of August, a sign, our Nahale 

 used to say, that the Nile in far away 

 Egypt was overflowing. The flower 

 stalks are much visited by bees and 

 they carry home quantities of white 

 pollen. 



From Moriah to Zion and around 

 to the Tower of Hippicus the ditches 

 have been filled up with city refuse, 

 carried out through ages. Centuries 

 of continued heaping up in the 

 ditches has lowered the road on the 

 south side, and often the road re- 

 sembles a trench of which the walls 

 are piled rubbish. The big, slanting 

 rampart below the Tower of Hippi- 

 cus, sometimes called "David's 

 Tower,' was full of bee-plants, the 

 bottom of the ditch was overgrown 

 with cactus hedges, which gave 

 plenty of bee forage in spring, and 

 prickly pears at the service of who- 

 ever could reach them. 



Common marjoram (Origanum vul- 

 garis), as well as different species of 

 peppermint, grew here and there. 

 Not only the bees found food there, 



but the natives used the leaves of the 

 Traatar, the first-named aromatic 

 plant, which they dried in the sun, 

 crushed and ate as a condiment witli 

 their bread. The stout shrubs of Pis- 

 tachio had never time to grow very 

 high, as they were cut down every 

 year, yet the bees found an odorifer- 

 ous, resinous matter for use in their 

 hives. 



How we envied the Tapji (artil- 

 leryman) when he was seen in the 

 midst of the tropical flora, cutting 

 down with his sham sickles_ big 

 bunches of rose-colored antirrhinum 

 purpureum. I saw later that the big 

 flowers containing honey for more 

 than one bee each were never util- 

 ized by the domestic honeybee. The 

 big blue-black giant bees, the wood 

 bee, bit the flower open at the base 

 of the calix and pumped out the nec- 

 tar in this original way. Bumblebees 

 of different kinds also sucked at the 

 deep-calixed flowers. 



In Jerusalem, as elsewhere, I found 

 in later years that almost all native 

 beekeepers distinguished two very 

 different kinds of bees, one very gen- 

 tle, the other furious. In Egypt they 

 called the furious kind Shami, or 

 Syrian bees, and the gentler kind Ba- 

 ladi, or native bees. Egyptians are, 

 as a rule, more submissive than the 

 v. ilder, indigent Syrians. The same 

 must hold true of their bees. 



Nahale, as well as others of his 

 school, assured us that there were 

 two very distinct kinds in Palestine — 

 the Harthi (agricultural or ploughing 

 bee"), were the more infuriated, and 

 the Malki (possessing or royal bees). 

 The Fellahin are considered less civ- 

 ilized and are warlike, whilst the up- 

 per classes in towns were gentler and 

 submitted to royal laws. 



The Harthi build long combs like 

 furrows made by the plow, from the 

 back to the flying hole, while the 

 Malki made beautiful circular combs 

 like full moons, said Nahale. When 

 In examined the latter bees he blew 

 them back with the tiniest whiff of 

 smoke and he could take out the 

 honey without receiving a single 

 sting. Not so with the Harthi; all 



Jerusalem on the west 

 France, near Tan 

 town walls in the foreground 



at the left, the valley; in the center, Notre Dame de 

 Heights; at the right, the Tower of Hippicus; the 



their combs ended at the back, and 

 he had all the streets filled with bees. 

 They were managed with great dif- 

 ficulty, as every modern beekeeper 

 understands, and this haphazard 

 building made them a new race. 

 Even here in France, I often heard 

 amateurs talk of a furious and a 

 gentle kind of bees, and they were 

 astonished after having warned me 

 of the fact, to see me manipulate the 

 furies just as easily as the gentle 

 ones. Most such persons cannot un- 

 derstand the secret, which lies whol- 

 ly in the quality of smoker, or also, 

 very often, in the harsh hands of the 

 beekeeper himself. 



Harthi and Malki bees were as 

 busy carrying honey to their hives in 

 spring, when rain did not fall, one 

 as the other; both suffered equally 

 from drought when the drying winds 

 from the east or south left no parcel 

 of moisture in the nectaries, and the 

 odoriferous thyme bushes were al- 

 most burned by the fierce sun. 



Nahale would usually come out to 

 Zion's school, where he had the bees, 

 on or about the 15th of August, 

 which, according to the Catholic 

 church, is the Ascension Day of the 

 Virgin Mary. But Nahale was a 

 stout Moslem, and I often asked my- 

 ' Ai how he adhered to a Christian 

 date. 



The overflow of the Nile, at least 

 the springing up of the high "stems 

 of the squills; the feast of Paphos in 

 Cyprus, to the feast of the virgin; 

 the worship of the Judaites in the 

 days of Jeremiah, to another regina 

 or queen of heaven; the wax offer- 

 ings to Ceres in Greece; the offer- 

 ings of first fruit to Demeter in 

 Sicily, or to Derketo at Jaffa, before 

 Hebrew history— all of them point 

 out to the same origin, with almost 

 the same ceremonies, with products 

 of the honeybee as principal offer- 

 ings. 



No wonder that Nahale, who knew 

 Miriam el Bathul, that Shpeta, an 

 orthodox Greek Christian who knew 

 El Adra Miriam, all respected the 

 same person in the same place at the 

 exact season as it had been prac- 

 ticed for many thousand years, 

 though giving different names. 



Harthi and Malki bees were for- 

 gotten as well as Ceres, Ashthoreth 

 or Adra, for on the 15th day of Aug- 

 ust it was honey day, and the beau- 

 tiful combs, thick with thyme honey, 

 drew out one Masha Allah (What 

 God hath granted) after the other. 

 Sober in words, Nahale did not say 

 much more, but Shpeta in Ramler 

 told me that the image of the Adra. 

 or of her hands were perfectly ac- 

 knowledged in the honey-combs. A 

 prior of the Greek convent explained 

 how the objects of value were found 

 in the day that she came out of the 

 sea — evidently she was Ceres, but 

 christened Mary. 



Our neighbor across Hinnom el 

 Asalli was a wealthy descendant of 

 the honey man who gave his name 

 to a street in Jerusalem. 



He had gathered his wealth by 

 selling Asall (honey) taken from the 

 apiaries which were built against the 

 high city walls of Zion. 



