THE BEE NATION. 283 



lips of the new born Zeus, and rejoiced over him, and the 

 gods on high Olympus feast on honey in nectar and ambrosia 

 (Scheitlin, loc. eit., p. 115). Perhaps also it was the bees 

 which suggested to the Greeks and their great poet Hesiod 

 the deep proverb, that the gods had placed toil before talent ! 

 They certainly might have done so. And when Pliny in his 

 " Natural History " (Book xi.) told of two Greek sages 

 (Aristomachus of Soles and Philiscus of Thasus) who had 

 devoted all their lives to the study of bees, this further proves 

 how rightly the Greeks knew how to value the interest and 

 merit of this wonderful insect. This interest has not only 

 endured down to the present time, but has increased with 

 the more intimate knowledge of the domestic life of this 

 remarkable creature. " From bees," says Dr. Dzierzon, of 

 Carlsmarkt (loc. cz'tf.), to whom we owe so much of our 

 nearer knowledge of this life, " since their activity, their whole 

 domestic life has latterly been completely revealed to men, 

 man can learn even more than from the ants, set out in the 

 Scriptures as an example shaming the sluggard. The industry 

 of the bee is unwearying and it often falls a sacrifice thereby 

 to cold air. In its cleanliness, mutual attachment and com- 

 patibility, its disinterestedness, dividing the last drop of honey 

 with its sisters, in its tender love for the common mother 

 and ruler, in its courage in defending her and its hive, 

 rushing against an enemy threatening its destruction with a 

 real contempt of death, the bee is to man a teacher of the 

 fairest domestic and civil duties. If each citizen of a state 

 acted from conviction and a feeling of duty as the bee acts 

 from direct inspiration or instinct, such a state might well 

 call itself happy." 



Our forefathers also, the ancient farmers, valued bees 

 highly, on account of the mead which they prepared from 

 their honey, and unusually long and broad honeycombs were 

 brought out of Germany to Rome. They did not keep the 

 bees in wood or straw hives, but in hollow trees, such as the 

 wild wood bee, of which we shall speak presently, still uses 

 for its nests. 



