BEE-MASTERS IN THE MIDDLE AGES 35 



He gives some advice as to the deportment of 

 a good bee-master which is well worth quoting. 

 " If thou wilt have the favour of thy Bees that they 

 sting thee not, thou must avoid such things as 

 offend them : thou must not be unchaste or un- 

 cleanely : for impurity and sluttishnesse (them- 

 selves being most chaste and neat) they utterly 

 abhore : thou must not come among them smelling 

 of sweat, or having a stinking breath, caused 

 either through eating of Lee'kes, Onions, Garleeke, 

 and the like ; or by any other meanes : the noi- 

 somenesse whereof is corrected with a cup of 

 Beere : and therefore it is not good to come 

 among them before you have drunke : thou must 

 not be given to surfeiting and drunkennesse : thou 

 must not come puffing and blowing unto them, 

 neither hastily stir among them, nor violently 

 defend thy selfe when they seeme to threaten 

 thee ; but softly moving thy hand before thy face, 

 gently putting them by : and lastly, thou must be 

 no Stranger unto them. In a word, thou must be 

 chaste, cleanly, sweet, sober, quiet, and familiar : 

 so will they love thee, and know thee from all 

 other." Thus, the good bee-master, according to 

 Butler, is necessarily a compendium of all the 

 virtues ; and nothing more seems to be wanted to 

 bring about the millennium than to induce all 

 mankind to become keepers of bees. 



Writers on the honey-bee in mediaeval times 

 vied with each other in their testimony to the 



