BEES IN THE OLDEN TIME. 31 



of 'trade,' mention being made of Judah and the land 

 of Israel trading in honey with Tyre. 



Again, we read in the Bible of bees, just as in 

 these days, building their nests in very various places 

 — rocks, trees, and so forth. The Psalmist speaks 

 (Psa. Ixxxi. 17) of 'honey out of the stony rock.' 

 And it was in ' the wood,' when ' honey dropped ' 

 from some nest built on a tree, that Jonathan took a 

 little to satisfy the cravings of hunger, and without 

 knowing it, disobeyed his father's command. And 

 then we read of a colony of bees which actually made 

 its nest in the carcase of the lion which Samson had 

 killed some time before. 



Whether the bees were, in any way, kept in hives, 

 or the honey simply taken from wild bees, we can 

 hardly say ; but, whatever the case in the Holy Land, 

 bees were certainly thus kept (and had been so for 

 long) in other countries in the time of our Lord. 

 John the Baptist in the wilderness ate 'wild honey,' 

 implying, perhaps, that some honey was to be had 

 from bees not in a ' wild ' state. At all events, in 

 Greece and Italy bees had both been ' kept ' and 

 observed long before this time. 



Among the many who wrote of bees and honey in 

 those olden days, Virgil, the great poet of Italy, who 

 lived and died a few years before Christ, stands first 

 of all. He devoted the whole of one of his books to 

 the subject ; and although he made a great number 

 of strange mistakes, and took many of his ideas from 

 yet more ancient authors, and probably was not him- 

 self a bee-keeper, he must nevertheless have taken 

 considerable interest in the subject 



