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. 
** Tf 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 Leekes, 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. Ina 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 medizval times 
vied with each other in their testimony to the 
3—2 
