BEE-MASTERS IN THE MIDDLE AGES 37 
broke into a church, and stole the silver casket in 
which the holy wafers were kept. They found 
one wafer in the box, and this they hid under a 
hive before making off with the more intrinsically 
valuable part of their booty. In the night, it 
seems, the owner of the hive was awakened by 
the most ravishing strains of music, coming at set 
intervals from the direction of his bee-garden. 
He went out with a lantern to ascertain the cause 
of it, and discovered it to proceed from the interior 
of one of his hives. Full of perturbation at this 
miracle, he went and roused the Bishop, and 
acquainted him with the extraordinary state of 
affairs ; and the Bishop coming with his retinue 
and lifting up the hive, they found that the bees 
had taken possession of the consecrated wafer, and 
placed it in the upper part of their hive, having 
first made for it a box of the whitest wax, an exact 
replica of the onestolen. And all around this box 
there were choirs of bees singing, and keeping 
watch over it, as monks do in their chapel. ‘“ With 
which story,” adds the narrator prophetically, “I 
doubt not but some incredulous people will 
quarrell,” 
In their directions for hiving a swarm, the 
medizval bee-masters were always quaintly ex- 
plicit. The dressing of the skep which was to 
receive the swarm was a particularly elaborate 
process. When the skep was new, you were 
recommended to scour it out with a handful of 
