BEE-MASTERS IN THE MIDDLE AGES 43 
Just before swarming-time, as many as nine or ten 
of these are sometimes to be found in one hive. 
The same writer has the inevitable ill word 
against the drones. These, he says, “are, by all 
probability and judgement, an idle kind of bees, 
and wastefull, which have lost their stings, and so 
being as it were gelded, become idle and great. 
They hate the bees, and cause them cast the 
sooner,” 
Never did creature come by so bad a name, and 
so undeservedly, as the luckless drone with these 
old scribes. Another of them speaks of the drone 
as ‘‘a grosse Hive-Bee without sting, which hath 
beene alwaies reputed a greedy lozell (and there- 
fore hee that is quicke at meat and slow at worke 
is fitted with this title): for howsoever he brave it 
with his round velvet cap, his side gowne, his full 
paunch, and his lowd voice; yet he is but an idle 
companion, living by the sweat of others’ brows. 
For he worketh not at all, either at home or 
abroad, and yet spendeth as much as two labourers: 
you shall never finde his maw without a good drop 
of the purest nectar. In the heat of the day he 
flieth abroad, aloft, and about, and that with no 
small noise, as though he would doe some great 
act: but it is onely for his pleasure, and to get 
him a stomach, and then returns he presently to 
his cheere.” 
But it is among the writings of the old bee- 
men with a taste for the quack-doctor’s art that 
