BEE-MASTERS IN THE MIDDLE AGES 47 
available source of artificial light. And honey was 
in much more universal demand than it is now, 
because cane-sugar could hardly have developed 
into a serious rival as a sweetening agent among 
the masses at a time when it stood, perhaps, at 
two shillings a pound. 
But in speculations of this kind, it must be 
borne in mind that, although the men who wrote 
about bees displayed so picturesque an ignorance 
in all matters appertaining to their charges, these 
formed a very small minority among the bee- 
keepers as a whole. Probably the bulk of the 
supply in honey and wax came from bee-gardens, 
whose owners neither knew nor cared anything 
about books, and were concerned only in the 
practical side of the work, where their knowledge, 
hereditary for the most part, amply sufficed for 
the part they played in it. 
Moreover, it is only in latter-day, scientific 
apiculture that the work of the bee-master counts 
to any greatextent. Nowadays, under the light of 
twentieth-century knowledge, this is competent to 
bring about the doubling, and even trebling, of the 
honey-harvest possible under the ancient methods. 
But the old skeppists did, and could do, little more 
than look on at the work of their bees, and here 
and there put a scarce availing hand to it. Nearly 
all the credit for the results achieved in those days 
must be given to the bees themselves, who, untold 
ages before, had brought to finite perfection 
