INTRODUCTION. 



LITERATURE OF BEE-KEEPING. 



|UST a few words at starting on the history of 

 the bee in ancient and modern literature. Our 

 work is not a critical survey, and still less an 

 exhaustive treatise ; but even that popular outline which 

 it is our aim to produce seems defective without some 

 mention of the great bee-students of the past. We find 

 the first definitive description of the insect in Aristotle's 

 "History of Animals," written about the middle of the 

 fourth century before Christ, and combining much sound 

 scientific information on our subject with other state- 

 ments which better information has had to reject. A 

 little before him lived Aristomachus, of Cilicia, who wrote 

 works on agriculture and domestic economy which are 

 lost to us except in a few quotations, but of whom we 

 are told that he devoted some fifty-eight years to a con- 

 tinual observance of the habits of bees. One Philiscus, 

 of Thasos, is mentioned as another of their votaries, who 

 betook himself to a forest life in order uninterruptedly 

 to pursue their study. Then just after the Christian era 



