CHAPTER XX 
THE KING’S BEE-MASTER 
GTUDENTS of old books on the honey-bee—and 
perhaps there has been more written about bees 
during the last two thousand years than of all other 
creatures put together—do not quite know what 
to make of Moses Rusden, who was Charles the 
Second’s bee-master, and wrote his ‘‘ Further 
Discovery of Bees ”’ in the year 1679. The wonder 
about Rusden is that obviously he knew so much 
that was true about bee-life, and yet seems, of set 
purpose, to have imparted so littl. He was a 
shrewdly observant man, of lifelong experience in 
his craft. His system of bee-keeping would not 
have disgraced many an apiculturist of the present 
time, often yielding him a honey harvest averaging 
sixty pounds to the hive, which is a result not 
always achieved even by our foremost apiarian 
scientists. His hives were fitted with glass 
windows, through which he was continually study- 
ing his bees. He must have had endless oppor- 
tunities of proving the fallacy and folly of the ancient 
classic notions as to bee-life. And yet we find him 
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