BEE MANUAL. 3 



Jonathan, with a part of Saul's army, entering a wood and 

 finding " honey on the ground." " When the people came 

 into the wood, behold the honey dropped," and Jonathan 

 refreshed himself by " putting forth the end of the rod that 

 was in his hand and dipping it in a honey-comb and putting 

 his hand to his mouth." This is very interesting as showing 

 so clearly how honey was then commonly obtained. About 

 the year 1023 B.C. honey is mentioned as one of the things 

 supplied by friendly hands for the refreshment of David and 

 his followers when " they were hungry and weary and thirsty 

 in the wilderness ; " and three centuries later it is enumerated 

 amongst the things of which tithes were to be paid to the 

 Levite priests by order of King Hezekiah. Finally, it is men- 

 tioned in the Prophecy of Ezekiel, when describing the ancient 

 commerce of Tyre, as an article of commerce sent to that port 

 from Palestine. 



ORIGIN OF THE ART OF BEE-KEEPING. 



Those passages relating to honey in the writings of the Old 

 Testament are quite sufficient to prove the great antiquity of 

 its use, but they give us no grounds for looking upon the 

 patriarchs and the early inhabitants of the earth as bee-keepers ; 

 on the contrary, there is ample evidence afforded that, at the 

 time referred to, honey was obtained from the natural haunts 

 of the bees — in the forests and rocky pasture lands — just as it 

 may be obtained at the present day in the bush districts of 

 warm climates, and especially in parts of India, where the bees 

 build not so much in the hollows of trees as in the open air in 

 the branches, and under ledges of rock on the sides of hills. 

 The climate of Palestine, Assyria, and Egypt is quite suited to 

 the natural propagation of bees in the woods and "wildernesses" 

 on the borders of the Arabian desert, and the nomadic life of 

 the shepherds and cattle-herds afforded the best opportunities 

 for tracing the bees to their haunts and collecting the wild 

 honey. We may then fairly conclude that such were the 

 sources from which honey was ordinarily obtained by the 

 inhabitants of those Eastern countries, and we have no reason 

 to suppose that they practised any art of bee-keeping, or knew 

 anything about a system of providing bees with artificial 

 dwellings and inducing them to gather honey and to store it in a 

 manner more convenient to man. We must suppose that the 



