: 4 AUSTRALASIAN 



haunts of the wild bees, when found, had to be pillaged with 

 the aid of smoke or sulphur fumes, and that the operation 

 was not always an agreeable one we may conclude from the 

 way in which bees are mentioned in the few passages of 

 Scripture where they are incidentally alluded to, as in Deut. 

 i. 44, where Moses, recapitulating all that had happened to the 

 Israelites during their migration, tells them, " The Amorites 

 came out against you and chased you as bees do." And in 

 Psalm cxviii. 13, "They (the heathens) encompassed me about 

 like bees." 



Amongst the Western nations the civilised Greeks had un- 

 questionably practised the art of bee-keeping at a very early 

 period. The laws of Solon, 600' years B.C., contain regulations 

 as to the distances apart at which bee-hives may be kept ; and 

 both Greeks and Romans wrote and Sang about bees and bee- 

 keeping from the times of Homer down to those of Aristotle, 

 Virgil, Palladius, Pliny, and Columella. It is very probable 

 that the Romans first introduced the practice into Palestine. 

 The term " wild " honey is never met with in the ancient 

 Scriptures, simply because dW honey deserved that name in 

 those times ; : but the Evangelists Matthew and Mark, who 

 wrote when Palestine had been 'for nearly a century virtually 

 a Roman Province, both use the term "locusts and wild honey." 

 We may conclude that at that time the people were accustomed 

 to keep bees in artificial hives, and they would naturally make 

 a distinction between honey so obtained and that gathered by 

 " wild '"' bees in the " wildernesses " or utifrequented places. 



When Alexander carried his conquests into India, in the 

 fourth century B.O., he found honey so plentiful there that he 

 imposed a tribute payable in honey and ' wax. The Romans, 

 at a much later period, levied a tribute of 200,000 lbs. of wax 

 yearly upon Corsica, and the countries of the " barbarians " 

 outside the limits of the Roman Empire in Europe were known 

 to produce (and certainly without ally art of bee-keeping) 

 large quantities of both honey and wax. In' the early part of 

 the third century, when the Goths were gradually migrating 

 towards the Roman Provinces, Gibbon • mentions that when 

 they took possession of the present Russian district of the 

 Ukraine,* " The plenty of game and fishj the innumerable bee- 



* Thip is the part of Russia from which the largest quantities of honey are 

 obtained at the present day. 



