4 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 



and labour, that the work took seven years to 

 accomplish — which is at the rate;of less than a line 

 a day. 



Virgil's house stood, probably, on the wooded 

 slope above the town of Naples, deep set in orange- 

 groves and lenion-plantations, and in full view, to 

 the north, of the snow-pinnacled Apennines, and, 

 southward, of the blue waters of the Bay. Vesuvius, 

 too, with its eternal menace of grey smoke, rose 

 dark against the morning sun only a few leagues 

 onward ; and, at its foot, the doomed cities 

 nestled, Pompeii and Herculaneum, then with 

 still a hundred years of busy life to run. 



Bee-hives in Virgil's day — as we can gather from 

 certain ancient Roman bas-reliefs still in existence 

 — were of a high, peaked, dome pattern, and they 

 were made of stitched bark, or wattled osiers, as 

 he himself tells us. Many of the directions he 

 gives as to their situation and surroundings are 

 still golden rules for every bee-keeper. The bee- 

 garden, he says, must be sheltered from winds, 

 and placed where neither sheep nor butting kids 

 may trample down the flowers. Trees must be 

 near for their cool shade, and to serve as resting- 

 places when "the new-crowned kings lead out 

 their earliest swarms in the sweet spring-time." 

 He tells us to place our hives near to water, or 

 where a light rivulet speeds through the grass ; 

 and we are to cast into the water " large pebbles 

 and willow-branches laid cross-wise, that the bees, 



