THE 



LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 



CHAPTER I 



THE ANCIENTS AND THE HONEY-BEE 



"While great Caesar hurled War's lightnings by high 

 Euphrates, . . . even in that season I, Virgil, nurtured in 

 sweet Parthenope, went in the ways of lowly Quiet." — 

 Fourth Book of the Georgics. 



IT was in Naples — the Parthenope of the 

 Ancients — that the "best poem by the best 

 poet " was written, nearly two thousand years 

 ago. Essentially an apostle of the Simple Life, 

 the cultured and courtly Virgil chose to live a 

 quiet rural existence among his lemon-groves and 

 his bee-hives, when he might have dwelt in the 

 very focus of honour at the Roman capital; where 

 his friend and patron, Maecenas, the prime minister 

 of Octavian, kept open house for all the great in 

 literature and art. 



Modern bee-keepers, athirst for the American- 

 isation of everything, give little heed nowadays 

 to the writings of one whom Bacon has called " the 



