45 THE LORE OF THE HONEY-BEE 



One last extract must be given from the same 

 old writer. It relates to the generation of bees, 

 and brings us out, perhaps, on the highest pin- 

 nacle of the marvellous. After a learned disserta- 

 tion on the method of breeding bees from a dead 

 ox — assuring us, however, that if we can procure 

 a dead lion for the purpose, it will be much better, 

 as then the bees will have a lion-like courage — 

 the writer goes on to explain how bees may be 

 produced in another way. We are to save all 

 dead bees, burn them, sprinkle the ashes with wine, 

 and then leave them exposed to the sun in a warm 

 place. In a little while, we are told, all the bees 

 so treated will come to life again, and we shall 

 then have a new stock ready for hiving. 



Dipping into these time-worn records of the 

 Middle Ages, with their embrowned, scarce legible 

 type and their antiquated phraseology, one comes 

 at last to realise how very little the old bee-masters 

 actually understood of the true ways of the honey- 

 bee, or, indeed, of any real essential in bee-craft. 

 And yet the production of honey and wax must 

 have been an industry very largely developed in 

 those days. Somehow or other, in spite of archaic 

 theories and useless interference in the work of 

 their hives, these people must have contrived to 

 supply a market of whose magnitude we can now- 

 adays form little conception. The trade in wax 

 alone must have been a very large one, for, except 

 in the poorest tenements, this formed the only 



