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 woodsand ‘“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 abcut 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 
