A narrow flooring, gutter’d, wall’d, and til’d.
In this, four windows are contriv’d, that strike
To the four winds oppos’d, their beams oblique.
A steer of two years old they take, whose head
Now first with burnished horns begins to spread:
They stop his nostrils, while he strives in vain
To breathe free air, and struggles with his pain.
Knock’d down, he dies: his bowels bruis’d within,
Betray no wound on his unbroken skin.
Extended thus, in his obscene abode,
They leave the beast; but first sweet flowers are strow’d
Beneath his body, broken boughs and thyme,
And pleasing Cassia, just renew’d in prime.
This must be done, ere spring makes equal day,
When western winds on curling waters play;
Ere painted meads produce their flowery crops,
Or swallows twitter on the chimney tops.
The tainted blood, in this close prison pent,
Begins to boil, and thro’ the bones ferment.
Then wond’rous to behold, new creatures rise,
A moving mass at first, and short of thighs;
Till shooting out with legs, and imp’d with wings,
The grubs proceed to Bees with pointed stings:
And more and more affecting air, they try
Their tender pinions and begin to fly.[626]
This absurd notion was also promulgated by the great English chronicler,
Hollingshed; for, says this author, “Hornets, waspes, Bees, and such
like, whereof we have great store, and of which an opinion is
conceived, that the first doo breed of the corruption of dead horses,
the second of pears and apples corrupted, and the last of kine and oxen;
which may be true, especiallie the first and latter in some parts of the
beast, and not their whole substances, as also in the second, sith we
never have waspes but when our fruit beginneth to wax ripe.”[627]
To conclude the history of this belief, the following remarks of the
learned Swammerdam will not be inappropriate. He says: “It is probable
that the not rightly understanding Samson’s adventure of the Lion, gave
rise to the popular opinion of Bees springing from dead Lions, Oxen, and
Horses; and this opinion may have been considerably strengthened, and
indeed in a manner confirmed, by the great number of Worms that are
often found during the summer months in the carcasses of such animals,
especially as these Worms somewhat resemble those produced from the eggs
of Bees. However ridiculous this opinion must appear, many great men
have not been ashamed to adopt and defend it. The industrious Goedaert
has ventured to ascribe the origin of Bees to certain dunghill Worms,
and the learned de Mei joins with him in this opinion; though neither of
them had any observation to ground their belief upon, but that of the
external resemblance between the Bee and a certain kind of Fly produced
from these Worms.”[628]
The opinion that stolen Bees will not thrive, but pine away and die, is
almost universal.[629] It is, too, of reverend antiquity, for Pliny
mentions it: “It is a common received opinion, that Rue will grow the
better if it be filched out of another man’s garden; and it is as
ordinarie a saying that stolen Bees will thrive worst.”[630]
In South Northamptonshire, England, there is a superstition that Bees
will not thrive in a quarrelsome family.[631] It might be well to
promulgate this and the next preceding superstition. This prevails among
us.
In Hampshire, England, it is a common saying that Bees are idle or
unfortunate at their work whenever there are wars. A very curious
observer and fancier says that this has been the case from the time of
the movements in France, Prussia, and Hungary, up to the present
time.[632]
In Bishopsbourne, England, there prevails the singular superstition of
informing the Bees of any great public event that takes place, else they
will not thrive so well.[633]
In Monmouthshire, England, the peasantry entertain so great a veneration
for their Bees, that, says Bucke, some years since, they were accustomed
to go to their hives on Christmas eve at twelve o’clock, in order to
listen to their humming; which elicited, as they believed, a much more
agreeable music than at any other period; since, at that time, they
celebrated, in the best manner they could, the morning of Christ’s
nativity.[634]
Sampson, in his Statistical Survey of the County of Londonderry, 1802,
p. 436, says that there “Bees must not be given away, but sold;
otherwise neither the giver nor the taker will have _luck_.”[635]
A clergyman in Devonshire, England, informs us that when any Devonian
makes a purchase of Bees, the payment is never made in money, but in
things (corn, for instance) to the value of the sum agreed upon; and the
Bees are never removed but on a Good Friday.[636] In western
Pennsylvania, it is thought by some of the old farmers that the vender
of the Bees must be away from home when the hive is taken away, else the
Bees will not thrive.
Another superstition is that if a swarm of Bees be met with in an open
field away from any house, it is useless to hive them, for they will
never do a bit of good.
In many parts of England, a popular opinion is that when Bees remove or
go away from their hives, the owner of them will die soon after.[637]
It is commonly believed among us that if Bees come to a house, it
forebodes good luck and prosperity; and, on the contrary, if they go
away, bad luck.
A North German custom and superstition is, that if the master of the
house dies, a person must go to the Beehive, knock, and repeat these
words: “The master is dead, the master is dead,” else the Bees will fly
away.[638] This superstition prevails also in England, Lithuania, and in
France.[639]
[Some years since, observes a correspondent of the Athenæum, quoted by
Brande, a gentleman at a dinner table happened to mention that he was
surprised, on the death of a relative, by his servant inquiring “whether
his master would inform the Bees of the event, or whether _he_ should do
so.” On asking the meaning of so strange a question, the servant assured
him that Bees ought always to be informed of a death in a family, or
they would resent the neglect by deserting the hive. This gentleman
resides in the Isle of Ely, and the anecdote was told in Suffolk; and
one of the party present, a few days afterward, took the opportunity of
testing the prevalence of this strange notion by inquiring of a cottager
who had lately lost a relative, and happened to complain of the loss of
her Bees, “whether she had told them all she ought to do?” She
immediately replied, “Oh, yes; when my aunt died I told every skep
(_i.e._ hive) myself, and put them....
“Into mourning.” I have since ascertained the existence of the same
superstition in Cornwall, Devonshire (where I have seen black crape put
round the hive, or on a small black stick by its side), and Yorkshire.
It probably exists in every part of the kingdom.... The mode of
communicating is by whispering the fact to each hive separately.... In
Oxford I was told that if a man and wife quarreled, the Bees would leave
them.][640]
“In some parts of Suffolk,” says Bucke, “the peasants believe, when any
member of their family dies, that, unless the Bees are put in mourning
by placing a piece of black cloth, cotton or silk, on the top of the
hives, the Bees will either die or fly away.
“In Lithuania, when the master or mistress dies, one of the first duties
performed is that of giving notice to the Bees, by rattling the keys of
the house at the doors of their hives. Unless this be done, the
Lithuanians imagine the cattle will die; the Bees themselves perish,
and the trees wither.”[641]
At Bradfield, if Bees are not invited to funerals, it is believed they
will die.[642]
In the Living Librarie, Englished by John Molle, 1621, p. 283, we read:
“Who would beleeve without superstition (if experience did not make it
credible), that most commonly all the Bees die in their hives, if the
master or mistress of the house chance to die, except the hives be
presently removed into some other place? And yet I know this hath hapned
to folke no way stained with superstition.”[643]
A similar superstition is, that Beehives belonging to deceased persons
should be turned over the moment when the corpse is taken out of the
house.[644] No consequence is given for the non-performance of this
rite.
The following item is clipped from the Argus, a London newspaper,
printed Sept. 13, 1790: “A superstitious custom prevails at every
funeral in Devonshire, of turning round the Bee-hives that belonged to
the deceased, if he had any, and that at the moment the corpse is
carrying out of the house. At a funeral some time since, at Columpton,
of a rich old farmer, a laughable circumstance of this sort occurred:
for, just as the corpse was placed in the hearse, and the horsemen, to a
large number, were drawn in order for the procession of the funeral, a
person called out, ‘Turn the Bees,’ when a servant who had no knowledge
of such a custom, instead of turning the hives about, lifted them up,
and then laid them down on their sides. The Bees, thus hastily invaded,
instantly attacked and fastened on the horses and their riders. It was
in vain they galloped off, the Bees as precipitately followed, and left
their stings as marks of indignation. A general confusion took place,
attended with loss of hats, wigs, etc., and the corpse during the
conflict was left unattended; nor was it till after a considerable time
that the funeral attendants could be rallied, in order to proceed to the
interment of their deceased friend.”[645]
After the death of a member of a family, it has frequently been
asserted that the Bees sometimes take their loss so much to heart as to
alight upon the coffin whenever it is exposed. A clergyman told
Langstroth, that he attended a funeral, where, as soon as the coffin was
brought from the house, the Bees gathered upon it so as to excite much
alarm. Some years after this occurrence, being engaged in varnishing a
table, the Bees alighted upon it in such numbers as to convince the
reverend gentleman that love of varnish, rather than sorrow or respect
for the dead, was the occasion of their conduct at the funeral.[646]
The following is an extract from a _Tour through Brittany_, published in
the Cambrian _Quarterly Magazine_, vol. ii. p. 215: “If there are Bees
kept at the house where a marriage feast is celebrated, care is always
taken to dress up their hives in red, which is done by placing upon them
pieces of scarlet cloth, or one of some such bright color; the Bretons
imagining that the Bees would forsake their dwellings if they were not
made to participate in the rejoicings of their owners: in like manner
they are all put into mourning when a death occurs in a family.”[647]
In the Magazine of Natural History we find the following instance of
singing psalms to Bees to make them thrive: “When in Bedfordshire
lately, we were informed of an old man who sang a psalm last year in
front of some hives which were not doing well, but which, he said, would
thrive in consequence of that ceremony. Our informant could not state
whether this was a local or individual superstition.”[648]
It is commonly said that if you sing to your Bees before they swarm, it
will prevent their leaving your premises when they do swarm.
Peter Rotharmel, a western Pennsylvanian, had a singular notion that no
man could have at one time a hundred hives of Bees. He declared he had
often as many as ninety-nine, but could never add another to them.[649]
I have since learned that this is not an individual superstition, but
one that pretty generally prevails.
The Apiarians of Bedfordshire, England, have a custom of, as they call
it, ringing their swarms with the door-key and the frying-pan; and if a
swarm settles on another’s premises, it is irrecoverable by the owner,
unless he can prove the ringing, but it becomes the property of that
person upon whose premises it settles.[650]
The practice of beating pans, and making a great noise to induce a swarm
of Bees to settle, is, at least, as old as the time of Virgil. He thus
mentions it:
But when thou seest a swarming cloud arise,
That sweeps aloft, and darkens all the skies:
The motions of their hasty flight attend;
And know to floods, or woods, their airy march they bend.
Then melfoil beat, and honey-suckles pound,
With these alluring savors strew the ground,
And mix with tinkling brass the cymbal’s drowning sound.[651]
But concerning this practice, Langstroth says: “It is probably not a
whit more efficacious than the hideous noises of some savage tribes,
who, imagining that the sun, in an eclipse, has been swallowed by an
enormous dragon, resort to such means to compel his snakeship to
disgorge their favorite luminary.”[652]
Dr. Toner, the author of that very interesting little work, “Maternal
Instinct or Love,” informs me that when a boy he witnessed a mode of
alluring a swarm of Bees to settle, performed by a German man and his
wife, which struck him at the time as being remarkable, and which was as
follows: Having first put some pig-manure upon the hive into which they
wished the Bees to go, they ran to and fro under the swarm, singing a
monotonous German hymn; and this they continued till the Bees were
settled and hived.
Another strange mode of alluring Bees into a new hive is practiced near
Gloucester, England, but only when all the usual ways of preparing hives
fail; it is this: When a swarm is to be hived, instead of moistening the
inside of the hive with honey, or sugar and water, the Bee-master throws
into it, inverted, about a pint of beans, which he causes a sow to
devour, and immediately then, it is said, will the Bees take to it.[653]
Pliny, as follows, incidentally mentions another curious mode of
preparing the hives to best suit the Bees: “Touching Baulme, which the
Greeks call Melittis or Melissophyllon: if Bee-hives be rubbed all over
and besmeared with the juice thereof, the Bees will never go away; for
there is not a flower whereof they be more desirous and faine than of
it.”[654]
Borlase, in his Antiquities of Cornwall, p. 168, tells us of another
strange practice in the hiving of Bees. He says: “The Cornish, to this
day, invoke the spirit of Browny, when their Bees swarm; and they think
that their crying Browny, Browny, will prevent them from returning into
the former hive, and make them pitch and form a new colony.”[655]
The Rev. Thomas P. Hunt, of Wyoming, Pa., has devised an amusing plan,
by which he says he can, at all times, prevent a swarm of Bees from
leaving his premises. Before his stocks swarm, he collects a number of
dead Bees, and, stringing them with a needle and thread, as worms are
strung for catching eels, makes of them a ball about the size of an egg,
leaving a few strands loose. By carrying--fastened to a pole--this
“_Bee-bob_” about his Apiary, when the Bees are swarming, or by placing
it in some central position, he invariably secures every swarm.[656]
The barbarous practice of killing Bees for their honey, not yet entirely
abolished, did not exist in the time of Aristotle, Varro, Columella, and
Pliny. The old cultivators took only what their Bees could spare,
killing no stocks except such as were feeble or diseased. The following
epitaph, taken from a German work, might well be placed over every pit
of these brimstoned insects:
HERE RESTS,
CUT OFF FROM USEFUL LABOR,
A COLONY OF
INDUSTRIOUS BEES,
BASELY MURDERED
BY ITS
UNGRATEFUL AND IGNORANT
OWNER.
To the epitaph also may be appended Thomson’s verses:
Ah, see, where robbed and murdered in that pit,
Lies the still heaving hive! at evening snatched,
Beneath the cloud of guilt-concealing night,
And fixed o’er sulphur! while, not dreaming ill,
The happy people, in their waxen cells,
Sat tending public cares.
Sudden, the dark, oppressive steam ascends,
And, used to milder scents, the tender race,
By thousands, tumble from their honied dome
Into a gulf of blue sulphureous flame![657]
It is considered very cruel in Africa, as Campbell observes, to kill
Bees in order to obtain their honey, especially as from flowers being
there at all seasons, and most in winter, they can live comfortably all
the year round. A Hottentot, who was accustomed to kill the Bees, was
often reasoned with by the humane to give up so cruel a practice, yet he
persisted in it till a circumstance occurred which determined him to
relinquish it. He had a water-mill for grinding his corn, which went
very slowly, from the smallness of the stream which turned it;
consequently the flour dropped very gently. For some time much less than
usual came into the sack, the cause of which he could not discover. At
length he found that a great part of his flour, as it was ground, was
carried off by the Bees to their hives: on examining this, he found it
contained only his flour, and no honey. This robbery made him resolve to
destroy no more Bees when their honey was taken, considering their
conduct in robbing him of his property as a just punishment to him for
his cruelty. The gentleman who related this story, Mr. Campbell says,
was a witness to the Bees robbing the mill.[658]
An old English proverb, relative to the swarming of Bees, is,--
A swarm of Bees in May,
Is worth a load of hay;
A swarm of Bees in June,
Is worth a silver spoon;
A swarm of Bees in July,
Is not worth a fly.[659]
In Tusser’s Five Hundred Points of Husbandry, under the month of May,
are these lines:
Take heed to thy Bees, that are ready to swarme,
The losse thereof now is a crown’s worth of harme.
On which is the following observation in Tusser Redivivus, 1744, p. 62:
“The tinkling after them with a warming-pan, frying-pan, kettle, is of
good use to let the neighbors know you have a swarm in the air, which
you claim wherever it lights; but I believe of very little purpose to
the reclaiming of the Bees, who are thought to delight in no noise but
their own.”
Ill fortune attends the killing of Bees,--a common saying. This,
doubtless, arose from the thrift and usefulness of these insects.
That swarms of Bees, or fields, houses, stalls of cattle, or workshops,
may not be affected by enchantment, Leontinus says: “Dig in the hoof of
the right side of a sable ass under the threshold of the door, and pour
on some liquid pitchy resin, salt, Heracleotic origanum, cardamonium,
cumin, some fine bread, squills, a chaplet of white or of crimson wool,
the chaste tree, vervain, sulphur, pitchy torches; and lay on some
amaranthus every month, and lay on the mould; and, having scattered
seeds of different kinds, let them remain.”[660]
To cure the stings of Bees, we have the following remedies: “Rue,” says
Pliny, “is an hearbe as medicinable as the best ... and is available
against the stings of Bees, Hornets, and Wasps, and against the poison
of the Cantharides and Salamanders.[661]
“Yea, and it is an excellent thing for them that be stung, to take the
very Bees in drinke; for it is an approved cure.[662]
“Baulme is a most present remedy not only against their stings, but also
of Wespes, Spiders, and Scorpions.[663]
“The Laurell, both leafe, barke, and berrie, is by nature hot; and
applied as a liniment, be singular good for the pricke or sting of
Wasps, Hornets, and Bees.[664]
“For the sting of Bees, Wasps, and Hornets, the Howlat (owlet) is
counted a soveraigne thing, by a certaine antipathie in nature.[665]
“Moreover, as many as have about them the bill of a Woodspeck
(Woodpecker) when they come to take honey out of the hive, shall not be
stung by Bees.”[666]
It is said that if a man suffers himself to be stung by Bees, he will
find that the poison will produce less and less effect upon his system,
till, finally, like Mithridates of old, he will appear to almost thrive
upon poison itself. When Langstroth first became interested in Bees,
according to his statement, a sting was quite a formidable thing, the
pain being often intense, and the wound swelling so as sometimes to
obstruct his sight. But, at length, however, the pain was usually
slight, and, if the sting was quickly extracted, no unpleasant
consequences ensued, even if no remedies were used. Huish speaks of
seeing the bald head of Bonner, a celebrated practical Apiarian, covered
with stings, which seemed to produce upon him no unpleasant effects. The
Rev. Mr. Kleine advises beginners to suffer themselves to be stung
frequently, assuring them that, in two seasons, their systems will
become accustomed to the poison. An old English Apiarian advises a
person who has been stung, to catch as speedily as possible another
Bee, and make it sting on the same spot.[667]
It is generally believed among our boys that if the part stung by a Bee
be rubbed with the leaves of three different plants at the same time,
the pain will be relieved.
Willsford, in his Nature’s Secrets, p. 134, says: “Bees, in fair
weather, not wandering far from their hives, presage the approach of
some stormy weather.... Wasps, Hornets, and Gnats, biting more eagerly
than they used to do, is a sign of rainy weather.”[668]
The prognostication drawn from a flight of Bees, in which there is
doubtless much truth, appears from the following lines to have been
known to Virgil:
Nor dare they stay,
When rain is promised, or a stormy day:
But near the city walls their watering take,
Nor forage far, but short excursions make.[669]
Bees were employed as the symbol of Epeses; they are common also on
coins of Elyrus, Julis, and Præsus.[670]
One of the most remarkable facts in the history of Bees is that passage
in the Bible[671] about the swarm of these insects and honey in the
carcass of the lion slain by Samson. Some look upon it as a paradox,
others as altogether incredible; but it admits of easy explanation. The
lion had been dead some little time before the Bees had taken up their
abode in the carcass, for it is expressly stated that “after a time,”
Samson returned and saw the Bees and honey in the carcass, so that “if,”
as Oedman has well observed, “any one here represents to himself a
corrupt and putrid carcass, the occurrence ceases to have any true
similitude, for it is well known in these countries, at certain seasons
of the year, the heat will in twenty-four hours so completely dry up the
moisture of dead animals, and that without their undergoing
decomposition, that their bodies long remain, like mummies, unaltered,
and entirely free from offensive odor.” To the foregoing quotation we
may add that very probably the larvæ of flies, ants, and other insects,
which at the time when Bees swarm, are to be found in great numbers,
would help to consume the carcass, and leave perhaps in a short time
little else than a skeleton.[672]
An instance of Bees tenanting a dead body is found in the following
passage from the writings of Herodotus: “Now the Amathusians, having cut
off the head of Onesilus, because he had besieged them, took it to
Amatheus, and suspended it over the gates; and when the head was
suspended, and had become hollow, a swarm of Bees entered it, and filled
it with honey-comb. When this happened, the Amathusians consulted the
oracle respecting it, and an answer was given them, ‘that they should
take down the head and bury it, and sacrifice annually to Onesilus, as
to a hero; and if they did so, it would turn out better for them.’ The
Amathusians did accordingly, and continued to do so until my time.”[673]
Another singular instance is mentioned by Napier in his Excursions on
the shores of the Mediterranean: “Among this pretty collection of
natural curiosities (in the cemetery of Algesiras), one in particular
attracted our attention; this was the contents of a small uncovered
coffin in which lay a child, the cavity of the chest exposed and
tenanted by an industrious colony of Bees. The comb was rapidly
progressing, and I suppose, according to the adage of the poet, they
were adding sweets to the sweet, if not perfume to the violet.”[674]