Chapter VII: Part 7

In the second volume of Lieutenant Holman’s Travels, the following anecdote is related: “Eight miles from Grandie----, the muleteers suddenly called out ‘Marambundas! Marambundas!’ which indicated the approach of Wasps. In a moment all the animals, whether loaded or otherwise, lay down on their backs, kicking most violently; while the blacks, and all persons not already attacked, ran away in different directions, all being careful, by a wide sweep, to avoid the swarms of tormentors that came forward like a cloud. I never witnessed a panic so sudden and complete, and really believe that the bursting of a water-spout could hardly have produced more commotion. However, it must be confessed that the alarm was not without good reason, for so severe is the torture inflicted by these pigmy assailants, that the bravest travelers are not ashamed to fly, the instant they perceive the host approaching, which is of common occurrence on the Campos.”[592]

Dr. Fairfax, in the Philosophical Transactions, mentions a lady, who had such a horror of Wasps, that during the season in which they abound in houses, she always confined herself to her apartment.[593]

Dr. James tells us: “The combs (of the Hornet) are recommended in a drench for that disorder in horses, which Vigetius, L. 2, c. 23, calls scrofula, meaning, I believe, what we call the strangles.”[594]

Hornets’-nest is smoked under horses’ noses for distemper, cold in the head, and such like diseases. It is also given to horses in their feed for thick-windedness.

The nests of Hornets are gathered by the country people to clean spectacles.

Topsel, in his History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents, has the following prognostications of the weather from the appearances of Hornets: “They serve instead of good almanacks to countrey people, to foretel tempests and change of weather, as hail, rain, and snow: for if they flie about in greater numbers, and be oftner seen about any place, then usually they are wont, it is a signe of heat and fair weather the next day. But if about twilight they are observed to enter often their nests, as though they would hide themselves, you must the next day expect rain, winde, or some stormy, troublesome or boysterous season: whereupon Avienus hath these verses:

So if the buzzing troups of Hornets hoarse to flie,
In spacious air ’bout Autumn’s end you see,
When Virgil star the evening lamp espie,
Then from the sea some stormy tempest sure shall be.”[595]

“In the year 190, before the birth of Christ,” say Moufet and Topsel, “as Julius witnesseth, an infinite multitude of Wasps flew into the market at Capua, and sate in the temple of Mars, they were with great diligence taken and burnt solemnly, yet they did foreshew the coming of the enemy and the burning of the city.”[596]

The first Wasp seen in the season should always be killed. By so doing, you secure to yourself good luck and freedom from enemies throughout the year.[597] This is an English superstition, and it prevails in parts of America. We have one, also, directly opposed to it, namely, that the first Wasp seen in the season should not be killed if you wish to secure to yourself good luck. Many of our people, too, will kill a Wasp at no time, for, if killed, they say, it will bring upon them bad luck.

If a Wasp stings you, our superstitious think that your foes will get the advantage of you.

If the first Wasp seen in the season be seen in your house, it is a sign that you will form an unpleasant acquaintance. If the first Bee seen in the season be seen in your house, it is a sign you will form a pleasant and useful acquaintance. This arose doubtless from the apparent uselessness of the former, and worth of the latter insect.

Wasps building in a house foretell the coming to want of the family occupying it. Likewise arose from the unthriftiness of this insect.

If Hornets build high, the winter will be dry and mild; if low, cold and stormy. This is firmly believed in Virginia; and the idea seems to be, that if the nest is built high it will be more exposed to the wind than if built low.

That a person may not be stung by Wasps, Paxamus says: “Let the person be rubbed with the juice of wild-mallow, and he will not be stung.”[598]

The Creoles of Mauritius eat the larvæ of Wasps, which they roast in the combs. In taking the nests, they drive off the Wasps by means of a burning rag fastened to the end of a stick. The combs are sold at the bazaar of Port Louis.[599]

The following story, of the cunning of the fox in killing the Wasps to obtain their combs, is told by Ælian: “The fox (a subtile creature) is said to prey upon the Wasp in this manner: he puts his tail into the Wasps’ nest so long till it be all covered with Wasps, which he espying, pulls it out and beats them against the next stone or tree he meets withall till they be all dead, this being done again and again till all the Wasps be destroyed, he sets upon their combs and devours them.”[600]

The Chinese Herbal contains a singular notion, prevalent also in India, concerning the generation of the Sphex, or solitary Wasp. When the female lays her eggs in the clayey nidus she makes in houses, she incloses the dead body of a caterpillar in it for the subsistence of the worms when they are hatched. Those who observed her entombing the caterpillar did not look for the eggs, and immediately concluded that the Sphex took the worm for the progeny, and say, that as she plastered up the hole of the nest, she hummed a constant song over it, saying, “_Class with me! class with me!_”--and the transformation gradually took place, and was perfected in its silent grave by the next spring, when a winged Wasp emerged, to continue its posterity the coming autumn in the same mysterious way.[601]

Apidæ--Bees.

Concerning the piety of Bees, we find the following legends:

“A certaine simple woman having some stals of Bees which yeelded not vnto her hir desired profit, but did consume and die of the murraine; made her mone to another woman more simple than hir selfe: who gave her councel to get a consecrated host or round Godamighty and put it among them. According to whose advice she went to the priest to receive the host; which when she had done, she kept it in hir month, and being come home againe she tooke it out and put it into one of hir hives. Wherevpon the murraine ceased, and the honey abounded. The woman therefore lifting vp the hive at the due time to take out the honie, sawe there (most strange to be seene) a chapel built by the Bees with an altar in it, the wals adorned by marvelous skil of architecture with windowes conveniently set in their places: also a dore and a steeple with bels. And the host being laid vpon the altar, the Bees making a sweet noise flew round about it.”[602]

Mr. Hawker’s legend is to this effect: A Cornish woman, one summer, finding her Bees refused to leave their “cloistered home” and had “ceased to play around the cottage flowers,” concealed a portion of the Holy Eucharist which she obtained at church:

She bore it to her distant home,
She laid it by the hive
To lure the wanderers forth to roam,
That so her store might thrive;--
’Twas a wild wish, a thought unblest,
Some evil legend of the west.

But lo! at morning-tide a sign
For wondering eyes to trace,
They found above that Bread, a shrine
Rear’d by the harmless race!
They brought their walls from bud and flower,
They built bright roof and beamy tower!

Was it a dream? or did they hear
Float from those golden cells
A sound, as of a psaltery near,
Or soft and silvery bells?
A low sweet psalm, that grieved within
In mournful memory of the sin![603]

The following passage, from Howell’s _Parley of Beasts_, furnishes a similar legend of the piety of Bees. Bee speaks:

“Know, sir, that we have also a religion as well as you, and so exact a government among us here; our hummings you speak of are as so many hymns to the Great God of Nature; and there is a miraculous example in _Cæsarius Cisterniensis_, of some of the Holy Eucharist being let fall in a meadow by a priest, as he was returning from visiting a sick body; a swarm of Bees hard-by took It up, and in a solemn kind of procession carried It to their hive, and their erected an altar of the purest wax for it, where it was found in that form, and untouched.”[604]

Butler, quoting Thomas Bozius, tells us the following:

“Certaine theeves (thieves) having stolen the silver boxe wherein the wafer-Gods vse to lie, and finding one of them there being loath, belike, that he should lie abroad all night, did not cast him away, but laid him under a hive: whom the Bees acknowledging advanced to a high roome in the hive, and there insteade of his silver boxe made him another of the whitest wax: and when they had so done, in worshippe of him, and set howres they sang most sweetly beyond all measure about it: yea the owner of them took them at it at midnight with a light and al. Wherewith the bishop being made acquainted, came thither with many others: and lifting vp the hive he sawe there neere the top a most fine boxe, wherein the host was laid, and the quires of Bees singing about it, and keeping watch in the night, as monkes do in their cloisters. The bishop therefore taking the host, carried it with the greater honour into the church: whether many resorting were cured of innumerable diseases.”[605]

Another legend, from the School of the Eucharist, is as follows:

“A peasant swayed by a covetous mind, being communicated on Easter-Day, received the Host in his mouth, and afterwards laid it among his bees, believing that all the Bees of the neighborhood would come thither to work their wax and honey. This covetous, impious wretch was not wholly disappointed of his hopes; for all his neighbors’ Bees came indeed to his hives, but not to make honey, but to render there the honours due to the Creator. The issue of their arrival was that they melodiously sang to Him songs of praise as they were able; after that they built a little church with their wax from the foundations to the roof, divided into three rooms, sustained by pillars, with their bases and chapiters. They had there also an Altar, upon which they had laid the precious Body of our Lord, and flew round about it, continuing their musick. The peasant ... coming nigh that hive where he had put the H. Sacrament, the Bees issued out furiously by troops, and surrounding him on all sides, revenged the irreverence done to their Creator, and stung him so severely that they left him in a sad case. This punishment made this miserable wretch come to himself, who, acknowledging his error, went to find out the parish priest to confess his fault to him....” etc.[606]

We quote also another from the School of the Eucharist:

“A certain peasant of Auvergne, a province in France, perceiving that his Bees were likely to die, to prevent this misfortune, was advised, after he had received the communion, to reserve the Host, and to blow it into one of the hives. As he tried to do it, the Host fell on the ground. Behold now a wonder! On a sudden all the Bees came forth out of their hives, and ranging themselves in good order, lifted the Host from the ground, and carrying it in upon their wings, placed it among the combes. After this the man went out about his business, and at his return found that this advice had succeeded ill, for all his Bees were dead....”[607]

We will close this series of legends with one from the Lives of the Saints:

“When a thief by night had stolen St. Medard’s Bees, they, in their master’s quarrel, leaving their hive, set upon the malefactor, and eagerly pursuing him which way soever he ran, would not cease stinging of him until they had made him (whether he would or no) to go back again to their master’s house; and there, falling prostrate at his feet, submissly to cry him mercy for the crime committed. Which being done, so soon as the Saint extended unto him the hand of benediction, the Bees, like obedient servants, did forthwith stay from persecuting him, and evidently yielded themselves to the ancient possession and custody of their master.”[608]

By the Greeks, Bees were accounted an omen of future eloquence;[609] the soothsayers of the Romans, however, deemed them always of evil augury.[610] They afforded also to the Romans presages of public interest, “clustering, as they do, like a bunch of grapes, upon houses or temples; presages, in fact, that are often accounted for by great events.”[611] The instances of happy omens afforded by swarms of Bees are the following:

“It is said of Pindar,” we read in Pausanias’ History of Greece, “that when he was a young man, as he was going to Thespia, being wearied with the heat, as it was noon, and in the height of summer, he fell asleep at a small distance from the public road; and that Bees, as he was asleep, flew to him and wrought their honey on his lips. This circumstance first induced Pindar to compose verses.”[612]

A similar incident is mentioned in the life of Plato:

“Whilst _Plato_ was yet an infant carried in the arms of his mother _Perictione, Aristo_ his father went to _Hymettus_ (a mountain in _Attica_ eminent for abundance of Bees and Honey) to sacrifice to the Muses or Nymphs, taking his Wife and Child along with him; as they were busied in the Divine Rites, she laid the Child in a Thicket of Myrtles hard by; to whom, as he slept (_in cunis dormienti_) came a Swarm of Bees, Artists of Hymettian Honey, flying and buzzing about him, and (as it is reported) made a Honeycomb in his mouth. This was taken for a presage of the singular sweetness of his discourse; his future Eloquence foreseen in his infancy.”[613]

From Butler’s Lives of the Saints we have the following:

“The birth of St. Ambrose happened about the year 340 B.C., and whilst the child lay asleep in one of the courts of his father’s palace, a swarm of Bees flew about his cradle, and some of them even crept in and out at his mouth, which was open; and at last mounted up into the air so high, that they quite vanished out of sight. This,” concludes the Reverend Alban, “was esteemed a presage of future greatness and eloquence.”[614]

Another instance is mentioned in the Feminine Monarchie, printed at Oxford in 1634, p. 22.

“When _Ludovicus Vives_ was sent by Cardinal Wolsey to Oxford, there to be a public professor of Rhetoric, being placed in the College of Bees, he was welcomed thither by a swarm of Bees; which sweet creatures, to signifie the incomparable sweetnesse of his eloquence, settled themselves over his head, under the leads of his study, where they have continued to this day.... How sweetly did all things then accord, when in this neat μουσαῖον newly consecrated to the Muses, the Muses’ sweetest favorite was thus honoured by the Muses’ birds.”[615]

Moufet, in his Theater of Insects, and Topsel, in almost the same words in his History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents, gives the following list of remarkable omens drawn from Bees:

“Whereas the most high God did create all other creatures for our use; so especially the Bees, not only that as mistresses they might hold forth to us a patern of politick and œconomic vertues, and inform our understanding; but that they might be able as extraordinary foretellers, to foreshew the success and event of things to come; for in the years 90, 98, 113, 208, before the birth of Christ, when as mighty huge swarms of Bees did settle in the chief market-place, and in the beast-market upon private citizens’ houses, and on the temple of Mars, there were at that time stratagems of enemies against Rome, wherewith the whole state was like to be surprised and destroyed. In the reign of Severus, the Bees made combes in his military ensigns, and especially in the camp of Niger. Divers wars upon this ensued between both the parties of Severus and Niger, and battels of doubtful event, while at length the Severian faction prevailed. The statues also of Antonius Pius placed here and there all over Hetruria, were all covered with swarms of Bees; and after that settled in the camp of Cassius; what great commotions after followed Julius Capitolinus relates in his history. At what time also, through the treachery of the Germans in Germany, there was a mighty slaughter and overthrow of the Romans. P. Fabius, and Q. Elius being consuls in the camp of Drusus in the tent of Hostilius Rutilus, a swarm of Bees is reported to have sate so thick, that they covered the rope and the spear that held up the tent. M. Lepidus, and Munat. Plancus being consuls, as also in the consulship of L. Paulus, and C. Metellus, swarms of Bees flying to Rome (as the augurs very well conjectured) did foretell the near approach of the enemy. Pompey likewise making war against Cæsar, when he had called his allies together, he set his army in order as he went out of Dyrrachium, Bees met him and sate so thick upon his ensigns that they could not be seen what they were. Philistus and Ælian relate, that while Dionysius the tyrant did in vain spur his horse that stuck in the mire, and there at length left him, the horse quitting himself by his own strength, did follow after his master the same way he went with a swarm of Bees sticking on his mane; intimating by that prodigy that tyrannical government which Dionysius affected over the Galeotæ. In the Helvetian History we read, that in the year 1385, when Leopoldus of Austria began to march towards Sempachum with his army, a swarm of Bees flew to the town and there sate upon the tyles; whereby the common people rightly foretold that some forain force was marching towards them. So Virgil, in 7 Æneid:

The Bees flew buzzing through the liquid air:
And pitcht upon the top o’ th’ laurel tree;
When the Soothsayers saw this sight full rare,
They did foretell th’ approach of th’ enemie.

That which Herodotus, Pausanias, Dio Cassius, Plutarch, Julius Cæsar, Julius Capitolinus, and other historians with greater observation then reason have confirmed. Saon Acrephniensis, when he could by no means finde the oracle Trophonius; Pausanias in his œticks saith he was lead thither by a swarm of Bees. Moreover, Plutarch, Pausanias, Ælian, Alex. Alexandrinus, Theocritus and Textor are authors that Jupiter Melitæus, Hiero of Syracuse, Plato, Pindar, Apius Comatus, Xenophon, and last of all Ambrose, when their nurses were absent, had honey dropt into their mouths by Bees, and so were preserved.”[616]

In East Norfolk, England, if Bees swarm on rotten wood, it is considered portentous of a death in the family.[617] This superstition is as old at least as the time of Gay, for, among the signs that foreshadowed the death of Blonzelind, it is mentioned:

Swarmed on a rotten stick the Bees I spy’d
Which erst I saw when Goody Dobson dy’d.[618]

In Ireland, the mere swarming of Bees is looked upon as prognosticating a death in the family of the owner.

In parts of England it is believed, that if a swarm of Bees come to a house, and are not claimed by their owner, there will be a death in the family that hives them.[619]

It is a very ancient superstition that Bees, by their acute sense of smell, quickly detect an unchaste woman, and strive to make her infamy known by stinging her immediately. In a pastoral of Theocritus, the shepherd in a pleasant mood tells Venus to go away to Anchises to be well stung by Bees for her lewd behavior.

Now go thy way to Ida mount--
Go to Anchises now,
Where mighty oaks, where banks along
Of square Cypirus grow,
Where hives and hollow trunks of trees,
With honey sweet abound,
Where all the place with humming noise
Of busie Bees resound.

Incontinence in men, as well as unchastity in women, was thought to be punished by these little insects. Thus in the lines of Pindarus:

Thou painful Bee, thou pretty creature,
Who honey-combs six angled, as the be,
With feet doest frame, false Phœcus and impure,
With sting has prickt for his lewd villany.[620]

Pliny says: “Certain it is, that if a menstruous woman do no more but touch a Bee-hive, all the Bees will be gone and never more come to it again.”[621]

In Western Pennsylvania, it is believed that Bees will invariably sting red-haired persons as soon as they approach the hives.

It is a common opinion that Bees in rough and boisterous weather, and particularly in a violent storm, carry a stone in their legs, in order to preserve themselves by its weight against the power of the wind. Its antiquity is also great, for in the writings of Plutarch we find an instance of this remarkable wisdom. “The Bees of Candi,” says this philosopher, “being about to double a point or cape lying into the sea, which is much exposed to the winds, they ballase (ballast) themselves with small grit or petty stones, for to be able to endure the weather, and not be carried away against their wills with the winds through their lightness otherwise.”[622]

Virgil, too, about a century earlier, mentions this curious notion in the following lines:

And as when empty barks on billows float,
With sandy ballast sailors trim the boat;
So Bees bear gravel stones, whose poising weight
Steers through the whistling winds their steady flight.[623]

Swammerdam, who has noticed this belief of the ancients, makes the following remarks: “But this, as Clutius justly observes, has not been hitherto remarked by any Bee-keeper, nor indeed have I myself ever seen it. Yet I should think that there may be some truth in this matter, and probably a certain observation, which I shall presently mention, has given rise to the story. There is a species of wild Bees not unlike the smallest kind of the Humble-Bee, which, as they are accustomed to build their nests near stone walls, and construct their habitations of stone and clay, sometimes carry such large stones that it is scarcely credible by what means so tender insects can sustain so great a load, and that even flying while they are obliged also to support their own body. Their nest by this means is often so heavy as to weigh one or two pounds.”[624]

It was the general opinion of antiquity that Bees were produced from the putrid bodies of cattle. Varro says they are called Βουγόναι by the Greeks, because they arise from petrified bullocks. In another place he mentions their rising from these putrid animals, and quotes the authority of Archelaus, who says Bees proceed from bullocks, and wasps from horses.[625] Virgil, however, is much more satisfactory, for he gives us the recipe in all its details for producing these insects:

First, in a place, by nature close, they build
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]

Butler, in his Feminine Monarchie, narrates the following curious story: “_Paulus Jovius_ affirmeth that in _Muscovia_, there are found in the woods & wildernesses great lakes of honey, which the Bees have forsaken, in the hollow truncks of marvelous huge trees. In so much that hony & waxe are the most certaine commodities of that countrie. Where, by that occasion, he setteth down the storie reported by _Demetrius_ a _Muscovite_ ambassador sent to Rome. A neighbor of mine (saith he) searching in the woods for hony slipt downe into a great hollow tree, and there sunk into a lake of hony vp to his brest: where when he had stucke faste two daies calling and crying out in vaine for helpe, because no bodie in the meane while came nigh that solitarie place; at length when he was out of all hope of life, hee was strangely delivered by the means of a great beare: which coming thither about the same businesse that he did, and smelling the hony stirred with his striving, clambered vp to the top of the tree, & thence began to let himselfe downe backward into it. The man bethinking himself, and knowing the worst was but death, which in that place he was sure of, beclipt the beare fast with both his hands aboit the loines, and withall made an outcry as lowd as he could. The beare being thus sodainely affrighted, what with the handling, & what with the noise, made vp againe withal speed possible: the man held, & the beare pulled, vntil with main force he had drawne _Dun out of the mire_: & then being let go, away he trots _more afeard than hurt_, leaving the smeered swaine in a joyful feare.”[675]

By the Chinese writers, the composition of the characters for the Bee, Ant, and Mosquito, respectively, denote the awl insect, the _righteous_ insect, and the _lettered_ insect; referring thereby to the sting of the first, the orderly marching and subordination of the second, and the letter-like markings on the wings of the last.[676]

In May, 1653, the remains of Childeric, King of the Franks, who died A.D. 481, and was buried at Tournay, were discovered; and among the medals, coins, and books, which were found in his tomb, were also found above three hundred figures of, as Chiflet says, Bees, all of gold. Some of these figures were toads, crescents, lilies, spear-heads, and such like, but Chiflet, after much labor and research, was fully convinced they were Bees; and, more than that, determines them to be the source whence the _Fleur de lis_ in the Arms of France were afterward derived. Montfaucon, however, did not hesitate to say they were nothing more than ornaments of the horse-furniture.[677]

Napoleon I. and II. are said to have had their imperial robes embroidered with golden Bees, as claiming official descent from Carolus Magnus, who is said to have worn them on his coat of arms.[678]

On a Continental forty-five dollar bill, issued on the 14th of January, 1779, is represented an Apiary in which two Beehives are visible, and Bees are seen swarming about. The motto is “Sic floret Respublica--Thus flourishes the Republic.” It conveys the simple lesson that by industry and frugality the Republic would prosper.[679]

Bees in the heroic ages it appears were not confined in hives; for, whenever Homer describes them, it is either where they are streaming forth from a rock,[680] or settling in bands and clusters on the spring flowers. Hesiod, however, soon after makes mention of a hive where he is uncourteously comparing women to drones:

As when within their well-roof’d hives the Bees
Maintain the mischief-working drones at ease,
Their task pursuing till the golden sun
Down to the western wave his course hath run,
Filling their shining combs, while snug within
Their fragrant cells, the drones, with idle din
As princes revel o’er their unpaid bowls,
On others’ labors cheer their worthless souls.[681]

It may be surprising to many to know that Bees were not originally natives of this country. But such is the case; the first planters never saw any. The English first introduced them into Boston, and in 1670, they were carried over the Alleghany Mountains by a hurricane.[682] Since that time, it has been remarked they betray an invariable tendency for migrating southward.[683]

Bees for a long time were known to our Indians by the name of “English Flies;”[684] and they consider them, says Irving, as the harbinger of the white man, as the buffalo is of the red man, and say that in proportion as the Bee advances, the Indian and the buffalo retire.[685]

Longfellow, in his Song of Hiawatha, in describing the advent of the European to the New World, makes his Indian warrior say of the Bee and the white clover:

Wheresoe’er they move, before them
Swarms the stinging fly, the Ahmo,
Swarms the Bee, the honey-maker;
Wheresoe’er they tread, beneath them
Springs a flower unknown among us,
Springs the White Man’s Foot in blossom.