The Honey-Bee: Its Natural History, Physiology and Management

+Although+ the great addition which has of late been made to our knowledge of the honey-bee, may seem to render a reference to ancient writers comparatively unimportant; yet a few prefatory observations, upon the rise and progress of apiarian science, may not be out of season.

The natural history and management of bees would probably occupy the attention of man at an early period. Surrounded by a boundless variety of living creatures, he would naturally be led to notice their habits and œconomy; and no part of the animal world, or at any rate no part of the world of insects, would be more likely to engage his consideration than the honey-bee. Honey would, in all probability, constitute one of his earliest luxuries; and as he advanced in civilization, he would, as a matter of course, avail himself of the industry of its collectors, by bringing them as much as possible within his reach; and by this means he would take an important step towards an acquaintance with entomology. But the progress made by our earliest progenitors, in this or any other science, is involved in the obscurity and uncertainty necessarily appertaining to the infancy of society.

The first indications of attention to natural history are contained in the Old Testament. The interest which it excited in the mind of +Solomon+, evinces how highly it was esteemed in his time. The records of its first progression are however entirely lost, and no regular history of this science exists prior to the days of +Aristotle+, who under the auspices and through the munificence of his pupil Alexander the Great, was enabled to prosecute with the greatest advantage, for the time in which he lived, his experiments and inquiries into every department of natural history. Alexander felt so strong a desire to promote this object, that he placed at the disposal of Aristotle a very large sum of money, and in his Asiatic expedition employed above a thousand persons in collecting and transmitting to him specimens from every part of the animal kingdom. +Aristotle+ is therefore to be regarded as having laid the first foundation of our knowledge of that kingdom. He must likewise have derived great advantages from the discoveries and observations of preceding writers, to whose works he would probably have easy access. No individual naturalist could, without such assistance, have produced so valuable and extensive a work on natural science as that which Aristotle has bequeathed to posterity. And though the opinions of himself and his contemporaries have been transmitted to us in an imperfect manner, and abound in errors, still he and his editor +Theophrastus+ may be regarded as the only philosophical naturalists of antiquity, whose labours and discoveries present us with any portion of satisfactory knowledge.

The observations of Aristotle on the subject of the honey-bee were afterwards "embellished and invested with a species of divinity, by the matchless pen of +Virgil+," in his fourth Georgic; and it excites feelings of regret, that poetry which for its beauty and elegance is so universally admired, should be the vehicle of opinions that are founded in error.

+Aristomachus+ of Soli in Cilicia had his contemplations for nearly sixty years almost solely occupied by bees; and +Philiscus+ the Thracian spent a great portion of his time in the woods, that he might investigate their manners and habits without interruption; whence he acquired the name of Agrius. However small their contribution of knowledge may appear to this enlightened age, these ancient worthies must have aided the early progress of their favourite science, and are at all events evidences of the zeal with which it was prosecuted in their day.

About the commencement of the Christian æra, +Columella+, who was a very accurate observer and exhibited considerable genius as a naturalist, made some curious and useful remarks upon bees in his Treatise De Re Rusticá: but Columella, like Virgil, appears to have acquiesced in and copied the errors of his predecessors.

After him the elder +Pliny+ gave a sanction to the opinions which he found prevalent, and added to them others of his own. But Pliny, though a laborious compiler, occupied himself with too great a variety of pursuits to attain excellence in any. As a naturalist, however, he is happy in some of his descriptions. To him we are indebted for the transmission to us of all that was actually known, or supposed to be known, of natural history in his day. I say--supposed to be known, for many of the opinions and conjectures which he has put forth, have been shown by modern investigators to be ill-founded.

The notions of the ancients respecting natural philosophy rested on no rational foundation; ideas of charms and of planetary influence directed their most important pursuits, and led to the formation of very absurd theories. When the writer last named recommends that the dust in which a mule has rolled should be sprinkled on persons who are violently in love, as a sovereign remedy for amatory ardour, and gravely tells us that snakes are sometimes produced from the human medulla,--with much nonsensical stuff of the like kind; we may safely pronounce that he or his contemporaries or both were very credulous, and that the science of experimental philosophy was scarcely cultivated among them.

After the compilation of Pliny's vast Compendium, nearly fourteen hundred years rolled away without anything being done for entomology or for natural history in general. +The Arabians+, who alone preserved a glimmer of science during those dark ages that succeeded the fall of the Roman empire, cultivated natural history only as a branch of medicine, and from their writings little can be gleaned in furtherance of our present object.

On the revival of learning in the fifteenth century, and after the discovery of the art of printing, various editions were published of the works on natural history, written by the Withers of that science. +Sir Edward Wotton+, +Conrade Gesner+, and others, produced conjointly a work on insects, the manuscripts of which came into the possession of +Dr. Thomas Penry+, an eminent physician and botanist in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. After devoting fifteen years to the improvement of the work, the Doctor died, and the unfinished manuscripts were purchased at a considerable price by +Mouffet+, a contemporary English physician of singular learning, who with great labour and at great expense arranged, enlarged, and completed the work. When nearly ready for the press, he also died; and the papers, after lying buried in dust and obscurity for several years, at last fell into the hands of +Sir Theodore Mayerne+ (Baron d'Aubone), a court physician in the time of Charles the First, who gave them to the world in 1634. The arrangement of this work is defective; but for the period in which it was written, it is a very complete and respectable Treatise on Entomology. It was highly recommended by Haller; and as a storehouse of ancient entomological lore it has not yet lost its utility. Its pages are embellished with nearly 500 wood-cuts. An English translation of it was published in 1658.

According to Fabius Columma, +Prince Frederic Cesi+, president of the Roman Academy of Sciences, wrote a treatise upon bees; but the work has not been preserved, and we are unacquainted with its merits.

These authors were succeeded by Goedart, Swammerdam, Maraldi, Ray, Willughby and Lister, who by their indefatigable exertions, towards the close of the 17th century threw very considerable light upon every branch of natural knowledge. Goedart spent forty years of his life in attending to the proceedings of insects, "daily conversing with insects," as he expresses it, and published in 1662 a work on their natural history; but the plates with which it is embellished form the best part of it. +Swammerdam+ published his celebrated work, "A General History of Insects," in 4to, in 1669: a more enlarged edition in two volumes folio, containing the history of bees, was afterwards published in 1737, under the auspices of Boerhaave, from the manuscript of Swammerdam. Those readers who have patience to wade through these tedious volumes, will find it rewarded by the attainment of much curious information. +Maraldi+ published in the Memoirs of the Royal Academy of Sciences for 1712, his account of the manners, genius, and labours of the bee. He is said to have been the inventor of glass hives, and to that invention may be attributed the success of his inquiries. Swammerdam founded his system upon what has been called the metamorphotic basis; and +Ray+, in conjunction with his friend +Willughby+, whom he calls the profoundest of naturalists and the most amiable and virtuous of men, erected his superstructure on the same basis. In the Historia Insectorum of Ray, evidently the joint production of himself and +Willughby+, especial attention is paid to the Hymenoptera: it contains various interesting observations on their manners and characters; and the descriptions, in which he was assisted by the use of very powerful microscopes, are concise and well drawn. +Dr. Martin Lister+, in an appendix to Ray's work, and in various other writings also, contributed materially to elucidate the science of entomology. +Madame Merian+ likewise deserves well, for her industrious pursuit of this subject, particularly for her beautiful illustration of the metamorphoses of insects in Surinam.