Bee Inspired in The Literature Of Honey

The widest read and written literature in the world, next to that of man and his affairs, is the literature about the life of an insect. From the earliest days of learning down to now, poets, philosophers, scientists, and common observers have written of the life of bees. No other creature, save man himself has inspired so splendid and lengthy of tribute after tribute.

Hyginus, Euhemerus, Virgil, Aristotle, Euthronis, Maro, and Shamash-shum-ukin were just but a few, of the ancient scholars who wrote of bees. Later, Roman soldier and farmer, Columella wrote extensively about bees and bee keeping in Volume IX, in his twelve volume The De re rustica (On Agriculture). Those are just a few example of authors who wrote about bees.

The life of the hive is one of the abiding miracles of nature, an extraordinary civilization much more ancient than our own. Man observed it, because he has dined in the bee's larder since the days when he was but a wild wanderer on the face of the earth.

Bees were his sole supply of sweetness. Their honey was all he had to sugar his food and drink with. Not until the seventeenth century, did the product of the sugar-cane reach the poorer people of developed countries. Up until then, even to the wealthy, it was a luxury. For every drink that was sweetened, for every food whose acid sourness was to be made gracious to the palate, the liquid gold called honey of the bee was used.

Honey was the forerunner of sugar. It was even the standard of sweetness in the Bible, where "sweeter also than honey and honeycomb" are the judgments of the Lord. Every picture of earthly well-being in days when men walked near God, has honey as one of the principal sources of contentment.

It was the substance in which the Hebrews traded with their neighbors, a delight of the table, a thing to sing songs about.

Shamash-shum-ukin was the king of Babylon from 668 BC to 648 BC. He came to his throne as the second son of Assyrian, King Esarhaddon. Historical details of his life are sketchy, largely because Babylonian history has been erased or lost.

It is known that he joined forces with other rules in the spring of 652 BC in a rebellion or war that lasted six years. By the time it was over much of Babylon was starving, so much so that it's believed the people gave in to cannibalism in the last days.

It's also said that he threw himself into his burning palace as the kingdom fell, and that this fact is the source of the Greek story Sardanapal.

If we desire further evidence as to the value set on honey and bees, we may find it, surprisingly, not in the text of the Bible though. It is written upon a cuneiform tablet of sun baked clay left by an ancient Babylonian ruler in the long, long ago.

It is an epitaph, written by himself, by an old-time governor, Shamash-resh-usur (aka Shamash-shum-ukin), and you just gotta love him for his claims to the gratitude of posterity of all of mankind. His life boasts of no military glory, of no territorial conquest, but he was immortalized from the plain fact which he thus sets forth:

"Bees, which collect honey, which no man had seen since the time of my fathers and forefathers, nor brought to this land of Skuhi, I brought down from the mountains of Khabkha tribe, and I put them in the garden of Gabbari-ibni. They collect honey and wax. The preparation of honey and wax I understand, and the gardeners understand it."

Shamash declared that posterity of the world would ask with wondering reverence of his name and fame:

"Is it true that Shamash-resh-ususr, governor of Sukhi, brought honeybees to the land of Sukhi?"

Granted that Shamash, must have been full of himself, or at least impressed with himself in finding and bring bees to Babylon -- still we cannot but fancy that Shamash, the pagan Babylonian knew more of bees than did Samson, who was the first of men known to history, to imagine that true bees were issued from the body of a dead animal.

His ignorance came from the fact that insects much resembling bees, do still spring from such carrion, but they are of course, not bees. Samson was observing drone flies, which closely resemble bees. That thought deceived him as much as Delila did apparently. He wasn't the only one, even Virgil and many more writers that came after them believed the same thing.

Indeed, the old literature of the bee is full of strange errors concerning the life-story of these little insect benefactors of man. Bees were thought not to be naturally born of parents, like other insects, and if they did not proceed from the decaying body of a dead animal, or to originate spontaneously on flowers. Thence, they were carried home as tiny babies by adult bees to the hives. Honey, was sort of dew from heaven, collected, not made by the insects.

We may laugh at such superstitions today, thought the greatest scholars of olden times and of the Middle Ages believed them. Indeed, it wasn't until Louis Pasteur proved that life cannot arise without parent-life, that this error was reluctantly abandoned by past modern thinkers.

For two thousand years people were taught Virgil's story of the life of the bee, most beautiful in language, shrewdly observant of the truth in parts, strangely full of error in others, enshrining all the old foolish notions which he had gathered from the legends of Egypt, and memorable for this lovely thought, that as he said, bees are inspired with a portion of the soul of the universe:

"Some have said that bees possess a share of divine mind, and draw the breath of heaven; for they think that the deity moves through all lands and spaces of the sea and deep of heaven; that hence, flocks, herd, men, every kind of wild beasts, each one at birth, derive the delicate spirit of life; and so in the course of things are restored to this fountain; and thither return again by dissolution; and there is no room for death, but each flies up into the place of a star, and climbs the height of heaven."

Virgil knew a good bit about bees, as he was a beekeeper. Bees, according to Virgil, had no parents, and all thought of the hive was to be governed by a king of more than natural powers.

It took a long time for mankind to figure out that bee life that was supposedly known by great minds who had considered the problems, were all wrong. Virgil also asserted that bees are created in the carcass of a young bull, so they didn't come from just any dead animal, only the biggest and best in his eyes.

However, the charm of it all, is that the reality is more wonderful than the myths woven by the imaginative old romancers. Let the unadorned truth about bees tell the real miraculous story, is my theory.

Hyginus --- Wrote of a woman of unsurpassed beauty called Melissa, who was changed into a bee by Jupiter

Euhemerus-- Wrote that bees were bred from hornets and the sun, and that the daughters of Phryxon were their babysitters

Columela -- Perpetuated a lot of myths, among them:

• The queen: "Now the king bees are slightly larger and more oblong in shape than to other bees, with straighter legs but less ample wings, of a beautiful shining color and smooth, without any hair, and sting less." (Failing to note that there are no kings in the bee kingdom).
• Beekeepers must: "Very great care must be taken by the man in charge, who feeds the bees, when he must handle the hives, that the day before he has abstained from sexual relations and does not approach them when drunk and only after washing himself, and the he abstains from all edibles which have a strong flavor....from acrimonious stench of garlic and onions and all other similar things."