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The Bee In Lore & Legend

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From 'The Golden Throng - A Book About Bees'. This is a classic text which is out of print. The article is here.
 
'Among the people of France, this idea that the honeybee is a guardian of morals as well as a producer of honey is carried still further. According to the belief of many peasants, bees sting those given to profanity as a reminder of their sins. Another idea of the French peasant is that when a man is stung it is a message from a relative in Purgatory, reminding him of his duty to offer up prayers for his relative's soul.'



very interesting atricale on bee symbolism.thanks/
 
Yes, I'll bump this thread!

There are lots of Fortean stories about bees and beekeepers. I've seen some good ones on TV, but don't remember enough detail to google for them.

One, I think, involved the death of a beekeeper, and subsequently a swarm of bees settled near a street sign on (perhaps) Beehive Street.

( I once worked for Marconi, whose social club was in Beehive Lane.)
 
Great thread! I recall an interesting article a couple of years back in FT on this topic. The Cistercian monks near where I live keep bees, as Cistercians have always done (cue Cistercian-Templar-Merovingian posts!):) and their honey is boss!
 
indeed it is a great tradition that on the death of a beekeeper someone must go and respectfully tell the bees..



i was told by a friend who grew up on a farm that bees must be moved a mile or only a one foot. In order for them not to swarm in thier former spot. They however didnt know this and bought a hive one day and neglected to move it from the middle of the farm yard for a few days.... then had to progress it over a few weeks to its final resting place!....
 
Thanks for the extract Alb. Ai picked up a nice first edition cheaply on the strength of it and enjoyed the read greatly.

Its the kind of book that is becoming increasingly rare nowdays: very cross-disciplinary (zoology/taxonomy/folklore), and obviously written by a man with a passion for his subject.
 
odd i was just this mornign talking with a friend about takeing up bee keeping....
 
I was recently wondering about representations of bees with broad black and yellow stripes... honey bees in nature look very different.

Does anyone know when bees started being depicted like this?
 
Inverurie Jones said:
Bumble bees look like that.
Click to expand...

Which reminded me of the question, do bumble bees sting so I checked and it seems some do and some dont, find more about them here.
 
I'm glad thats cleared up. I got stung by a bumble bee when I was a child. The poor bee got caught in my flip-flop and stung me on the sole of my foot. No-one believed me - I'll show 'em.

What? How long ago? Oh twenty xxx years. What me hold a grudge, don't know what you mean :eek:

On another note, my boyfriend was convinced (until I printed out a diagram of a bee) that bee stings were in their legs. He has spend the last thirty odd years believing that. Parents eh!
 
Goodkarma said:
I got stung by a bumble bee when I was a child. The poor bee got caught in my flip-flop and stung me on the sole of my foot.
Click to expand...

I was also once stung on the foot by a bumble bee. I managed to tread on it as I was getting out of bed... . It was nowhere near as painful as a honey bee sting, though.
 
I like bumble bees. If you find them at the right time of day they're very docile and you can stroke them...they're like little flying gerbils.
 
ho hum

There's a poem by Kippling, which runs (I'm quoting from memory)

Bees! Bees! Hark to your Bees!
You may hide from your neighbours as much as you please
But all that you know to your bees you must tell
or else we will give you no honey to sell.


I can remember my granny telling me of a custom of draping the hives in black when there was a death in the faimily and white when there was a wedding.
 
just bought a book on begining bee keeping...anyone here keep bees?
 
Useful and thrifty tip from tonight's News Quiz:

A collection of live bees in a cigar tube makes an inexpensive
vibrator. :p

If you are feeling medieval, try it the wrong way and lose the lid.
:eek:
 
anyone here keep bees?
Click to expand...
I kept two hives when I was a child. My father and family were bee keepers. Much of what I once knew, I have now forgotten. But I intend to re learn it.

So many nice things about bee keeping which I remember.

Eg:

I remember my father buying queens from Buckfast Abbey which were delivered via the mail. I remember us introducing them to the hives via little boxes with wax seals which would be slowly eaten through as the hives and the queens got used to each other. But I cannot remember how the conflict between the two queens would have been decided.

I remember chasing swarms and smoking them into boxes from difficult to reach tree branches.

Spinning honey with a big hand cranked device.
 
some bee keepers from...

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Beekeeping/fame.htm

Henry Fonda - The star of 96 films, this hobby beekeeper gave away honey in jars that he labeled Henry's Honey. When he was a youngster, he'd earned the Eagle Scout badge for beekeeping.

Leo Tolstoy - This Russian author was a beekeeper. His wife, Sonja, talked about him "crouching in front of his hives, net over his head."

Lord Baden Powell - Founder of the Boy Scouts in England. This beekeeper, once when producing honey for showing, mistakenly allowed it to overheat and the honey became dark. He showed it anyway and due to his prestige this created a fashion for dark honey in England for many years

Maria von Trapp - Yes, after the family escaped Austria, the little nun and governess from the Sound of Music kept bees on her Vermont farm.

Sherlock Holmes - This great detective retired to a simple life of puttering around with bees. As a beekeeper, he continued to demonstrate his problem-solving expertise
 
I remember anothing thing. We were living in England when oil - seed - rape became a huge farming industry. We had osr fields nearby.

The honey crop was completely spoiled. OSR honey has an awful flavour and sets solid, like crystal concrete, within a few weeks. Normally honey takes much longer to set hard. The next year we moved our hives elsewhere.

Incidentally - set honey can be melted down by placing it in a pan of hot water. Remove the jar lid first.
 
ive found thousands of references to bees in older symbolism books ,one mentions 'the path of bees' which was a germanic way of referring to the air as filled with the souls of dead ,over and over again bees were seen as a symbol of the soul /immortality.
 
sidecar_jon said:
some bee keepers from...

http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/Beekeeping/fame.htm

Henry Fonda - The star of 96 films, this hobby beekeeper gave away honey in jars that he labeled Henry's Honey. When he was a youngster, he'd earned the Eagle Scout badge for beekeeping.
Click to expand...

And years later his son Peter starred in Ulee's Gold as a beekeeper (best bit of acting PF ever did in his life, IMO, or perhaps the ONLY real bit of acting :hmph: ).

Isn't there also some lore about following a bee through the woods to find the hive?

Keith Thomas, Man and the Natural World: Changing Attitudes in England 1500-1800 writes:

"Even bees could be communicated with, for, when they swarmed, their owners would whistle, clap their hands, ring bells and tinkle basins and kettles. This was an ancient practice, going back to Roman times, but still universally observed in 18th c. England. Its original purpose seems to have been to warn neighbours of the approaching swarm and to prevent disputes by establishing the owner's rights in advance. 'The tinkling,' as one expert put it, 'secures a legal right to follow a swarm upon another person's grounds in order to hive them. But by early modern times the noise was widely regarded by country people as a means of addressing the bees themselves. It was thought to prevent them from flying very far; it made them 'knit' and encouraged them to settle sooner." [p. 96]

"Bees were also looked within the human community, and it was believed that they would not thrive unless treated accordingly. Bees would hate you, said an authority, if you did not love them. They would not make honey if their owners were dirty, quarrelsome, or unchaste. They were not to be ignominiously bought for money, but only exchanged for food or some useful commodity. When there was a death in the family they had to be told at once and given a share of the funeral repast, else they would die themselves or leave in umbrage. If what was said of bees was right, thought Sir William Petty, 'their souls seem...like the souls of men.'" [p. 98]

There's more if anyone wants to hear it (she said shyly).

Edited for typos.
 
Victorian urinals used to have an engraved bee as a target for men to hit to avoid splashing.

Why a bee?

Apparently it comes from the latin for bee: Apis

UL or not? ;)
 
When I was a very little girl my gramps kept bees. He never wore one of the bee keeping hats though. He had this thing with animals he could get them to do anything. He could pull the honeycomb right from the hive and the bees would swarm all over him and he would never get stung.
 
We used to catch bumble bees when we were kids. We'd keep them in a jar until they settled down after which you could tip them out onto your hand and they would walk about quite happily without stinging.

These were the big furry black and yellow ones with the white tail ends, which we called Dr. White Arses.

I remember seeing a thing on the TV when I was a midget about someone who was using bee stings to cure something. I can't remember what they were curing, but the cure was to let the bee sting the patient on the back of the neck in a certain spot. Whatever it was, it was reputed to work.
 
Drunken Bees Act Like Buzzed Humans

Hi

(just passing through)

source:
--------------------------

http://www.forbes.com/lifestyle/health/feeds/hscout/2004/10/25/hscout521890.html
-- Robert Preidt -- Robert Preidt,

quote:
---------------------------

Drunken Bees Act Like Buzzed Humans

MONDAY, Oct. 25 (HealthDayNews) -- Buzzed bees may help scientists better understand drunken human behavior, say Ohio State University researchers.
"Alcohol affects bees and humans in similar ways -- it impairs functioning along with learning and memory processing," study co-author Julie Mustard, a postdoctoral researcher in entomology, said in a prepared statement.

She and her colleagues gave various levels of ethanol -- the intoxicating agent in liquor -- to bees and studied the effect this had on their behavior.

The more ethanol they consumed, the more difficulty the bees had flying, walking, standing still and grooming. Some of the bees became so drunk they ended up flat on their backs.

This preliminary study was designed to document the effects of ethanol on the bees. In future studies, the researchers plan to use bees as a model for how alcohol affects humans, particularly at the molecular level.

"On the molecular level, the brains of honey bees and humans work the same. Knowing how chronic alcohol use affects genes and proteins in the honey bee brain may help us eventually understand how alcoholism affects memory and behavior in humans, as well as the molecular basis of addiction," Mustard said.

The study was presented Oct. 23 at the annual Society for Neuroscience conference in San Francisco.

---------------------------
endquote

Mal F
 
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