- Joined
- Apr 24, 2004
- Messages
- 840
Ahhh, I love bees, they're so awesome. I think my bee is pissed, look at the way he's holding onto that flower. "I love you," he's saying. The flower is like "who are you?"
AlchoPwn
Public Service is my Motto.
- Joined
- Nov 2, 2017
- Messages
- 2,527
Firstly I would like to point out that this is not a post about the wonderful Nicholas Cage slapstick cult comedy classic "The Wicker Man", but about actual folk beliefs about one of the few insect species that humans have domesticated, i.e. the honeybee. My family has something of an interest in apiary, and of late global bee populations have been taking a severe hit due to insecticides and disease. Woe betide humanity if we allow bees to become extinct, as they are still as utterly essential to agriculture as they ever have been since it first began, as they pollinate so many plants we eat.
Bees bring us the blessings of honey and useful wax, and as such have always been associated with the Gods and their favor. In general, the golden color of honey and beeswax has linked the Bees to the Sun, which is reinforced by their activity during daylight. This in turn has linked bees to gold and therefore wealth in the symbologies of many cultures. Many cultures have used the honeybee in some fashion in their amulets to provide attraction to prosperity and happiness. The link is more than merely symbolic of course, as to maintain beehives will generate the useful products of honey and wax, but will also see one's flowering plants pollinated ahead of others.
In Norse mythology the bee is seen as being integrally tied to their sacred drink of mead. The symbology of the link is itself quite interesting as it ties in to the myth of Yggdrasil, which is a great ash tree. According to Norse myth, the tree Yggdrasil produces a white clay that sweats beads of honeydew, that bees collect and turn into honey. As mead is created from this honey, it comes directly as a sacred product of this holy tree to humanity. Humanity also shares a common ancestry with Yggdrasil as in Norse myth, humans were created from an Ash tree. Thus it might be that mead becomes a sacred gift and sacred tradition that ties humanity to the World Tree and to the Bees. It is worth noting that ash sap is often sweet to the taste.
Strangely Aristotle also chimes in with some very Norse-like comments, but managed to completely misunderstand the natural world and offers us this completely goofy explanation of honey coming from honeydew, which is actually the excreta of aphids and scale insects:
"The honey is what falls from the air, especially at the risings of the stars and when the rainbow descends. On the whole there is no honey before the [morning] rising of the Pleiad... Honey [the bee] does not make, it fetches what falls" - Aristotle, Historia Animalium 5.22, trans. A. L. Peck (Harvard University Press [Loeb], 1970), vol. 2, p. 191.
In general, it seems that the Greeks and Romans had precious little idea about where honey came from, and so they developed plentiful and odd theories on the subject. Primarily they believed that honey fell from the sky as a gift from the gods, i.e. biblical manna, and that bees collected it. Thus honey was often linked to honeydew, which as mentioned before is actually aphid waste, that they forcibly flick away from their bodies, creating a droplet of sweet rain if you happen to be under them.
The idea of honey raining from heaven onto the world is found in Indian mythology also, and the divine intoxicant Soma is identified in the Vedas with honey that falls from the skies. The twin horsemen Avins have a honey whip (madhurasa), which has been interpreted as lightning. Rig Veda 1.157 is a prayer to them: "Bedew our power with honey and with oil... sprinkle us with your whip that drops honey-dew".
In Cymric (often misidentified as Celtic) Myth, Britain was often called the Isle of Honey due to the proliferation of bees in the air. They believed that bees were messengers between the worlds, and that if a bee alighted on a baby's lips, they would be blessed with eloquence and a gift for poetry. As a symptom of Bees apparent intelligence, they were to be informed of all major occurrences in the family of their carers, and beekeepers were to use quiet and respectful tones around them. If a hive decided to swarm it was seen as an omen of the beekeeper's forthcoming death.
Some of the more bizarre beliefs actually come from Christianity, who believed that bees were a gift to mankind from God to show how to live in an harmonious society. A myth was told about how in a monastery, the monks bestowed a communion wafer on the bees, and they built a cathedral around it, as they immediately recognised its holiness.
Apparently in France there was a tradition of certain gifted apiarists being called Bee Kings, and supposedly having magical powers to do with bees.
Similarly Bees have often been a symbol of royal authority, such as in Egypt. Napoleon Bonaparte used the bee as his own personal symbol too.
If you have any other tidbits of bee lore, please let me know.
Bees bring us the blessings of honey and useful wax, and as such have always been associated with the Gods and their favor. In general, the golden color of honey and beeswax has linked the Bees to the Sun, which is reinforced by their activity during daylight. This in turn has linked bees to gold and therefore wealth in the symbologies of many cultures. Many cultures have used the honeybee in some fashion in their amulets to provide attraction to prosperity and happiness. The link is more than merely symbolic of course, as to maintain beehives will generate the useful products of honey and wax, but will also see one's flowering plants pollinated ahead of others.
In Norse mythology the bee is seen as being integrally tied to their sacred drink of mead. The symbology of the link is itself quite interesting as it ties in to the myth of Yggdrasil, which is a great ash tree. According to Norse myth, the tree Yggdrasil produces a white clay that sweats beads of honeydew, that bees collect and turn into honey. As mead is created from this honey, it comes directly as a sacred product of this holy tree to humanity. Humanity also shares a common ancestry with Yggdrasil as in Norse myth, humans were created from an Ash tree. Thus it might be that mead becomes a sacred gift and sacred tradition that ties humanity to the World Tree and to the Bees. It is worth noting that ash sap is often sweet to the taste.
Strangely Aristotle also chimes in with some very Norse-like comments, but managed to completely misunderstand the natural world and offers us this completely goofy explanation of honey coming from honeydew, which is actually the excreta of aphids and scale insects:
"The honey is what falls from the air, especially at the risings of the stars and when the rainbow descends. On the whole there is no honey before the [morning] rising of the Pleiad... Honey [the bee] does not make, it fetches what falls" - Aristotle, Historia Animalium 5.22, trans. A. L. Peck (Harvard University Press [Loeb], 1970), vol. 2, p. 191.
In general, it seems that the Greeks and Romans had precious little idea about where honey came from, and so they developed plentiful and odd theories on the subject. Primarily they believed that honey fell from the sky as a gift from the gods, i.e. biblical manna, and that bees collected it. Thus honey was often linked to honeydew, which as mentioned before is actually aphid waste, that they forcibly flick away from their bodies, creating a droplet of sweet rain if you happen to be under them.
The idea of honey raining from heaven onto the world is found in Indian mythology also, and the divine intoxicant Soma is identified in the Vedas with honey that falls from the skies. The twin horsemen Avins have a honey whip (madhurasa), which has been interpreted as lightning. Rig Veda 1.157 is a prayer to them: "Bedew our power with honey and with oil... sprinkle us with your whip that drops honey-dew".
In Cymric (often misidentified as Celtic) Myth, Britain was often called the Isle of Honey due to the proliferation of bees in the air. They believed that bees were messengers between the worlds, and that if a bee alighted on a baby's lips, they would be blessed with eloquence and a gift for poetry. As a symptom of Bees apparent intelligence, they were to be informed of all major occurrences in the family of their carers, and beekeepers were to use quiet and respectful tones around them. If a hive decided to swarm it was seen as an omen of the beekeeper's forthcoming death.
Some of the more bizarre beliefs actually come from Christianity, who believed that bees were a gift to mankind from God to show how to live in an harmonious society. A myth was told about how in a monastery, the monks bestowed a communion wafer on the bees, and they built a cathedral around it, as they immediately recognised its holiness.
Apparently in France there was a tradition of certain gifted apiarists being called Bee Kings, and supposedly having magical powers to do with bees.
Similarly Bees have often been a symbol of royal authority, such as in Egypt. Napoleon Bonaparte used the bee as his own personal symbol too.
If you have any other tidbits of bee lore, please let me know.
- Joined
- Jul 19, 2004
- Messages
- 29,622
- Location
- Out of Bounds
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?
Apparently not ...
SOURCE: https://www.toiletstolet.co.uk/taking-apis-victorian-latin-themed-pun/
A more recent version of this strategy uses a fly printed or etched onto the porcelain of urinals. This seems to have started at Schipol airport in Amsterdam, then spread to JFK airport in New York. The webpage linked above shows an illustration of a similar implementation at Changi airport in Singapore, in which the graphic image is once again a bee. (Photo at the link above.)
Cecil Adams (The Straight Dope) writes:
SOURCE: https://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2450/urinal-101-aim-for-the-back-wall-or-the-water/
Bad Bungle
Tutti but not Frutti.
- Joined
- Oct 13, 2018
- Messages
- 4,132
- Location
- The Chilterns
I know Lyle's Golden Syrup is a refined sugar (from cane or beet) rather than honey. but their famous slogan "Out of the strong came forth sweetness." (1885) was based on the incident in the book of Judges where Samson killed a lion with his bare hands and later found a bee colony in the carcass. The notion of bees spontaneously generating from putrified flesh (making them 'unclean') then persists throughout history up to Medieval times. It took writers like St Francis de Sales (Bishop of Geneva died 1622) in his Introduction to the Devout Life, "The bee not only shuns all carrion, but abhors and flies far from the faintest smell proceeding from it" before bees started getting a good press.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment...59948/The-riddle-of-the-golden-syrup-tin.html
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment...59948/The-riddle-of-the-golden-syrup-tin.html