A Description of Elizabethan England.

http://www.bartleby.com/35/3/14.html

As concerning bees, I think it good to remember that, whereas some
ancient writers affirm it to be a commodity wanting in our island, it
is now found to be nothing so. In old times peradventure we had none
indeed; but in my days there is such plenty of them in manner
everywhere that in some uplandish towns there are one hundred or two
hundred hives of them, although the said hives are not so huge as
those of the east country, but far less, and not able to contain
above one bushel of corn or five pecks at the most. Pliny (a man that
of set purpose delighteth to write of wonders), speaking of honey,
noteth that in the north regions the hives in his time were of such
quantity that some one comb contained eight foot in length, and yet
(as it should seem) he speaketh not of the greatest. For in Podolia,
which is now subject to the King of Poland, their hives are so great,
and combs so abundant, that huge boars, overturning and falling into
them, are drowned in the honey before they can recover and find the
means to come out.

Our honey also is taken and reputed to be the best, because it is
harder, better wrought, and cleanlier vesselled up, than that which
cometh from beyond the sea, where they stamp and strain their combs,
bees, and young blowings altogether into the stuff, as I have been
informed. In use also of medicine our physicians and apothecaries
eschew the foreign, especially that of Spain and Pontus, by reason of
a venomous quality naturally planted in the same, as some write, and
choose the home-made: not only by reason of our soil (which hath no
less plenty of wild thyme growing therein than in Sicilia and about
Athens, and maketh the best stuff) as also for that it breedeth
(being gotten in harvest time) less choler, and which is oftentimes
(as I have seen by experience) so white as sugar, and corned as if it
were salt. Our hives are made commonly of rye straw and wattled about
with bramble quarters; but some make the same of wicker, and cast
them over with clay. We cherish none in trees, but set our hives
somewhere on the warmest side of the house, providing that they may
stand dry and without danger both of the mouse and the moth. This
furthermore is to be noted, that whereas in vessels of oil that which
is nearest the top is counted the finest and of wine that in the
middest, so of honey the best which is heaviest and moistest is
always next the bottom, and evermore casteth and driveth his dregs
upward toward the very top, contrary to the nature of other liquid
substances, whose grounds and leeze do generally settle downwards.
And thus much as by the way of our bees and English honey.


Peter Borst
Ithaca, NY
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http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/plb6