Hello 'E'

I selected two book excerpts that are stored
in the Historical Honeybee Articles Archives group.
You can also check the files there for weather 
lore at:
Files > 16) Superstitions & Lore

Or search the message archive at H.H.A. 

===== Book Excerpt =====

Fabulous creatures, mythical monsters,
and animal power symbols: a handbook
By Cassandra Eason -2007

Page 154

Animals and Predicting Natural Disasters

This seeming ability of animals and birds to predict earthquakes
is not new. As early as 373 BCE, animals, including rats, snakes,
weasels, left the Greek city of Helice in large number days before
an earthquake destroyed the town. The ancient Greeks also reported
that bees swarmed from their hives before the earthquake. This omen
was taken very seriously as a warning from Artemis, the bee and
hunting goddess, that people should leave the area at once.

=====Book Excerpt =====

-An account concerning the reaction of
bees to the earthquake of July 13, 1910

The Journal of comparative psychology
1923
Page 70

Bees fly in excited swarms from their hives during an
earthquake, as they do doing a thunderstorm. They
get infuriated; whilst during a thunderstorm they seek
safety and refuge. Thunderstorms or even slow electric
discharges are said to have a fatal effect on bees; exact
and systematical investigations are lacking. We know
only that electric tensions of the atmosphere intensely
on the mortality of all hymenoptera.

Before the earthquake of July 13,1910, bee-farmers at
Landsberg (Bavaria) made an interesting observation.
At 9:30 all the bees left their hives and turned round in
extraordinary excitement. At 9:32:-38 an earthquake,
was registered by the apparatus of the Munich seismic
station. A quarter of an hour later the bees returned to
their hives. The bee-breeders working in the open did
not notice any earth tremor and heard of it only afterwards.

===== End  =====

Best Wishes,
J. Waggle 
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/HistoricalHoneybeeArticles/

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