> Story from the  Bible on bees in a Lion's carcass.So nothing new under the sun.

Comment:

Samson is, as every body knows, the person
who, according to the Holy Scriptures, found a swarm of bees
in the carcase of a lion he had killed. The same story is told
about Aristaeus, but with an alteration, not uncommon with
fables of this class, which substitutes the carcase of an ox for
that of a lion.

This story of Samson and his bees, misunderstood
as it was, has undoubtedly given rise to the common ignorant
craze that bees originate from lions, oxen and horses.

For more than two thousand years a superstition has been
prevalent in the minds of the masses, as well as in books, to
the effect that, besides the usual production of honey-bees in
hives, they originated by spontaneous generation from carcases
of dead animals, and principally from those of oxen.

The original cause of this delusion lies in the fact that a
very common fly, scientifically called Eristalis tenax (popularly
the drone-fly), lays its eggs upon carcases of animals, that its
larvae develop within the putrescent mass, and finally change
into a swarm of flies which, in their shape, hairy clothing and
colour, look exactly like bees, although they belong to a totally
different order of insects. 

Osten-Sacken, C. R. (1894). On the Oxen-born Bees of the Ancients (Bugonia) and Their Relation to Eristalis Tenax, a Two-winged Insect.

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