The Greeks believed that bees came from dead oxen and could be raised by killing an ox and leaving it in a sealed room for thirty-two days. This story persisted for hundreds of years; directions for producing bees this way were last published as late as 1842. Until 1609, when an English beekeeper observed a queen laying eggs, queens were believed to be "kings" who ruled over their hives; Virgil wrote that bees collected their young from leaves and sweet plants; Xenophon called the queen the housewife of her hive, its guiding brain. The Dutchman Swammerdam thought that queens were fertilized by an "odoriferous effluvia" produced like an exhalation of perfume from drones. The Roman scholar Varo wrote that diarrhea in bees could be cured by giving them urine to drink and that bees gathered wax from flowers. Piny the Elder wrote that bees could be slain by echoes. It was widely believed that the sound of clashing cymbals caused bees to swarm. News bees: in Appalachian folklore, "news bees" appeared as omens to those wise enough to read them: there were yellow news bees, which meant that good things were in the offing, and black news bees which warned of imminent death. The black news bees would fly in the windows and out again, and fly straight for the nearest cemetery; they would hover making a sound like a human being talking. But what are we to make of Gerard, the English herbalist, writing that he had with his own eyes seen young geese hatched out of the barnacles on driftwood? Or Andrew Crosse achieving the spontaneous generation of insects during a chemical experiment? ;-) :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: -- Visit www.honeybeeworld.com/BEE-L for rules, FAQ and other info --- ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::