Some excerpts from 



VIRGIL AND THE BEES, A Study in Ancient Apicultural Lore

By B. G. WHITFIELD



Ancient writers on bees did not mind borrowing, and, mostly, they did not bother to acknowledge their debt. It is therefore possible that much that passes for the work of one author may have come originally from writers who are but names to us, from Nicander and Menecrates, from the Sasernae, father and son, and Scrofa Tremellius, friends of Varro … 



Then there is the question of common bee-lore, a tangled skein indeed. How far, in a practical occupation like apiculture, is coincidence of idea to be allowed before it can be taken for dependence? A case in point is provided by the statement that in a wind bees ballast themselves by means of tiny pebbles. 



Any knowledgeable bee-keeper who has studied the classical authors will observe that they can be divided into two classes — first, a small one which contains the bee-keeper of practical experience, and second (much larger) that of the encyclopaedists who are writing on apiculture in general, plagiarizing freely, and possibly with little or no first-hand knowledge of bees. 



In the second class too comes the landowner on a largish scale, as opposed to the smallholder: he would not work the hives himself, but would certainly employ a mellarius -- a horny-handed rustic, responsible to his master through the vilicus (the bailiff) for this part of the produce, and no literary student.



Here I should like to digress on the subject of the sting and the curious insensitivity of the ancients in this respect. Perhaps in those days bees were better tempered: there is abundant evidence for careful selection of strain, so they were far removed from the wild type which is expressly mentioned as more savage; again, they were certainly subjected to little interference from their masters except at the time of the honey harvest.  



Paxamos in the first century A.D., and Didymus later, advise self-anointment with a mixture of wild mallow juice, parched fenugreek, and oil, and the former goes farther and suggests swallowing some of this prescription and thereafter breathing into the hive!   



But the absence of many references to stinging and the general failure to mention specific remedies, in combination with the almost total absence of classical jokes or anecdotes about bee-stings, suggest that it was only the corny mellarius who had to face this problem -- and his reactions were not a matter for any popular concern 



Source:

Whitfield, B. G. (1956). Virgil and the bees: a study in ancient apicultural lore. Greece and Rome (Second Series) - Cambridge Univ Press





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