Saving the bees, 200 years ago:

I am no stranger to that complaint so continually in the mouths of those who are unacquainted with the subject, the cruelty of taking the honey, by destroying the bees. Their fate is pathetically lamented as if they alone of all the creation were to be exempt from their contribution to the support of man; while such persons walk through a market, and look into a slaughter-house without emotion, they weep over the apiary in the month of September. 

No one can better love the insect than I do, nor more exert himself to shelter, to save, and protect it; addressing myself therefore with due deference to the opinions of the Society, who have thought the preserving the lives of the insects an object meriting a premium at their hands, I avow it to be my opinion that I consider the speculation of saving the bees, and at the same time taking the honey, as impracticable, as well as unnecessary.

Isaac Espinasse. (1820). On the Management of Bees.
Nichols and Son, Printers, Parliament Street, Westminster.

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