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Date: | Mon, 5 Oct 2020 12:22:11 -0400 |
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Problems have been forced upon us which never rackt the brains of the ancients. I have never read that in the olden time bee-keepers were compelled to flee to the mountains and forego civilized society in order to keep bees.
I wonder if in Babylon they had a city ordinance prohibiting Assyrian bees from flying over the walls into the celebrated hanging gardens ? It probably never occurred to Nebuchadnezzar that a royal decree would have prevented every bee in the kingdom from sucking the flowers which he planted for his imported wife.
It was reserved for some 2x4 “city fathers” of a 2x4 corporation to banish from the corporate limits of their 2x4 town every innocent bee that might be found on a honeysuckle or in the act of appropriating a drop of water from a reeking back alley!
Perhaps Nebuchadnezzar had some sort of heathenish idea that insects were a part of the great plan of the Creator to pollinate the blossoms and fructify the orchards and vineyards; but these modern smarties, who know about as much of science as the average Philippine insurgent does of the American Constitution, attempt to improve on God’s plan of doing things.
If some of the so-called horticulturists, and some of the small-calibre municipal authorities could have their way, and drive the industrious bee into retirement or bankruptcy, I imagine I see an army of two-legged pollinators going around the country with their camel’s hair brushes and a pot of yellow dust, endeavoring to restore the fertility to garden, farm and orchard that existed before the fall – of human greatness.
Eugene Secor. American Bee Journal. Dec. 1898
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