On Sun, 10 Aug 1997 23:08:21 +0900 j h & e mcadam <[log in to unmask]> writes: >Fable 2 >(source - The ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture - which also contains some >fascinating material on ancient beekeeping) > >Democritus a Greek philosopher advised that bee swarms can be obtained by: >Killing an ox and confining in a one-room building, which has had all the >openings closed with clay. On the 32nd day the building may be opened to >discover it full of bees "crowded in clusters on each other, and the horns >and the bones and the hair and nothing else of the bullock left". The connection between bulls and bees is a lot older than Democritus -- by about 3000 years. The iconography of the (pre-Greek) neolithic and chalcolithic cultures of southeastern Europe is full of bull-gods and bee-goddesses. (Source: Marija Gimbutas, "Goddesses and Gods of Old Europe".) The idea that bees are generated from dead animals seems to have been widespread in the ancient eastern-Mediterranean area (remember Samson and the lion in the Bible?) I wonder why. Some wasps, of course (yellow-jackets, for example) are carnivorous and will flock to meat if given the opportunity, but honey-bees --- ?? Walter Weller Post Office Box 270 Wakefield, Louisiana 70784 <[log in to unmask]>