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Bee-Culture at Present: Hymettus

The poet's favored palate, however, is still able to detect the flavor of antiquity in the Attic honey, and we are grateful to Byron for singing thus of famed Hymettus, in "Childe Harold":- "Still his honeyed wealth Hymettus yields; There the blithe bee his fragrant fortress builds; The free-born wanderer of the mountain air."

The Abbé Barthélemy, too, does not share Mahaffy's dark view of the subject, for he tells us, speaking of bees : "These insects are extremely partial to Mount Hymettus, which they have filled with their colonies, and which is covered almost everywhere with wild thyme and other odoriferous plants; but it is chiefly from the excellent thyme which the Mount produces that they extract those precious sweets, with which they compose a honey in high estimation throughout Greece."