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Curious Customs and Beliefs in Modern: Vives
The College of Bees at Oxford University, according to Butler's "Feminin Monarchi," was "so called by the founder in the statutes," and he adds, "whereupon Erasmus to the first president inscribeth his epistle thus : - "Erasm. Rot. Joanni Claymundo. Collegii Apum Præsidi." Butler also tells the following interesting story in connection with this college. "When, in A. D. 1520, Lodovicus Vives was sent by Cardinal Wolsey to Oxford, there to be the public professor of Rhetoric, being placed in the College of Bees, he was welcomed thither by a swarm of bees: which sweetest creatures, to signify the incomparable sweetness of his eloquence, settled themselves over his head, under the leads of his study; where they have continued above one hundred years. "The truth of this story appears as well by the general voice of the house, which have received it by tradition; as by the special testimony of a worthy Antiquari of our time: who affirms that he hath often heard his master, D. Benefield (one of the public professors of Divinity) who then had L. Vives' chamber and study; and D. Cole (then President, and in Q. Mari's days scholar of this house) to say as much, calling the bees Vives' Bees. "In the year 1630, the leads over Vives' study, being decayed, were taken up and new cast; by which occasion the stall was taken, and with it an incredible mass of honey. But the bees, as presaging their intended and imminent destruction, (whereas they were never known to have swarmed before) did that spring (to preserve their famous kind), send down a fair swarm into the president's garden. The which, in the year 1633, yielded two swarms; one whereof pitched in the garden for the president; the other they sent up as a new colony into their old habitation, there to continue the memory of this mellifluous Doctor, as the University styled him in a letter to the Cardinal." Quite carried away by these honeyed happenings, Butler thus concludes : - "How sweetly did all things then concord; when in this neat museum, newly consecrated to the muses, the muses' sweetest favorite was thus honoured by the muses' birds?" "The Bee" is a common name for periodicals, as, for instance, the "Omaha Bee," a daily newspaper, and the "Tryon Bee," a semi-weekly sheet. But the most interesting of these is undoubtedly "The Bee" of Oliver Goldsmith, a weekly paper conducted and wholly written by its gifted editor. The first number came into circulation October 6th, 1759; but a single bee cannot do the work of a hive, so it is not surprising that Goldsmith's "Bee" ended its existence November 24th, 1759, having, like the true honey-bee in a season of abundant honey-flow, worked itself to death in about six weeks.
A very interesting Order of the Bee was that founded Curious Customs and Beliefs 361 in 1703 by Louise, wife of Louis Augustus de Bourbon, the gold medal of which bore upon one side the likeness of the princess, upon the other a bee, with the significant inscription, "Je suis petite, mais mes piqûres sont profondes."
