Curious Facts

Everything below is in the book — each fact links straight to the page it comes from.

The bee was the official hieroglyph for Lower Egypt — and it appears on the Rosetta Stone. When Egypt was divided under Menes, "the bee was the symbol of Lower or Southern Egypt, while the lotus was the symbol of the Upper or Northern country." Bee and lotus side by side before a king's name signified rule over both halves of the land. Read it in the book →
To collect bee venom, a pharmacist would let a live bee sting a lump of sugar. The Homœopathic Pharmacopœia directed: "take a live bee with a pair of pincers and allow it to take hold of a small lump of sugar. It will immediately sting into the sugar which will absorb the poison." Alternatively whole bees were bottled, "irritated by shaking," and drenched in five times their weight of dilute alcohol for eight days. Read it in the book →
Distilled honey was sold as a "quintessence" that dissolved gold and raised the dying. Butler passes on the recipe of the alchemist Raimundus Lullius: two pounds of pure honey distilled until the receiver holds "a water of red color like blood," then redistilled seven times until it turns gold. Its claimed virtue: "if any be dying, and drink two or three drams thereof, presently he will revive." (An alchemical boast, not a remedy.) Read it in the book →
Bees were believed to flee any country full of echoes. "It is a common superstition dating from the time of Pliny, or probably long before, that bees cannot endure an echo and will not remain in a country where echoes are common." They were not thought hostile to all sound — church bells were held to give them pleasure, hence the custom of banging on metal. Read it in the book →
A French princess's medal read: "I am little, but my stings are deep". An order founded in 1703 by Louise, wife of Louis Augustus de Bourbon, struck a gold medal with the princess on one face and a bee on the other, inscribed "Je suis petite, mais mes piqûres sont profondes." Read it in the book →
A nurse bee pestered too long for honey will bite her sister's tongue. When food runs short and a begging bee will not stop, the feeder "suddenly close[s] her jaws upon the importunate and sensitive tongue of her sister." The victim "winces and jumps back, doubtless feeling inexpressible things, and begs no more for honey." Read it in the book →
Homer was said to have been suckled by a priestess whose breasts ran honey. Bees allegedly foretold eloquence: Pindar, asleep, "was visited by bees who refreshed the darling of the Muses with delicious honey," while "the divine Homer" was said "to have received his first nourishment from a priestess whose breasts distilled honey." Xenophon and Sophocles were each nicknamed the Attic Bee. Read it in the book →
Indian honey-gatherers held a sacred leaf in the hand, believing Krishna was inside the bees. Because Krishna turned a beloved mortal maiden into the plant Ocymum nigrum and forbade worship without it, "the Indians to this day hold leaves of it in the hand when they remove the honey from the hives - believing the god Krishna to be present in the bees." Read it in the book →
A queenless hive can produce egg-laying workers out of nowhere. Workers are undeveloped females that normally lay no eggs, but if a colony loses its queen and cannot replace her, "Some of the better developed of the worker bees acquire power to lay eggs!" Read it in the book →
Bee venom was reckoned worse than snake venom because you couldn't even swallow it safely. The book calls the pearly drop on an angry bee's sting "the very essence of wrath," and "more pervading even than the venom of the serpent or the poison of hydrophobia, for those may be taken into the stomach with impunity, while this is as vicious there as when received into the blood." (A period claim, not modern toxicology.) Read it in the book →
Bumble-bees throw up their legs as a warning, like tiny raised fists. Approach too closely and the legs fly up as if the bee "meant to strike, or give warning to the intruder to stand back" — and "it is very amusing to see the warning legs fly up when one comes too close." Between bees, a repulsed stranger usually takes the hint; if not, the fight leaves the wounded dying. Read it in the book →
A bee flies until her wings literally wear out. Butler's seventeenth-century phrasing: "Nature hath furnished her with four wings: which, swifter than the East-wind, carry her into all the four coasts of the world; and thence with her precious lading bear her back again, until her incessant labor hath worn them out." Read it in the book →
The classic 1609 bee book was printed in an invented phonetic alphabet. Charles Butler's "The Feminin Monarchi, or Histori of Bees" was, in its 1634 edition, "printed from a peculiar form of type devised to illustrate a method of phonetic spelling" — the author's own orthographic reform, smuggled in with the bees. Read it in the book →
Honey from rhododendrons and laurels is narcotic — and bees mostly avoid the flowers anyway. The appendix notes that "The honey gathered from rhododendrons and laurels contains a narcotic poison which is to be treated medically as such." Hive-bees dislike these sticky blossoms; bumble-bees can pull free of them, but "smaller bees are sometimes entangled and so meet their death." Read it in the book →
"Bee-poison expresses the concentrated anger of the bee" — plus your own. The author's dry addendum to a technical account of the sting's lances and sheath: to the bee's concentrated anger "is generally added more or less anger of our own, which probably assists the action of the other." Read it in the book →
Virgil noticed that storm-bound bees stay close and fetch water under the city walls. Bees have an ancient and, the book says, well-deserved reputation as weather prophets. Virgil's "Fourth Georgic" has them refusing to "trust the sky when east winds approach; but in safety supply themselves with water all around under the walls of their city." Read it in the book →