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In Christian and Mediæval Times: Russian

The Poles, Silesians, and Russians generally, had a beegod called Babilos who was credited with being the inventor of the art of bee-keeping, and the image of this god was often placed near the hives. We hear also of a Lithuanian goddess of honey called Austheia, and of another honored in the Caucasus as Meritta, while the Russian peasants consider it sacrilegious to kill a bee.

In the Russian folk-tales the bee appears as a good fairy to assist the deserving in their need, and there is a story of a bee that once changed itself, to comfort an old father, into the form of his only son, who was wandering in strange lands, and whom the father wished to see once more before dying. There is another tale of a father who wished to choose the best one from among his twelve sons. He loved them all and feared doing injustice to any, whereupon a bee flew in and settled upon the head of the youngest as a visible sign that this was the most excellent.

A bee also undertook the grave responsibility of deciding for a young hero, who wished to choose from twelve maidens the most beautiful for his bride.

It is said the bear, as the "honey-finder" and "honeyeater," still enjoys high respect among the Russian peasants. According to an old Russian custom a vessel containing honey must be placed beside the bier upon which lies a corpse - reminding us of a similar custom among the ancient Greeks.

In northern mythology as among other nations, honey gave the gift of poetry.

The way it acquired this power is related at length in the "Younger Edda," where we learn there once lived a very wise man, Knaser, so wise that no one could ask him a question he could not answer.

He travelled much about the world, teaching men wisdom, until he came to the house of the dwarfs Fjalar and Galar. They called him aside, saying they wished to speak with him alone, then slew him and let his blood run into two jars called Son and Bodu, and into a kettle called Odrarer. They mixed honey with the blood, and thus was produced such mead that whoever drinks from it becomes a skald and sage.

How this mead was taken from the dwarfs and finally made accessible to man one can discover by reading the "Edda."

Lorenzo de' Medici did not receive his gift of poetry from the mead of Valhalla nor from literal honey, though he needed the bees and their hive to explain the phenomenon, as Henry Morley in his "English Writers" informs us: "Lorenzo [de' Medici] himself, in a love sonnet, tells how the gods made him poetical. "The rays of love from the eyes of his lady penetrating through his eyes to the shadow of his heart, as rays of the sun enter the dark bee-hive by its fissure, caused the hive to awake, and fly hither and thither in the forest sipping from the flowers."