The Honey-Makers

Half natural history, half literature: how the honey-bee actually works — tongue, wings, sting, swarm — and then three thousand years of what people have believed about her, from the Vedas to mead.

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In Greece and Italy: Colophonian

Nicander the Colophonian, in his "Dialects," says that celebe is a vessel used by the shepherds in which they preserve honey. For Antimachus the Colophonian, in the fifth book of his "Thebais," says, "He bade the heralds bear to them a bladder Fill'd with dark wine, and the most choice of all, The celebea in his house which lay, Fill'd with pure honey."

And in a subsequent passage he says: - "But taking up a mighty celebeum In both his hands, well fill'd with richest honey, Which in great store he had most excellent."

And again he says: - And golden cups of wine, and then besides, A celebeum yet untouch'd by man, Full of pure honey, his most choice of treasures."

Eubulus, in his "Rich Woman," humorously describes the market at Athens:- "And in the same way everything is sold Together at Athens; figs and constables, Grapes, turnips, pears and apples, witnesses, Roses and medlars, cheese cakes, honeycombs, Vetches and law-suits; bee-strings of all kinds, And myrtle-berries, and lots for offices, Hyacinths, and lambs, and hour-glasses too, And laws and prosecutions."

The most startling dish of all those in which the bee figures is mentioned by Pherecrates, "the strictest Atticist of all."

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