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: Cupid

Cupid does not, like Kāma, bear a bow strung with bees, but we are told that he sometimes dips the golden arrow that incites love in honey, to make the love fortunate, sometimes in gall to make it unfortunate; and Anacreon has used the bee, not to aid Cupid, but to punish the relentless infant, as appears in the following: - "Cupid once upon a bed Of roses laid his weary head; Luckless urchin, not to see Within the leaves a slumbering bee!

The bee awaked - with anger wild The bee awaked, and stung the child.

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