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In Greece and Italy: Solon

That bees were extensively cultivated in Greece before 600 B. C. we know from the fact that one of Solon's laws related to them, for Plutarch tells us, in his "Life of Solon " : "If any one would raise stocks of bees, he was to place them three hundred feet from those already raised by another."

The bees receive their chief attention in Greek and Latin literature, however, from the writers upon practical agriculture or natural history. Aristotle has devoted more space to the bees in his "History of Animals," than to any other insect, and he has gathered together what was known of bees and bee-keeping in his time, and has so well done his work that succeeding writers almost to the present day have copied him.