great, but it has received great honour from the gods
because of its lovingness; for while it is making its
nest, all the world has the happy days which it calls
halcyonidae, excelling all others in their calmness."

ARISTAEUS THE BEE-KEEPER

"... Every sound is sweet;
Myriads of rivers hurrying thro' the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees."

Tennyson.

In the fragrance of the blossom of the limes the bees are gleaning a
luscious harvest. Their busy humming sounds like the surf on a reef
heard from very far away, and would almost lull to sleep those who
lazily, drowsily spend the sunny summer afternoon in the shadow of the
trees. That line of bee-hives by the sweet-pea hedge shows where they
store their treasure that men may rob them of it, but out on the
uplands where the heather is purple, the wild bees hum in and out of
the honey-laden bells and carry home their spoils to their own free
fastnesses, from which none can drive them unless there comes a foray
against them from the brown men of the moors.

How many of us who watch their ardent labours know the story of
Aristaeus--he who first brought the art of bee-keeping to perfection in
his own dear land of Greece, and whose followers are those men in
veils of blue and green, that motley throng who beat fire-irons and
create a hideous clamour in order that the queen bee and her excited
followers may be checked in their perilous voyagings and beguiled to
swarm in the sanctuary of a hive.

Aristaeus was a shepherd, the son of Cyrene, a water nymph, and to him
there had come one day, as he listened to the wild bees humming
amongst the wild thyme, the great thought that he might conquer these
busy workers and make their toil his gain. He knew that hollow trees
or a hole in a rock were used as the storage houses of their treasure,
and so the wily shepherd lad provided for them the homes he knew that
they would covet, and near them placed all the food that they most
desired. Soon Aristaeus became noted as a tamer of bees, and even in
Olympus they spoke of his honey as a thing that was food for the gods.
All might have gone well with Aristaeus had there not come for him the
fateful day when he saw the beautiful Eurydice and to her lost his
heart. She fled before the fiery protestations of his love, and trod
upon the serpent whose bite brought her down to the Shades. The gods
were