On the preservation of bees for their usefulness, and on their form of government

THE inhabitants of those regions, realizing how bees are in so many ways pre-eminent among insects and how they have been created exclusively for man’s benefit, offer them safety by giving them great privileges under the laws, so that they remain everywhere unmolested. ¹ Farmers are warned of coming rain when bees hang from the doorway of their hive and flit swiftly out and back again, ² and when by communal toil they reduce everything to order, completing their edifices of wax with unanimous control. If they take it into their heads to depart, says Aristotle, then an exceptional and peculiar buzzing is emitted from inside the hive some days beforehand, and for another two to three days a few of them fly round the hive. Whether the king is also one of these cannot be ascertained, for he is hard to recognize. ³ However, when he does leave, it is with a large troop. A retinue of attendants escorts him as constant guardians of his authority, and he is surrounded by several squadrons of bees. ⁴ Swarming together like this, they fly off to seek a new home. The owner keeps them carefully in view as they pass over fields and woods, until they descend on someone else’s property, where he can reclaim them according to the terms of the law to which all peoples subscribe through a natural sense of fairness. ⁵ By their experi-ence the older bees produce sweeter honey than the young, but they have a sharper sting. ⁶