Posted in Bee Lore, Bee Present, Bee-ology, Beekeeping, Beetwixt & Beetween on January 19, 2008| Leave a Comment »
And the Lord taught the Bee to build its cells in hills, in trees, and in men’s habitats; then to eat of all the produce and find with the skill the precious paths of its Lord: there issues from within their bodies a drink of varying colours, wherein is healing for men; verily this is a sign for those who give thought.
Translated from The Holy Koran sura ‘The Bee’ in ayyats 68 and 69.
Posted in Bee Lore, Bee Present, Beetwixt & Beetween on January 19, 2008| Leave a Comment »
So waste not thou; but come; for all the vales
Await thee; azure pillars of the hearth
Arise to thee; the children call, and I
Thy shepherd pipe, and sweet is every sound,
Sweeter thy voice, but every sound is sweet;
Myriads of rivulets hurrying thro’ the lawn,
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.
From “Come Down O Maid” by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Whole Poem at: http://poetry.poetryx.com/poems/10840/
Posted in Bee Lore, Bee Present, Beetwixt & Beetween on January 19, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Where the bee sucks, there suck I;
In a cowslip’s bell I lie;
There I couch when owls do cry.
On the bat’s back I do fly
After summer merrily.
Merrily, merrily shall I live now
Under the blossom that hangs on the bough.
Henry Fuseli: Ariel
From: The Tempest, which was William Shakespeare’s last play. Words spoken by Ariel after he is set free by Prospero.
Picture from: www.english.emory.edu/classes/Shakespeare_Illustrated/Fuseli.Ariel.html
Posted in Bee Lore, Beetwixt & Beetween on January 18, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Once upon a time the animals had a school.
They had four subjects: running, climbing, flying, and swimming-
and all animals took all subjects.
The duck was good at swimming, better than the teachers in fact.
He made passing grades in running and flying,
but he was almost hopeless in climbing.
So they made him drop swimming to practice more climbing.
Soon he was only average in swimming.
But average is OK, and nobody worried much about it except the duck.
The eagle was considered a troublemaker.
In his climbing class he beat everybody to the top of the tree,
but he had his own way of getting there, which was against the rules.
He always had to stay after school and write,
Cheating is wrong 500 times.
This kept him from soaring, which he loved.
But schoolwork comes first.
The bear flunked because they said he was lazy, especially in winter.
His best time was summer, but school wasn’t open then.
The penguin never went to school because he couldn’t leave home,
and they wouldn’t start a school out where he lived.
The zebra played hooky –– a lot.
The ponies made fun of his stripes, and that made him very sad.
The kangaroo started out at the top of the running class,
but got discouraged trying to run on all fours like the other kids.
The fish quit school because he was bored.
To him all four subjects were the same, but nobody understood that.
They had never been a fish.
The squirrel got A’s in climbing,
but his flying teacher made him start from the ground up instead of the treetop down.
His legs got so sore from practicing takeoffs that he began getting C’s and D’s in running.
But the bee was the biggest problem of all,
so the teacher sent him to Dr. Owl for testing.
Dr. Owl said that the bees wings were just too small for flying
and besides they were in the wrong place.
But the bee never saw Dr. Owls report,
so he just went ahead and flew anyway.
I think I know a bee or two, don’t you?
From: http://teachers.dadeschools.net/mmarcus/a_bee_story.htm
Posted in Bee Lore, Bee Present, Beetwixt & Beetween on January 18, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Bees are symbols of communication. The saying ‘tell it to the bees’ meant using bees to transmit wishes and desires out to God/dess. Bees work in complete cooperation, communicating with each other so that their hive remains intact and productive. Bees in a dream may indicate a need for communication either with a group or with a significant other.
Posted in Bee Lore, Beekeeping, Beetwixt & Beetween on January 17, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Robbing honey from wild bee colonies is one of the most ancient human activities and is still practiced by aboriginal societies in parts of Africa, Asia, Australia and South America. Some of the earliest evidence of gathering honey from wild colonies is from rock painting, dating to around 13,000 BC.
Robbing honey from wild bee colonies is usually done by subduing the bees with smoke and breaking open the tree or rocks where the colony is located, often resulting in the physical destruction of the colony.
From: http://www.answers.com/topic/beekeeping-1?cat=technology
Posted in Bee Present, Bee-ology, Beekeeping, Beetwixt & Beetween on January 17, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Bees sting only when they are provoked, for to do so means their death. So if you have a lot of angry bees around you, the best thing is to move away!
However, if a bee lands on you and is angry enough to sting you, then just before they sting they will arch their back and rub your skin with their tiny tail and leave a small amount of pheromone – which attracts other bees to sting in exactly that place! If you are quick, you can feel the bee rubbing itself on your skin and knock it off before it stings you! If you can prevent it from leaving the pheromone – even better. I am told that this is why bears hate bees so much – because one stung, the bees keep stining in the same vulnerable area….so there is a multiplier effect. Clever bees!
If one does manage to sting you, then the sting has barbs, which allows the sting to enter the skin and stay there. Unfortuantely this literally rips out the insides of the honey bee – which (unlike a wasp), will kill the bee. It also leaves a small venom sack attached to the barb that will, over time, self-inject imore venom nto the skin (it has a tiny muscle that will go on contracting even though the bee has fallen away!) I have found that if you get stung, then you should scrape off the small black barb from the wound as soon as you can with of one of your fingernails or a hive tool. It greatly reduces the effect of the sting – because the venom sack does not have a chance to inject all its venom into the skin.
Below is a diagram of how the bee-sting works.
Diagram from: http://www.the-piedpiper.co.uk/th16.htm
Posted in Bee Lore, Beetwixt & Beetween on January 13, 2008| 2 Comments »
Napoleon I’s Coat of Arms contained the eagle and bee, emblems of the First and later Second Empire.
Used as a symbol of immortality and resurrection, the bee was chosen so as to link the new dynasty to the very origins of France.
Golden bees (in fact, cicadas) were discovered in 1653 in Tournai in the tomb of Childeric I, founder in 457 of the Merovingian dynasty They were considered as the oldest emblem of the sovereigns of France.
It is interesting to note how the bee was one of the main symbols for Ancient Egyptian Pharohs, The Merovingian dynasty and Napoleon’s Coat of Arms. No other symbol (not even the Reed or the Eagle) has survived consistently as a regal symbol for such a long time!
More detail on other symbols on Napoleon’s coat of Arms can be found at: http://www.napoleon.org/en/essential_napoleon/symbols/index.asp#abeilles
See also my earlier entry: https://beelore.com/2007/12/23/the-merovingian-bee/
Posted in Bee Lore, Beetwixt & Beetween on January 13, 2008| 1 Comment »
According to Ancient Egyptian history (as written by the Egyptian historian Manetho, c305–285 BCE), Menes was the founder of the unified Egyptian state which combined Upper and Lower Egypt under a single monarchy. Archaeologists now believe that it is likely that the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt occurred over the reigns of several First Dynasty kings, and that the legend of Menes was, perhaps, created at a much later date to represent all of those involved.
Prior to the unification, the Egyptian word nsw (he who belongs to the reed) was a symbol for Upper Egypt, and the word bit (he who belongs to the bee) was a symbol for Lower Egypt. When Upper and Lower Egypt united, the two symbols together came to represent the Pharaoh of the United Egypt – a hyroglyph of which can be seen above.
From: http://africanhistory.about.com/od/egyptology/p/Menes.htm
See also: https://beelore.com/2007/08/24/tears-of-ra-the-sun-god/
Posted in Bee Lore, Bee Present, Beetwixt & Beetween on January 12, 2008| Leave a Comment »
The cultivation of honey was a sacred charge often imbued with ritual symbolism and associated with the mother goddess, whose nurturing protection of mankind was symbolized by the the abundance of honey provided to bee society under the reign of the queen bee.
Bee-headed Goddess medallion, from Knossos, Crete, 1500 BCE
As it was widely believed that bees were born spontaneously, they were widely viewed as symbols of chastity and purity. The Bee’s never-flagging labors made them an emblem of hard work, industriousness, teamwork, perseverence, charity, selflessness, and constancy. These virtues are recalled in many heraldic emblems and personal seals, as well as in the emblems of Freemasonry, the Church of Latter-Day Saints, and in countless trademarks.
Masonic Beehive emblem
From: http://altreligion.about.com/library/glossary/symbols/bldefsbee.htm
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