by Virgil
take turns to keep an eye on clouds and coming rain
and to relieve the homing bees of their burdens, or, having rounded up a troop,
keep out the drones, that lazy shower, from the mangers.
Full steam ahead! The honey smacks of fragrant thyme.
The same as when the Cyclopes hammered thunderbolts
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from stubborn lumps of ore, some worked the bull hide bellows out and in
to fan the give and take of breezes, and others dipped the bronze
to sizzle in the trough, while Etna groaned beneath the weight of anvils;*
as one, they flex the muscles of their arms in rhythm, upwards and down,
and keep the iron that’s being turned gripped tightly in their tongs.
So, if it’s all right to liken little things to great,
an innate love of ownership impels the bees of Cecrops
each through his own responsibility. The elders’ cares include
the fortifying of the comb and moulding of intricate shelters.
Come night, the youngsters haul themselves back home, exhausted,
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leg-baskets loaded down with thyme; they pick randomly on wild strawberry,
the blue-grey willow, spurge laurel (that’s the bee plant), blushing saffron,
and a luxury of limes and lindens and lilies tinted rust.
As one they rest; as one they work.
Come morning, and a hurry from the hives, all go and no delay,
until the evening star suggests that they return from where
they’re gleaning and retire. Then they head home, where they attend to themselves.
You’ll hear a hum—their mumble thickening around the doors
and on the doorsteps—until afterwards when they’ve settled in their chambers
and a stillness reigns, and well-earned sleep overtakes their weary limbs.
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Nor will they stray far from the hives when rain is on its way
or trust the weather in the face and force of an east wind,
but from the safety of the walls they venture on brief sorties
to fetch a drop of water and, often, little pebbles—
the way a skimpy boat tossed here and there in the waves’ mercy
takes on a load of ballast—to steady themselves as they fly high as pleases them.
In fact they have another habit—you’ll wonder how it ever did find favour—
that is, that bees refrain from intercourse, their bodies never
weaken into the ways of love, nor suffer pangs of labour.
Instead, themselves, they pick their young up in their mouths
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from leaves and lovely meadows; all by themselves, they’ll supply
the city with a queen and little citizens, and so maintain the royal court and realm of wax.
Often, too, while wandering, they’ll graze their wings on jagged rocks
and beneath their burden pay the final sacrifice—
such is their love for flowers and pride in the production of the honey.
Therefore, although there’s but brief life allotted to each one of them
(the most they have is seven summers), their kind can’t be killed off
and, years on top of years, their houses stay in good standing
and their ancestral rolls include grandfathers of their fathers.
What’s more, there was not in Egypt or the whole of Lydia,
nor among the Parthians or the Medes,* such regard for royalty.
When their queen’s safe and sound, they’re all at peace.
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But when she dies their trust is shredded, and they take to wrecking
honey halls and sacking well-wrought honeycombs.
Of all they do, she is the patron—that’s why they all look up to
and surround her, bustling with a loud hubbub.
Sometimes they’ll hold her up on high; for her they’ll lay down lives
and count it a death with honour, the one from wounds in battle.
By such signs, and on foot of such examples,
some say that bees have supped a draught that is divine,
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that, as a matter of true fact, a god pervades the whole wide world,
sea’s expanse and heaven’s height,
whence flocks and herds and men, and all species of savage beast,
derive that fine line of life the second they are born.
And, what’s more, to him all things return in time, dissolved
and reabsorbed; there is no place for death—instead they soar,
still alive—to take their rightful place among the stars.
If you happen ever to broach the storehouse where they hoard the honey
be sure you have first washed your mouth out with a sup of water,
then surround your seeing fingers with smoke to still and settle them.
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Twice in the year men harvest honey,
once, when Taÿgete of the Seven Sisters* shows the world her comely face
and spurns the ocean currents with a shrug,
and again when, trying to escape from Pisces,* she slides down the sky
beneath the waves, a sorry sight, and drowns.
There’s no end to the wrath of bees—vexed, they’ll inflame their stings
with poison and, fastening to a vein, deposit darts that you can’t see—
inflicting harm, they’ll forfeit their own lives.
But if you fear a winter will be hard, and would look out for them,
in pity for their bruised and battered spirit, a state brought to its knees,
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who would hesitate to purify the hive with smoking heads of thyme
and lop off useless cells, for oftentimes an eft, unnoticed, has been gnawing
at the comb, or the nest’s a mess of cockroaches that shun the light,
and there’s a drone—that good-for-nothing—squatting down to scoff another’s feed.
Or a savage hornet has entered in the fray with its unfair advantage,
or the dreaded moth, or, just as bad, a spider, Minerva’s fateful enemy,*
has slung its fatal web across the frame.
The more trials sent to test them, the keener they become, one and all,
to throw themselves into the mending of their tumbled world.
They re-stock the rows, and weave the store’s new walls with fruit of flowers.
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If, in fact, life brings to bees the same misfortunes as to us
their bodies may fall faint with grievous illness
whose signs you’ll have no trouble recognizing.
The minute they grow sick their colour changes, a haggard look disfigures features,
and they carry out into the open those whose life’s light is quenched,
a sorrowful procession, and either hang around
the threshold, their feet tucked up beneath them,
or shuffle slowly in the temple,
the all of them weak with the hunger and perished with the cold.
Then you hear a deeper sound, drawn out,
the way the south winds rumbled once through frozen forests,
the way a troubled sea shrieks and creaks at ebb-tide;
or a raging fire roars in a furnace with the door shut tight.
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When things have come to this I recommend you light galbanum for its scent,
and pipe in honey through a reed, going to no end of bother
to encourage them, the worn and weary ones, and coax them back to food they know and love.
It will help to have a blend of pounded galls, those acrid oak-apples,
with dried leaves of roses, or must reduced a long time
over an open flame, and raisins from the Psythian vine,
thyme from Athens, and pungent centaury.
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And
growing in the meadows there’s a flower farmers call ‘amellus’,*
that is star wort, and it’s not hard to find, for it raises from a single root
a veritable forest—itself is golden-lined
but in the petals it produces so abundantly
a purple glow shimmers through deep violet.
Many’s the time it’s been employed to decorate the altars of the gods.
Its taste is bitter. Shepherds pick it in
the close-cropped valleys along the winding Mella.
Take my word. Boil its roots in a strong-smelling wine
and serve it to the bees in baskets left beside their doorways.
It can happen in a flash that someone’s stock completely fails—
and he can see no way to supplant it with new blood.
Time then to let you in on what that great Arcadian keeper
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first discovered,* that is—this happened often—that putrid blood
of slaughtered cattle brought new swarms into being.
Listen. I’ll tell all from the root to bloom, share all I’ve heard.
For where Pellaean people live their happy lives beside Canopus on the Nile*
whose flowing waters form flood pools
on which they do their rounds in brightly painted pinnaces
and where the Persians, race of archers, crowd in close as neighbours,
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and a tumbling torrent splits into its seven deltas—
the river, which has travelled all the way from the land of sun-bronzed Ethiopians
and which fertilizes fertile Egypt with dank sands—that’s where
the continued well-being of the bees rests safe and surely on the skill I’ve promised to describe.
First they choose an area, a place made smaller for this very purpose,
enclosed with roof tiles and its walls pressed in.
Then they add four apertures that face four quarters
of the wind and admit a slanting light.
Then they’ll pick a bull calf out, his two years’ growth of horn a crown upon his brow,
and plug his nostrils and, despite the fight he’ll offer, put a stop to his breathing.
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And when he’s been assailed with blows, and while his hide
is still unbroken, they’ll pummel to a pulp his flesh.
That’s how they leave him, shut away in that enclosure, beneath his ribcage
piles of branches, thyme, and newly picked spurge laurel.
All this proceeds while west winds first play on the waves,
before spring restores a flush of colour to the face of fields,
before the chattering swallow attaches her nest to the rafters.
Meanwhile, the bullock’s tender bones begin to heat and ferment
and—astonishing to see—strange animals appear,
with, at first, no feet to speak of, then with wings whirring,
as they mill around on their play flights, first here, then there,
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and then spill out like heavy showers poured from summer clouds,
or like those arrows the lightly armed Parthians unleash from bows
to strike the first blows in battle.
O Muses, say what god was it
who with this miracle advanced the minds of men?
The shepherd, Aristaeus, turned his back on Tempe, through which the Peneius flows*—
or so the story goes—his bees all lost to hunger and disease,
and stood heartsore and sorry at the sacred river’s source
and, in words like these, directed his complaint to the one who bore him,*
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‘Mother of mine, Mother Cyrene, whose home is in the depths
of this deep water, how could you bear me to this noble line of gods—
(if it’s true, as you assert, Apollo is my father)—
for fate itself to turn against me? Oh, whither has your love for me been driven?
Why did you teach me to reach up my hopes to heaven?
Look! Even this distinction of my mortal being,
hard won by me through expert care of crops and cattle
and nothing stinted, and even with you for a mother, I must give up.
Then why not, while you’re at it, uproot with your own hands my fruiting forests,
burn down my stalls, wipe out the harvest I have won,
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set fire to all that I have in the ground, and launch attacks on my vines
with a battleaxe, if you have grown so displeased with any good I’ve done.’
Deep in the river,* in her chamber, his mother listened to his cry,
while all around her, carding fleeces from Miletus,
all of them dyed bottle blue, were nymphs
whose names are Drymo, Xantho, Ligea, and Phyllodoce,
fair heads of hair cascading down their shining necks […]
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and Cydippe, and fairhaired Lycorias, the one a maiden still,
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the other fresh from pangs of labour, her first nativity,
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and there was Clio and her sister Beroe, the two of them the daughters of Oceanus,
the two of them bedecked with gold and both dressed up in coloured skins,
and there was Ephyre and Opis and Asian Deiopeia,
and fleet-footed Arethusa, her bow and arrows put away at last.
And in their midst was Clymene, rambling on about
Vulcan’s efforts all in vain and Mars’ deception and the joy he stole,*
elaborating all the loves of all the gods, from Chaos’ time to ours.*
And as they sat enthralled, winding soft wool from the spindle,
Aristaeus’ mourning made its way again into his mother’s ear
and all of them, seated on their crystal chairs, were paralysed, struck dumb—
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till Arethusa, before any of the others,
raised her golden head above the water to find the sorrow’s source
and cried out from afar, ‘Oh, not for nothing has a sigh caused you such fright,
sister Cyrene, for it is he, poor Aristaeus, who’s nearest and most dear to you,
who is standing by the waters of our father Peneius, a well of tears,
and he’s naming you the hard-hearted one.’
His mother then, her mind wild with new feeling, called,
‘Yes, bring him, bring him over here, he has a right to walk
where the gods walk.’ And at once she bade the waters part
and made a pathway for her son’s passage.
Then all around him waves crested like mountain peaks
and, safe in that embrace, bore him below the water.
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And now, in wonder of his mother’s home, her watery realm,
