A 17th-Century Beekeeping Manual: Charles Butler and His Hive

Charles Butler's *The Feminine Monarchie, or the History of Bees* (1609), the first English work of its kind, remained an influential apiculture handbook for centuries. The book is filled with Butler's firsthand observations of bees at his Hampshire parsonage, whom he calls "the muses' birds." He revered them, outlining protocols for earning their respect that read almost like a religious purity code. Bees, being "most chaste and neat," "utterly abhor" those who eat leeks, onions, and garlic; their sobriety and industriousness means they "violently defend" themselves against drunkards and gluttons. Butler seems to yearn for a bee-like existence, lamenting that "unto the industrious nature of bees nothing is more odious than sloth and idleness." His only grievance is with the drone bee, who, violating the Protestant work ethic, "worketh not at all, either at home or abroad, and yet spendeth as much as two labourers."