It is considered very cruel in Africa, as Campbell observes, to kill Bees in order to obtain their honey, especially as from flowers being there at all seasons, and most in winter, they can live comfortably all the year round. A Hottentot, who was accustomed to kill the Bees, was often reasoned with by the humane to give up so cruel a practice, yet he persisted in it till a circumstance occurred which determined him to relinquish it. He had a water-mill for grinding his corn, which went very slowly, from the smallness of the stream which turned it; consequently the flour dropped very gently. For some time much less than usual came into the sack, the cause of which he could not discover. At length he found that a great part of his flour, as it was ground, was carried off by the Bees to their hives: on examining this, he found it contained only his flour, and no honey. This robbery made him resolve to destroy no more Bees when their honey was taken, considering their conduct in robbing him of his property as a just punishment to him for his cruelty. The gentleman who related this story, Mr. Campbell says, was a witness to the Bees robbing the mill.[658] An old English proverb, relative to the swarming of Bees, is,-- A swarm of Bees in May, Is worth a load of hay; A swarm of Bees in June, Is worth a silver spoon; A swarm of Bees in July, Is not worth a fly.[659] In Tusser’s Five Hundred Points of Husbandry, under the month of May, are these lines: Take heed to thy Bees, that are ready to swarme, The losse thereof now is a crown’s worth of harme. On which is the following observation in Tusser Redivivus, 1744, p. 62: “The tinkling after them with a warming-pan, frying-pan, kettle, is of good use to let the neighbors know you have a swarm in the air, which you claim wherever it lights; but I believe of very little purpose to the reclaiming of the Bees, who are thought to delight in no noise but their own.” Ill fortune attends the killing of Bees,--a common saying. This, doubtless, arose from the thrift and usefulness of these insects. That swarms of Bees, or fields, houses, stalls of cattle, or workshops, may not be affected by enchantment, Leontinus says: “Dig in the hoof of the right side of a sable ass under the threshold of the door, and pour on some liquid pitchy resin, salt, Heracleotic origanum, cardamonium, cumin, some fine bread, squills, a chaplet of white or of crimson wool, the chaste tree, vervain, sulphur, pitchy torches; and lay on some amaranthus every month, and lay on the mould; and, having scattered seeds of different kinds, let them remain.”[660] To cure the stings of Bees, we have the following remedies: “Rue,” says Pliny, “is an hearbe as medicinable as the best ... and is available against the stings of Bees, Hornets, and Wasps, and against the poison of the Cantharides and Salamanders.[661]