In late springs, or when there is a drought or blight, the bees breed very little, but make a great deal of honey, whereas in wet seasons they keep more at home, and attend to breeding. Swarms in Greece[1227] appeared about the ripening of the olive. Aristotle is of opinion, that honey is not manufactured by the bee, but falls perfectly formed from the atmosphere, more especially at the heliacal rising or setting of certain stars, and when the rainbow appears. He observes, too, that no honey is found before the rising of the Pleiades,[1228] which happens about the thirteenth of May.[1229] This opinion is in exact conformity with the fact, that at certain seasons of the year what is called the honey dew descends, covering thick the leaves of the oak, and several other trees, which at such times literally drop with honey. On these occasions the bees find little to do beyond the labour of conveying it to their cells, and, accordingly, have been known to fill the hive in one or two days. It has been observed, moreover, that autumn flowers, which yield very little fragrance, yield, also, little or no honey. In the kingdom of Pontos there was a race of white bees which made honey twice a month; and at Themiscyra there were those which built their combs both in hives and in the earth, producing very little wax, but a great deal of honey.[1230] ----- Footnote 1227: Cf. Sch. Aristoph. Vesp. 425. In the island of Cuba, where the tame bee was originally introduced by the English, it has been found to swarm and multiply with incredible rapidity, each hive sometimes sending forth two swarms per month, so that the mountains are absolutely filled with them. This rapid increase seems to have taken place chiefly in the neighbourhood of the sugar plantations, which they were long since supposed to deteriorate by extracting too much honey from the cane. Don Ulloa, Memoires Philosophiques, &c., t. i. p. 185. In North America where bees are known among the natives by the name of the “English Flies,” they betray an invariable tendency for migrating southward. Kalm. t. ii. 427. Schneider, Observ. sur Ulloa, ii. 198. Footnote 1228: Hist. Anim. v. 22. Orion rises on the 9th of July, Gœttling ad Hesiod. Opp. et Dies, 598. Arcturus, 18th September. Id. 610. Footnote 1229: A similar opinion has been sometimes maintained also by the moderns:—“I have heard,” observes Lord Bacon, “from one that was industrious in husbandry, that the labour of the bee is about the wax, and that he hath known in the beginning of May, honey combs empty of honey, and within a fortnight when the sweet dews fall filled like a cellar.”—Sylva Sylvarum, 612. Footnote 1230: