His book abounds in curious details as to hive-life. When foraging bees are overtaken in their expeditions by nightfall, they place themselves on their backs on the ground, to protect their wings from the dew, thus lying and watching until the first sign of dawn, when they return to the colony. At swarming-time, the king-bee does not fly, but is carried out by his attendants. Pliny warns intending bee-keepers not to place their hives within sound of an echo, this being very injurious to the bees; but, he adds, the clapping of hands and tinkling of brass afford bees especial delight. He ascribes to them an astonishing longevity, some living as long as seven years. But the hives must be placed out of the reach of frogs, who, it seems, were fond of breathing into hives, this causing great mortality among its occupants. When bees need artificial food, they are to be supplied with raisins or dried figs beaten to a pulp, carded wool steeped in wine, hydromel, or the raw flesh of poultry. Wax, Pliny says, is best clarified by first boiling it in sea-water, and then drying it in the light of the moon, for whiteness. And in taking honey from the hives, a person must be well washed and clean. Malefactors are cautioned against approaching a hive of bees at any time. Bees, he assures us, have a particular aversion to a thief. To the latter-day practical bee-keeper, all these minute details given by the classic writers read very like useless and cumbersome nonsense; and it seems matter for wonder that the bees contrived to exist at all under such ingeniously complicated mismanagement, born, as it was, of an ignorance flawed by scarcely a single ascertained fact. But the truth stands out pretty clearly that bee-keeping two thousand years ago was really a very large and important industry. One apiary is mentioned by Varro as yielding five thousand pounds of honey yearly, while the annual produce of another brought in a sum of ten thousand sesterces. Pliny mentions the islands of Crete and Cyprus, and the coast-country of Africa, as producing honey in great abundance. Sicily was famous for the good quality of its beeswax, but Corsica seems to have been one of the main sources of this. When the island was subject to the Romans, it is said that a tribute of two hundred thousand pounds’ weight of wax was yearly exacted from it. This, however, is such an astounding figure that it must be taken with a certain caution.