This story is only paralleled by another, equally ancient, wherein it is related that some thieves broke into a church, and stole the silver casket in which the holy wafers were kept. They found one wafer in the box, and this they hid under a hive before making off with the more intrinsically valuable part of their booty. In the night, it seems, the owner of the hive was awakened by the most ravishing strains of music, coming at set intervals from the direction of his bee-garden. He went out with a lantern to ascertain the cause of it, and discovered it to proceed from the interior of one of his hives. Full of perturbation at this miracle, he went and roused the Bishop, and acquainted him with the extraordinary state of affairs; and the Bishop coming with his retinue and lifting up the hive, they found that the bees had taken possession of the consecrated wafer, and placed it in the upper part of their hive, having first made for it a box of the whitest wax, an exact replica of the one stolen. And all around this box there were choirs of bees singing, and keeping watch over it, as monks do in their chapel. “With which story,” adds the narrator prophetically, “I doubt not but some incredulous people will quarrell.” In their directions for hiving a swarm, the medieval bee-masters were always quaintly explicit. The dressing of the skep which was to receive the swarm was a particularly elaborate process. When the skep was new, you were recommended to scour it out with a handful of sweet herbs, such as thyme, marjoram, or hyssop; and this was to be followed by a second dressing of honey and water, or milk and salt. But the preparation of an old skep must have been a rather disgusting affair. You were to put “two or three handfuls of mault, or pease, or other come in the hive, and let a Hogge eat thereof. Meanwhile, doe you so turne the Hive, that the fome or froth, which the Hogge maketh in eating, may goe all about the Hive. And then wipe the Hive lightlie with a linnen cloth, and so will the Bees like this Hive better than the new.”