A little book published in 1656, and called “The Country Housewife’s Garden,” is interesting, as it was probably written for cottagers by one almost in the same humble walk of life, whereas the bee-books generally of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were, for the most part, the work of men of considerably higher station. This book, almost alone of its kind, harbours no fine theories on bee-keeping, but keeps throughout to rule-of-thumb methods. The writer, evidently caring little for speculation as to the origin of bees, but confining his remarks to practical honey-getting, takes up the following wholesome position: “Much discanting there is of, and about the Master Bees, and of their degrees, order, and Government: but the truth in this point is rather imagined, than demonstrated. There are some conjectures of it, viz., wee see in the combs diverse greater houses than the rest, and we commonly hear the night before they cast, sometimes one Bee, sometimes two or more Bees, give a lowde and severall sound from the rest, and sometimes Bees of greater bodies than the common sort: but what of all this? I leane not on conjectures, but love to set down that I know to be true, and leave these things to them that love to divine.” The “greater houses” here mentioned were, no doubt, the large cells in which the queens are bred. Just before swarming-time, as many as nine or ten of these are sometimes to be found in one hive. The same writer has the inevitable ill word against the drones. These, he says, “are, by all probability and judgement, an idle kind of bees, and wastefull, which have lost their stings, and so being as it were gelded, become idle and great. They hate the bees, and cause them cast the sooner.” Never did creature come by so bad a name, and so undeservedly, as the luckless drone with these old scribes. Another of them speaks of the drone as “a grosse Hive-Bee without sting, which hath beene alwaies reputed a greedy lozell (and therefore hee that is quicke at meat and slow at worke is fitted with this title): for howsoever he brave it with his round velvet cap, his side gowne, his full paunch, and his lowd voice; yet he is but an idle companion, living by the sweat of others’ brows. For he worketh not at all, either at home or abroad, and yet spendeth as much as two labourers: you shall never finde his maw without a good drop of the purest nectar. In the heat of the day he flieth abroad, aloft, and about, and that with no small noise, as though he would doe some great act: but it is onely for his pleasure, and to get him a stomach, and then returns he presently to his cheere.”