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Charles Butler's the Feminine Monarchie, or the History of Bees (1634 Edition)
The first full-length work of apiculture published in English.
Writing circa 1599, Shakespeare was evidently not abreast of the latest apian news: gazing into a hive in 1586, the Spanish entomologist Luis Méndez de Torres realized that bees are ruled not by a king, but by her majesty, the queen. / As is contended that, to help us thrive, / We should partake the profit of his Hive.” Each chapter pivots between practical knowledge (the construction and dressing of dwellings, the use of summer vs. winter doors, the insulating benefits of “hog foam” and salivary froth) and theological takeaways about a divine, natural order led by a female monarch. In one of the strangest passages in the book, Butler relays a story about a colony infected by the plague whose beekeeper, regurgitating Sunday mass’s sacramental bread into the hive, returns to find “a chapel built by the Bees with an altar in it, the walls adorned with marvelous skill of architecture with windows conveniently set in their places.
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