It does not seem to be forcing the meaning of this passage to infer from it that Virgil had some knowledge of the valuable services of bees in fertilizing plants of all kinds.
To have learned all that he tells us about bees, Virgil must have mastered the subject of apiculture as it was understood in his time. That he gained his information at first hand, or at least verified it by personal observation, seems indubitable. For here and there all through his work are convincing bits of description, sometimes merely felicitous phrases, that recall the life of the hive forcibly to any one familiar with it. He says
As for what is left when, the golden sun has put winter to flight
Beneath the earth, and has revealed the sky with summer light,
Immediately they (the bees) wander over all the glades and forests,
And rifle the bright-hued flowers, and lightly-moving,
Drink from the surfaces of the streams.
From this time, joyful from I know not what delight,
They cherish their family and their home,
And make the ripened honey.
This could not fail to paint vividly for any beekeeper the yearly awakening of the bees, when, shaking off the torpor of winter, they prepare with eagerness for the advent of summer, that fraction of the year in which alone they lead a full and active life. His description of the listlessness and apathy of bees which are diseased at once suggests the appearance of a colony which is suffering from the ravages of bacillus alvei, or foul brood, the terrible, almost pestilential malady of the apiary. He says
But indeed life has brought our misfortunes to the bees;
If their bodies shall droop with a sad disease . . .
The sick are of a different color;
A dreadful leanness marks their appearance;
They carry forth from the dwellings those bereft of life,
And conduct sad funeral rites;
Or clinging together by the feet, hang at the thresholds,
Or delay within their house, and are listless with hunger
And inactive from the cold which they have caught.
Again he says, when speaking of the life of the bees during the harvest season, "the work seethes, and the sweet-smelling honey is fragrant with thyme." The work does seethe; his phrase exactly describes the abnormal, all-pervading activity of the swarm during the honey-flow. Often at that time we can tell by the delicate aroma, one might almost say the bouquet, of the honey, from what kind of flowers it is being made. To-day only that of the mountain sage resembles in fragrance and flavor the honey of the ancients which was made from thyme, of which the fabled honey of Hymettus was the finest type.
Interspersed throughout Virgil's discourse are numerous precepts
