Normally, having insects in an archive is not what you want at all, but for World Bee Day we’ve ventured into the shelves to find some archival bees!
World Bee Day was first celebrated in 2018 to bring attention to the role of bees as one of the most important pollinator species in the world, as well as to highlight the plight of many lesser-known native species of bee, but our interest in the bee goes back four centuries.
The Feminine Monarchie, or A Treatise Concerning Bees, and the Due Ordering of Them by Charles Butler was printed in Oxford by the University Printer Joseph Barnes in 1609. Charles Butler is often called the “Father of English Beekeeping” because this book was the first scientific manual of beekeeping printed in England. There had been earlier books and pamphlets on the topic but they were either copies of existing books from other countries or were based on Classical and Medieval understandings of bees, rather than the scientific approach that Butler took based on his own observations.
Most importantly, Butler is credited with first spreading the correct assumption that it was a female bee, the Queen, who led the hive, rather than a King. In fact, in a hive of “social” bees (who live together in colonies) almost all of them will be female, with only a handful of male drone bees who exist entirely to mate with the Queen.
One of the most fascinating parts of the 1609 edition is Butler’s inclusion of music, notating the very distinct “piping” made by the new Queen when she first emerges from her cell. While Butler believed it was the new “princess bee” asking permission from the old Queen to leave the hive and set up her own, it is now known to be a warning to any other newly-hatched queen bees that there is another queen bee nearby who will fight them for the dominance of the hive.
These three short staves marked the very first time that music type had been used at Oxford, which would have required specially designed punches and matrices to make the type. While none of the originals are known to survive, the OUP Archive does hold similar music matrices from approximately eighty years later.
In a later edition of Butler’s book, first printed in London in 1623 and then again in Oxford in 1634, Butler expanded on his use of music and included a madrigal for four singers called Melissomelos, or The Bee’s Madrigal. It includes his previous notation of the Queen’s “piping” as a solo between some of the verses and expounds on the benefits of a female-led monarchy, as well as approval for the hard-working and apparently conflict-free society of a beehive.
