In a story, anything can happen. The cla.s.sical writers elevated deities to powerful, Olympian heights; on the other hand, they could dash mortals down with obliterating fate. What gave them the power? Honeyed words.

Bees hovering near the lips of a newborn was an omen that the child would grow up with a mellifluous tongue. Bees are said to have flown near the milky infant mouth of Virgil, the greatest poet of Cla.s.sical Rome. The breath of life is certainly present in his many references to them; some scholars and apiarist readers believe he himself was a beekeeper, such is the detail and freshness of his observations.

The fourth and last book of Virgil's great poem on the art of farming, the Georgics Georgics, is much about honeybees, describing their collective work, frugal ways, organization, and obedience to leadership. A lesser work on this theme might have had a simplistic ring of stern, Roman virtue, but instead the poetry hums with life in all its complexity.

Virgil spent his adult life in the countryside near Naples, away from the politicking and power-grabbing of Rome during a particularly tumultuous period. Nearly a third of his life had the backdrop of civil war. The Georgics Georgics were begun about six years after the a.s.sa.s.sination of Julius Caesar in 44 bc, and the moral, peaceful rural life of this poem communicates, subliminally, a reaction to the trauma of war beyond its pages. The Latin name for the poem, were begun about six years after the a.s.sa.s.sination of Julius Caesar in 44 bc, and the moral, peaceful rural life of this poem communicates, subliminally, a reaction to the trauma of war beyond its pages. The Latin name for the poem, Georgica Georgica, translates as "what concerns the man that works the earth," and was about such smallholders, rather than the large Roman estates that used slave labor.

Ancient Greek amphora depicting sacred bees stinging intruders in the cave on Mount Dicte.

Nature runs through the lines of Georgics, Book Four Georgics, Book Four, like a stream. You see and smell the flowers that attract the bees-the wild thyme, the "rich breathing" savory, the bank green with celery, the lime blossom, willow, saffron, and lily. You recognize how the bees "hurry from the hive, all helter-skelter" (this translation is by Cecil Day-Lewis, who was himself working against the backdrop of the Second World War); the "vague and wind-warped column of cloud to your wondering eyes" of a swarm; the bucolic image of an old smallholder, happy as a king when his small, poor land can yield roses in spring, apples in autumn, and frothy honey squeezed from the combs.

The poem partly poses as instruction, and it is fascinating to read what Virgil thought of bees and how they should be kept. He encourages the beekeeper to keep his hives near water, so the bees can drink, and says the hives must be sheltered from rough winds. He emphasizes the importance of the hive's ruler, and perhaps this commanding figure is meant to suggest, on a political dimension, a leader who could bring unity to the warring factions of Rome, spinning out of control after the murder of Julius Caesar.

The poem tells the beekeeper to site the hive away from lizards, the "sinister tribe of moths," and from birds that eat bees. Some of this is all too recognizable today. As well as the moths that can devastate a colony, birds with strong beaks, such as the woodp.e.c.k.e.r, have been known to break into bees' nests in the wild, and there are twenty-five species of bee eaters, including one occasionally found in Britain, that can catch bees on the wing in their beaks and pull them over a hard surface to extract the venom before eating them. (Scientists dissecting spine-tailed swifts in the Philippines found one bird with the remains of nearly four hundred bees, the bird's mouth and gizzards barbed with scores of detached stings.) Virgil mentions the three kinds of bees in the hive. His probable source was Aristotle (384-321 bc), who wrote extensively about bees in his natural history writing, particularly in Historia Animalium Historia Animalium. As well as noting there are different sorts of honeybees, all with different roles, Aristotle's book describes how the bees collect the juices of the flowers in their stomachs and take them back to the hive to regurgitate into the wax, and that this liquid gets thicker with time. Aristotle saw that there were hairy worker bees inside the hive and smoother ones outside (the worker bees become less fluffy with age), and that the new ruler could kill off others that emerged from other cells. He even noticed how the bees danced across the face of the comb, though he did not understand the meaning of this (we now know it is a means of communication).

Some mysteries remained. Many mused on the reproductive methods of bees. Aristotle was especially interested in where bees came from, though he never reached a satisfactory explanation, pondering whether the young were collected from flowers, olives, and reeds. The strangest belief of all, maintained for many centuries, was that honeybees generated spontaneously from the carca.s.s of an ox. Credence in this idea of "ox-born bees" continued right up to the time when a certain Mr. Carew reported this feat of reproduction in Coventry in 1842. Virgil praises the worker bees' abstention from s.e.xual intercourse, an escape from the mess of pa.s.sion and the pain of birth. "How to get bees from an ox" appears in his Georgics, Book Four Georgics, Book Four, almost like a recipe: in the springtime, you must take a two-year-old ox into a small house with four windows, stop up its nostrils and mouth, bludgeon it to death, and leave it in the room, along with ca.s.sia, thyme, and branches.

Virgil's description of how bees then poured out of the rotting flesh, like a throbbing attack of arrows, is so like the pulsating release of flies from the maggots feeding on carrion that this could be one natural explanation for this curious belief. The honeybee does not settle on meat; but it easily could have been confused with the drone fly that lays its eggs in decomposing carca.s.ses. Another possibility is that bees do nest in skulls, and among other bones, in places where shelter is rare, such as the Egyptian desert. This could also be the origin of the Old Testament story of Samson (Judges 14) when he asks the riddle "out of the strong came forth sweetness"; the image of a swarm of bees and a lion remains on tins of Tate & Lyle's golden syrup.

In Virgil's Georgics Georgics, there is a more important interpretation than the literal truth of the ox-born bee: this is the idea that life regenerates. A swarm of bees is a beautiful, visible embodiment of reproduction; moving through the air in its dark cl.u.s.ter, it is a living symbol of how life moves on. In the beliefs of the ancient cla.s.sical cultures, this concept was reinforced because the best swarms happen in spring-a time of the annual rebirth of the world and the continuation of life after the death of winter. Whether a swarm of bees comes from an ox or a hive, it is the start of new life, flying toward the future. Hardly surprising, then, that bees came to be portrayed as special creatures that could move between life and death, between the world and the underworld, between humans and the divine. In ancient Greece, bees flying through the cracks of rocks were thought to be souls emerging from the underworld, just as the ancient Egyptians believed the insects to be human spirits that could fly anywhere.

One of the most moving pa.s.sages in Georgics, Book Four Georgics, Book Four, describes the bees' blending of the natural and supernatural. It connects these flying particles of heaven to the way in which all of nature-including man-exists (the translation is Dryden's):

Ox-born bees in an engraving ill.u.s.trating John Dryden's translation of Virgil's Georgics, Book Four. Georgics, Book Four.

...some have taughtThat Bees have Portions of Etherial Thought:Endu'd with Particles of Heavenly Fires:For G.o.d the whole created Ma.s.s inspires;Thro' Heav'n, and Earth, and Oceans depth he throwsHis Influence round, and kindles as he goes.Hence Flocks, and Herds, and men, and Beasts, and FowlsWith Breath are quickn'd; and attract their Souls.Hence take the Forms his Prescience did ordain,And into him at length resolve again.No room is left for Death, they mount the Sky,And to their own congenial Planets fly.

Life comes, briefly, and then is reabsorbed back into the heavens and never dies. I asked Willie Robson, on the Northumberland heather moors, about the life span of a colony. The bees? They're immortal, he said.

WHO WERE THE Greek and Roman G.o.ds? In his exploration of Sicily, Greek and Roman G.o.ds? In his exploration of Sicily, The Golden Honeycomb The Golden Honeycomb, Vincent Cronin described the ancient world as a twilight zone where legend and history met. The stories of mythology gave G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses human traits, raised up on Mount Olympus; but they were, for all their glory, ultimately akin to men and women, with characteristics and foibles we recognize. This was the time when humans began to civilize the Western world, to form it to our own will. Mythology was a way of projecting us onto a larger scale, with all the possibilities within the reach of our imagination-and all our mistakes, too. Greek and Roman G.o.ds certainly feel more familiar to us than the mysterious deities of ancient Egypt, worshipped from afar with fearful awe.

The Golden Honeycomb is based around Cronin's quest in the 1950s to uncover the origin of one such myth, the tale of Daedalus, the legendary master craftsman and inventor who supposedly flew to Sicily from Crete, believed by the ancients to be the origin of bees and beekeeping. On the way, Daedalus's son Icarus flew too near to the sun, and the beeswax holding his wings together melted, plunging him into the sea, where he drowned. But Daedalus made it to the island and here was said to have wrought an exquisitely realistic golden honeycomb. Did it actually exist, or was it a metaphor of some sort? Cronin travels around looking for clues. He goes to Greek ruins, such as Silenus, named after wild celery, which is a good source of nectar for bees; he reads the sweet words of poets; he writes of how nature was connected to divine forces. In Taormina he sees the spring, with its lavish surge of life and the flowers that provide so much nectar for the bees-and the rea.s.surance that humans, too, will be able to eat again after the winter. Was this vital expression of Mediterranean nature in some way connected to the origin of the golden honeycomb? is based around Cronin's quest in the 1950s to uncover the origin of one such myth, the tale of Daedalus, the legendary master craftsman and inventor who supposedly flew to Sicily from Crete, believed by the ancients to be the origin of bees and beekeeping. On the way, Daedalus's son Icarus flew too near to the sun, and the beeswax holding his wings together melted, plunging him into the sea, where he drowned. But Daedalus made it to the island and here was said to have wrought an exquisitely realistic golden honeycomb. Did it actually exist, or was it a metaphor of some sort? Cronin travels around looking for clues. He goes to Greek ruins, such as Silenus, named after wild celery, which is a good source of nectar for bees; he reads the sweet words of poets; he writes of how nature was connected to divine forces. In Taormina he sees the spring, with its lavish surge of life and the flowers that provide so much nectar for the bees-and the rea.s.surance that humans, too, will be able to eat again after the winter. Was this vital expression of Mediterranean nature in some way connected to the origin of the golden honeycomb?

No conclusive answer could be found; rather, Cronin's search gives him a reason to explore successive cultures, and the ways in which honey played a part in them.

Alongside oil or wine, honey was one of the libations for the dead in the cla.s.sical era. Achilles put jars of oil and honey by the funeral pyre of his friend Patroclus, so the food of this life could be enjoyed in the afterlife. Honey was offered to the G.o.ds because it was a product of both earth and sky; it was believed the bees gathered the juice that had fallen from the heavens and collected in flowers, and honey was, therefore, an appropriate food with which to commune with the otherworld. Such beliefs in the sanct.i.ty of bees continued. When Cronin was writing in the 1950s, Sicilian newlyweds arriving home from the church for the bridal feast were given a loving spoonful of honey to share. Death, life, mythology, and love: honey slid into them all.

THE ANCIENT GREEKS and Romans were the first serious observers of the natural history of the honeybee. After Aristotle, the next most significant author on bees was Varro (116-27 bc), the greatest Roman scholar of his day. His and Romans were the first serious observers of the natural history of the honeybee. After Aristotle, the next most significant author on bees was Varro (116-27 bc), the greatest Roman scholar of his day. His Res rusticae Res rusticae was written at roughly the same time as Virgil's was written at roughly the same time as Virgil's Georgics, Book Four Georgics, Book Four. This practical, useful text goes into subjects such as the different types of hive, evaluating those made from wood, bark, earthenware, and reeds. He writes about the plants that are good for honey production, such as thyme, beans, and the succession of blooms between the spring and autumn equinoxes. He even mentions the economics of beekeeping, telling of two Spanish brothers who ran a successful apiary on just half an acre of land. He writes, too, of the value of propolis; in Rome's Via Sacra, it was more expensive than wax. Propolis is the sticky, dark "bee-glue" gathered from buds and the bark of trees, with which the bees seal up their hives (the word comes from the Greek "before the city," meaning it surrounded the city, or colony, of bees). Even at this early date, it was valued for its bacteriocidal and fungicidal properties, and was used by doctors in the cla.s.sical world to treat ulcers and tumors.

Another Roman writer, Pliny the Elder (ad 23-79), noted that propolis could also draw out stings and foreign bodies. As for understanding the bees, he mentions a consul who had hives made of translucent horn so that he could watch the new bees emerging from their cells. It sounds like a primitive version of an observation hive, though not a particularly clear one. Pliny's own questions and observations could also be opaque, if poetic. Was honey the saliva of the stars or the sweat of the sky, he asked? A little more on target, he noted how honey thickened and was covered with a skin that was "the foam of the boiling." This kitchen metaphor, of a liquid reducing through evaporation, is a.n.a.logous to what happens to honey as it thickens through the fanning of the insects' wings (though the "skin" is made of wax).

There was still a misunderstanding about the origin of beeswax, which was thought to be a secretion collected from plants rather than a product of the bee itself. Whatever its source, the wax itself was much used on a practical, everyday level. Wooden boards, coated with wax, were reusable writing tablets. Wax was also used by craftsmen, real and mythological, for joining objects together-unsuccessfully, in the case of Icarus's wings and more successfully, with Pan's pipes.

In the artistic field, statues were cast using the cire perdue cire perdue or "lost wax" method. Malleable beeswax was modeled and then covered in clay; this was then heated so the wax melted, leaving a cast in one piece into which molten metal could be poured. With other methods, the cast had to be cut into pieces; with the lost-wax method, a complete mold could be made. Wax busts were also sculpted of famous people, a technique that is still used. Besides this, the flaws in dodgy cla.s.sical statues could be hidden with beeswax. If a statue was or "lost wax" method. Malleable beeswax was modeled and then covered in clay; this was then heated so the wax melted, leaving a cast in one piece into which molten metal could be poured. With other methods, the cast had to be cut into pieces; with the lost-wax method, a complete mold could be made. Wax busts were also sculpted of famous people, a technique that is still used. Besides this, the flaws in dodgy cla.s.sical statues could be hidden with beeswax. If a statue was sans cere sans cere, or without wax, the seller was an honest dealer or, as you could say, sincere.

Writing about bees and honey continued, but more in encyclopedic collections of received wisdom than in fresh observation. Fifty years after both Virgil and Varro came Columella, an army officer from Cadiz who retired outside Rome. His book on agriculture, De re rustica De re rustica, written around ad 60, methodically runs through many aspects of the hive, from the races of bees to the extraction of beeswax. Palladius, writing in the fourth century ad, gives a month-by-month account of the honeybee; his book was translated into English in the fourteenth century. Cla.s.sical authority was set to remain largely unquestioned for a thousand years-then the chief work of the Greek physician Dioscorides, De materia medica De materia medica, written in the first century ad, was a crucial text on botany and healing through the Middle Ages and was used right up to the seventeenth century.

THE ANCIENT GREEKS and Romans already distinguished between different kinds of honey. Dioscorides said Attic honey from Greece was the best, with that from Mount Hymettus the very best of all. Honey from the islands of the Cyclades was next best, followed by that from Hybla in Sicily. They prized the distinctive quality and flavor of one particular honey made from the thyme that covered their hills and mountainsides. The herb imparts a special fragrance to the honey, giving it a unique taste of place. I a.s.sociate thyme with the sinuous brown honey that you drizzle on sharp, white sheep's-milk yogurt for breakfast in Greece. After a trip to Sicily to see whether the honey culture of the ancients continued in this area today, I can now picture it among the limestone gorges of what is now called Monte Iblei, formerly Mount Hybla. and Romans already distinguished between different kinds of honey. Dioscorides said Attic honey from Greece was the best, with that from Mount Hymettus the very best of all. Honey from the islands of the Cyclades was next best, followed by that from Hybla in Sicily. They prized the distinctive quality and flavor of one particular honey made from the thyme that covered their hills and mountainsides. The herb imparts a special fragrance to the honey, giving it a unique taste of place. I a.s.sociate thyme with the sinuous brown honey that you drizzle on sharp, white sheep's-milk yogurt for breakfast in Greece. After a trip to Sicily to see whether the honey culture of the ancients continued in this area today, I can now picture it among the limestone gorges of what is now called Monte Iblei, formerly Mount Hybla.

Sortino is a hill town on Monte Iblei where forty beekeepers still make at least part of a living from the nectar-rich slopes of their surroundings. At certain moments of my visit, the past millennia seemed to vanish. When I met Paolo Pagliaro, a sixth-generation beekeeper in his sixties, he almost immediately quoted Virgil to me, in Italian, his light blue eyes and youthful face lighting up as he spoke: "Non vi e miele piudolce di te, o miele ibleo!" "Non vi e miele piudolce di te, o miele ibleo!" (There is no honey sweeter than you, o Iblean honey!) (There is no honey sweeter than you, o Iblean honey!) Every October Paolo helps run a great honey festival, Sagra del Miele Sagra del Miele, which now attracts more than 65,000 people, and there runs a compet.i.tion between honeys from all over the Mediterranean. I tasted his dizzying a.s.sortment of pots, from a surprisingly floral thistle honey to one that was darkly savory, almost like licorice, which turned out to be rose honey and cost $170 per pound. For all these novelties, I was most interested in trying his local varieties: the delicious, runny thyme, which was dark as a polished nut; the wild-flower honey with its up-front sweetness jolly as a child's painting of bright blooms; and the subtly floral orange blossom, which was slightly waxy in texture.

Evidence of the tradition of beekeeping on Mount Iblei came in different forms. One church had a collection of beeswax models embodying ailments such as broken legs, which reminded me of the effigies of ancient Egypt, though here in a Christian form. Paolo showed me his family's ferula hives. Right up until a generation ago, the beekeepers used such hives, which were made with the light, strong stems of a giant fennel threaded onto a wooden frame, using not a single nail, nor a single element that couldn't be gathered from the surrounding area. Such hives were mentioned by Varro and Columella; some ancient beekeepers thought them better than those made of pottery. Plant materials were said to be lighter, less breakable, and better at keeping the bees cool in hot weather. The small, rectangular hives would have been stacked in piles of eight high by twenty wide. You could get around 6 pounds of honey from one, a very small quant.i.ty compared to a modern hive. The ferula hives had that simple, handmade quality that is just a short step from the soil. When Paolo was young, he would move them around the countryside on foot, pulling the cart himself, or with a horse.

Followers of Pythagoras, the Greek philosopher of the sixth century bc, believed you should breakfast on bread and honey every day for a disease-free, long life; while the philosopher Democritus (460-370 bc) advised that if you wanted longevity, you should moisten your insides with honey and your outside with oil. I asked Paolo about the longevity of honey eaters. Yes, he said, his grandparents had both lived into their nineties. Paolo himself had a vigor and lightness undimmed by age.

NEAR SORTINO is Pantalica, a winding, flower-strewn limestone gorge with a Bronze Age necropolis of around five thousand tombs. These small, square-fronted caves were probably gouged out of the limestone with tools made from hard volcanic rock. The regular, simple entrances almost resemble large television screens or modernist architecture. The necropolis was certainly in use around 1200 bc, around the time archaeologists believe Troy was besieged. One later traveler, ignorant of Pantalica's origin, speculated whether these holes in the rock might have been carved for giant bees. When the gorge was properly explored by archaeologists in the nineteenth century, inside the tombs they discovered that bodies in the caves had been buried in the fetal position; in some, the heads rested on low stone ledges as if on pillows. is Pantalica, a winding, flower-strewn limestone gorge with a Bronze Age necropolis of around five thousand tombs. These small, square-fronted caves were probably gouged out of the limestone with tools made from hard volcanic rock. The regular, simple entrances almost resemble large television screens or modernist architecture. The necropolis was certainly in use around 1200 bc, around the time archaeologists believe Troy was besieged. One later traveler, ignorant of Pantalica's origin, speculated whether these holes in the rock might have been carved for giant bees. When the gorge was properly explored by archaeologists in the nineteenth century, inside the tombs they discovered that bodies in the caves had been buried in the fetal position; in some, the heads rested on low stone ledges as if on pillows.

As I wandered down the gorge on a rubbly mule track, the scents of flowers arrived like s.n.a.t.c.hes of birdsong. At the bottom was a pool of clear water and a New Ager wearing a rainbow T-shirt sitting on a rock and filling his pipe. He had come to a place of the utmost peace. In the stillness, the loudest sound was the river, like a rush of wind below my feet. It was not always so peaceful. Next to the young man's rock was a ruined mill where explosives had once been made using bat excrement from a nearby cave. Bees now ma.s.sed on the ivy that had crawled all over the stones of the ruins. When Vincent Cronin descended the gorge on horseback from Sortino in the 1950s, he found wild honeycomb in the cleft of a rock, like a seam of gold; the climax of The Golden Honeycomb The Golden Honeycomb comes as he sees its swirls of honey-filled cells, the sun reflecting a hundred thousand suns in prismatic, reflected light. This was the end of his quest: not the myths, or the ruins, but the timeless glory of the honeycomb itself. comes as he sees its swirls of honey-filled cells, the sun reflecting a hundred thousand suns in prismatic, reflected light. This was the end of his quest: not the myths, or the ruins, but the timeless glory of the honeycomb itself.

I found no wild honey in Pantalica, but the gorge was still full of hives. The honey plants of Mount Iblei succeed each other as the year moves on: the early spring almond blossom; the orange and lemon blossoms that make one of the major Sicilian honeys; the wildflowers that go into millefiori; the nectar-laden native oaks, which once covered the countryside in cla.s.sical times and were mostly cut down to build ships and clear land for farming; and the carob trees, the source of the pods used for a chocolate subst.i.tute, which flowers in October, yielding a rare honey that comes at the end of the bees' foraging season.

Sicily, as a whole, is famously fertile. Homer told of how Odysseus, returning from Troy, sailed around such an island, marveling at its golden fields of wheat. It became the bread basket of the Roman world and was known, also, as the island of many fruits. Orchards still flow up the sides of Mount Etna, probably the mythical home of the Cyclops (the crater may have been the single eye of the giants). The volcano can still erupt with fury, but between such devastation, the local farmers have benefited from the rich volcanic soil.

Sicily's bountiful agriculture is the base of the island's celebrated cuisine that is layered, like its architecture, with the cultures that have formed this epicenter of Mediterranean civilization: Greek, Roman, Arab, Norman, Spanish, French, and Italian. All these cultures brought their plants and needs; all of these had an effect on the honeys and their uses in the kitchen. This was to be the next part of my search of the cla.s.sical world.

AN HOUR'S DRIVE down the hillside from Sortino is Syracuse, one of the foremost cities of the ancient Greeks. Syracuse was much a.s.sociated with the rise of cooking as an art; the first cookbook of the Western world is said to be by Mithaecus, written here in the fifth century bc. In the fourth century bc, Socrates spoke of the refinements of Sicilian cooking, and the fame of the tables of Syracuse, in particular. The city was home to the first school for professional cooks and through this became linked with food, far and wide. It was something of a status symbol among high-rolling Romans to have your kitchen run by such a Sicilian, and he became a stock character in comedies. down the hillside from Sortino is Syracuse, one of the foremost cities of the ancient Greeks. Syracuse was much a.s.sociated with the rise of cooking as an art; the first cookbook of the Western world is said to be by Mithaecus, written here in the fifth century bc. In the fourth century bc, Socrates spoke of the refinements of Sicilian cooking, and the fame of the tables of Syracuse, in particular. The city was home to the first school for professional cooks and through this became linked with food, far and wide. It was something of a status symbol among high-rolling Romans to have your kitchen run by such a Sicilian, and he became a stock character in comedies.

One of the best records we have of ancient Greek food comes from Archestratus, a Sicilian gourmet who traveled around the Greek world, recording the gastronomic highlights of more than fifty ports. The sixty-two fragments remaining have the tone of the enthusiast urging his fellow travelers toward the best. If you find the flat-cakes of Athens, do do try them with the Attic honey, he writes. try them with the Attic honey, he writes.

Despite his joking tone, Archestratus's words give us some clues about ancient tastes, and help us to see how honey was used in Greek cooking. It was one of the two main sweeteners of the day, alongside boiled-down grape juice. Such sweetness worked as a counterpoint to what the British chef and cla.s.sics scholar Shaun Hill has identified as "a rank, slightly rotting quality" prevalent in the food of the time; a juxtaposition that was not unlike the contrast between our Stilton and port or mutton and red currant jelly.

Honey was later much used in the somewhat overblown dishes-dormouse in honey and the like-described by the Roman writer on food Apicius in the fourth century ad. He put it in nearly all his sauces. But Greek cooking, as recorded by Archestratus, had a much more refined air. His maxim, that you should use the best, seasonal ingredients and not mess around with them too much, is in tune with many of the best chefs today; these master craftsmen-in the ancient world or the twenty-first century-dare to let their ingredients sing their own flavor notes with an unfussy clarity.

The tables of Syracuse were still exceptional. I'd read of ancient Greek cheesecakes flavored with honey. At Jonico a Rutta e Ciauli, a restaurant above the sea edging the city, I was offered a simplified version of the honeyed cheesecake: a starter of softly scented orange-blossom honey from Sortino with aged pecorino and cacio cavallo cacio cavallo, a hard cow's-milk cheese from Ragusa, on the other side of the Iblean mountains from Sortino. I took a teaspoon of honey and zigzagged it over the cheese, its gleam turning light to syrup. The matte texture and tangy flavor of the aged cheeses counterbalanced the smooth sweetness of the honey.

As I sat at the table, eating and drinking, I noticed how everything on the table-the cheeses, honey and bread, the white wine from Marsala-was a form of gold. The wine and the honey held the same hue, the cheeses a paler shade, the bread's crust a darker one. Each one of these foods-not least the honey-was virtually unchanged from ancient times. Vincent Cronin's quest for a golden honeycomb ended with wild honey; mine at this simple feast in a hospitable restaurant in Syracuse. It was here that I finally understood how honey had been eaten in the same way for millennia; and how centuries could dissolve and yet form a whole. "The past is not over," William Faulkner said. "In fact, it's not even past."

CHAPTERFIVE.

CANDLELIGHT AND INTOXICATION.

In the woods that once covered swathes of northern Europe, men would raid the bees' nests they found within hollows in tree trunks. To the bee, a tree is not just a home; the flowers offer an enormous stash of nectar gathered together in one place. Even a single lime or chestnut, say, can release enough nectar to make at least a kilo of honey in just a short amount of time.

The insects' woodland stores then made rich pickings for medieval honey hunters. Russian bee men, for example, working the forests around Moscow, would keep an eye out for swarms in the springtime and follow them to where they settled. Sometimes they smeared honey in a box to trap a single bee, and, on its release, followed the insect back to its colony. A bee man claimed a found nest by carving his personal mark-perhaps a hare's or goat's ear-on the bark, and returned year after year to see if it contained any honey.

Wild forest honey-hunting began to give way to more organized practices. In addition to plundering natural nests, the specialist woodland hunters gouged holes to create nest s.p.a.ces in which homeless bees could settle, and would make small doorways over the hollows in the trunks so they could check and collect the honey stores more readily. They also hung hollow logs in the trees, high enough for swarms to settle out of reach of the animals on the ground. One ill.u.s.tration shows a cruel trap, designed to get rid of one such major compet.i.tor, the bear: the climbing animal is trapped on a platform placed near the nest and shot at by archers so it falls onto spikes on the ground below.

It might be a 12-mile round-trip to check a "bee-walk" of colonies; the more prosperous bee men went by horseback, the less so by foot. In a forest of five hundred known tree cavities, as few as ten might contain nests. Collecting honey could be as treacherous as unpredictable: perhaps one in a thousand hunters died, not to mention the number of broken limbs that came from falling out of trees when pursued by angry insects.

Accordingly, these woodland workers began to devise safer methods. Hollow sections of trunk were taken from the tree and put on the ground to make primitive wooden hives. In Poland and eastern Germany, ground-based log hives became folk art and were carved into figures such as bears or human beings, perhaps, in the latter case, with the bee entrance positioned below a man's belt so a stream of bees flew comically in and out of his pants.

German woodland beekeepers removing combs from trees.

Although these bee men laid claim to the honey from their nest sites and hives, it was the landowner who let them walk through the woods to collect it, and he demanded a portion of the honey. If the land was sold, this right of honey payments was transferred with it. The woodland laws of medieval Europe were strict and comprehensive. The Ancient Laws of Ireland, codified by St. Patrick in ad 400, covered wild woodland bees as well as those kept in gardens, and imposed a fine for stealing them, the tariff being specified as "a man's full meal of honey." Neighboring properties also had rights of recompense for "the damage bees did to fruit and flowers"; the benefits of pollination were still unknown. As to what const.i.tuted the neighborhood of a hive, it was said that a bee flew as far as the sound of a church bell, or a c.o.c.k's crow, an evocative definition of a local food.

In ninth-century Wess.e.x, King Alfred decreed that a swarm should be announced and claimed by banging metal, neatly turning into an audible declaration of ownership the cla.s.sical belief, known as tanging, that swarming bees could be made to settle with the sound of clashing metal. England's Charter of the Forests in 1225 established that taking someone else's honey and beeswax was an act of poaching. The judgments of special courts created to enforce forest laws have left us some of the names and misdemeanors of these men-of-the-woods. In 1299, several men were caught at Ralph de Caton's house with a nest of wild bees, leaving behind the remnants of the tree they had burned in order to collect the comb. They were fined for both arson and looting. In 1334, another two men were fined for carrying honey out of Sherwood Forest. But in 1335, a court upheld Gilbert Ayton's defense that he was ent.i.tled to the 2 gallons of honey and 2 pounds of wax in his possession; they came from his own woods, and therefore belonged to him.

These rights of honey ownership continued to be exercised in the British Isles long after the medieval period. Even as late as 1852, a landowner in Hampshire's New Forest laid claim, in court, to any honey found in his woods. When it came to wild food, finders were not necessarily keepers. The quant.i.ty of laws that relate to honey and wax shows their economic importance. In Germany until the seventeenth century, the chief value of the forests was not just hunting but also harvesting the honey and wax.

The great woodlands of medieval Northern Europe progressively dwindled, as trees were felled to build ships or burned to smelt metal. Woodland beekeeping continued as long as there was honey to be collected; meanwhile, another way of keeping bees was being developed in northwest Europe where there were fewer large trees to provide material for log hives.

THE FIRST of these new hives in the British Isles were made from wicker woven into conical shapes and covered with a substance called cloom, which was cow dung mixed with something like lime, gravel, or sand. These structures sound like an agricultural version of the wattle and daub of human habitations. They were mostly replaced by the skep, the domed straw hive that has become a much-loved symbol of traditional beekeeping. The word may come from the old Norse of these new hives in the British Isles were made from wicker woven into conical shapes and covered with a substance called cloom, which was cow dung mixed with something like lime, gravel, or sand. These structures sound like an agricultural version of the wattle and daub of human habitations. They were mostly replaced by the skep, the domed straw hive that has become a much-loved symbol of traditional beekeeping. The word may come from the old Norse skeppa skeppa, meaning a basket that both contained and measured grain. Skeps were originally used by Germanic tribes west of the Elbe and entered the British Isles through East Anglia with the Anglo-Saxons; the hives also spread southward as far as the Alpes-Maritimes and Pyrenees in France. Today, these rustic hives are made pretty much in the same way as they were in medieval Europe. They still have their fans among beekeepers because they insulate the bees better than wood, and their rounded shape suits the cl.u.s.tered ball of overwintering bees, helping them survive the cold.

The materials for skeps came originally from the agricultural materials that were at hand. Lengths of wheat straw were used, or dried stalks from other plants such as reeds, rye, and oats. These were gathered together and pushed through a section of cow's horn with the tip cut off to create an aperture about 1 1 inches in diameter. (A twentieth-century skep maker, Frank Alston, suggested subst.i.tuting the cow's horn with the metal ring of a TV aerial.) The gathered bunch of straw was then coiled into a dome shape and bound together with a strong, flexible material, which was traditionally dethorned bramble briars, though cane is now used, more conveniently. inches in diameter. (A twentieth-century skep maker, Frank Alston, suggested subst.i.tuting the cow's horn with the metal ring of a TV aerial.) The gathered bunch of straw was then coiled into a dome shape and bound together with a strong, flexible material, which was traditionally dethorned bramble briars, though cane is now used, more conveniently.

Some skeps were given straw hats, known in parts of the country as hackles, to keep out the rain; others were sited in shelters. One elaborate medieval shelter in Gloucestershire, made of Caen stone, has niches for thirty-eight skeps and magnificent carved dividing brackets between them. It was in danger of demolition until given a resting place, first at the agricultural college at Hartpury, and now at the local church.

On a more domestic scale, there was the bee bole, a recess into a house or garden wall in which one or more skeps were sheltered from the elements. These tend to be sited on north- and east-facing walls to protect the bees from the prevailing southwesterlies. You can see them still in the cob walls-some of which are as much as 4/2 feet thick-of traditional Devon buildings as well as in other rained-upon, traditional places such as the Lake District and the Yorkshire dales. One c.u.mbrian bee bole can be spied in an ill.u.s.tration in Beatrix Potter's Tale of Jemima Puddleduck Tale of Jemima Puddleduck. Beatrix Potter took her images from her surroundings and in real life you can see this very bee bole beside the vegetable patch at her house Hill Top, near Ambleside. In mid-Devon there are two, high up in a wall of the Ring O'Bells pub at Cheriton Fitzpaine, a village near Exeter. Bee boles come in different shapes in different parts of the country: in Scotland they are rectangular; in Devon, arched or domed; and in Kent, gabled or triangular. These skep niches are an example of the local distinctiveness that has been so eroded in this h.o.m.ogenized world, but is still there to be enjoyed in many rich particulars, once you are on the lookout.

KEEPING BEES in skeps was different from modern beekeeping in one vital aspect: in order to cut out the comb, many people destroyed the colony. The skep was put over a pit that held a burning paper dipped in brimstone; this ga.s.sed the bees with sulfur. A cabbage or rhubarb leaf might be put on top of the smouldering fire to stop it from being extinguished by the falling, dead bees-a curiously homey detail for a deadly task. Care had to be taken not to adulterate the comb, and the sellers could be taken to court if this happened. in skeps was different from modern beekeeping in one vital aspect: in order to cut out the comb, many people destroyed the colony. The skep was put over a pit that held a burning paper dipped in brimstone; this ga.s.sed the bees with sulfur. A cabbage or rhubarb leaf might be put on top of the smouldering fire to stop it from being extinguished by the falling, dead bees-a curiously homey detail for a deadly task. Care had to be taken not to adulterate the comb, and the sellers could be taken to court if this happened.

Beekeepers tended to remove the comb from the heaviest and the lightest skeps; in the case of the former, because it would contain the most honey; and in the latter, because the bees probably wouldn't survive the winter on the honey within in any case. There was much disquiet about the killing of these sacred and useful creatures, and people devised ways of driving them from one skep into another so the comb could be taken from an empty nest. One of the disadvantages of this annual slaughter was that it bred out the more productive strains. Nevertheless, the colonies left to survive the winter would, if all had gone well, get going again in the spring, when they would reproduce and swarm once the skep was too small. The breakaway bees would be caught in new skeps, to start all over again. Straw skeps are used by some beekeepers today precisely to catch swarms; their light, handy shape is good for this task.

I went to see a contemporary skep maker and beekeeper, David Chubb, who lives in south Gloucestershire. His farmhouse was in South Cerney, a village that has been colonized by the commuters; there were plenty of four-wheel-drives on the roads, raring to tackle the wild, urban terrain of Cirencester and Swindon. In a previous life, before he went into farming and skep-making, David was a maintenance mechanic on the railways. One of his best honey crops comes from the wildflowers on the disused Southampton-to-Birmingham railway line. It was incongruous but somehow satisfying that the old-fashioned skep was being made in a place that so defied the picture postcard.

The Chubbs have moved through mixed farming, diversifying long before it was the trend, to keep the big, rare-breed Cotswold sheep, chickens for eggs, and bees, as well as doing contract work and making skeps. David sometimes puts his Cotswolds onto nearby land to act as bucolic lawn mowers, and problems can arise when people want to fit the sheep in like appointments; when commuters live alongside farmers, neither quite speaks the other's language. But this is a modern village, where tight estates of new houses face onto fields, and both tribes need to talk to each other if the incomers are to get their rural dream and the farmer is to survive. Both have an attachment to the idea of the countryside, as well as its reality. When I asked David what he liked about the countryside, his blue eyes became momentarily abstracted. "I escaped over the garden wall when I was four," he said, "and I've never gone back. It's better out there. Nature."

What better way to be a part of your place than to eat your surroundings in the form of honey? David now focuses mostly on the skeps and the bees, selling his pots in local shops and from his home. He started making skeps because he couldn't get hold of one himself. Some people like them for display because the golden dome represents a certain image of rusticity; like the handicrafts made for the heritage pub market, the symbol lingers beyond use.

But at least half of David's customers still use skeps for beekeeping, often buying them from him via the modern means of the Internet. At the Chubbs' farmhouse, we looked at photographs of Dutchmen with skepfuls of bees at markets-the tradition of these hives continued longer in the Netherlands-and at pictures of skeps that showed how the bees' entrance hole could be found at different places, at the bottom or the top, and at images of another kind that looked like a medieval helmet for a scarecrow, with a single eye-slit halfway up. David agreed that skeps provide good insulation (he said an inch of straw was equivalent to 6 inches of wood), and he continues to keep at least one colony in this way as an insurance policy against a big winter freeze. Mostly, though, he keeps his own bees in wooden hives, because it is so much easier to harvest the honey from them.

I watched David in his skep workshop. He buys old-fashioned wheat from the same sources as thatchers, who also need longer stalks, harvested with a binder to preserve their length. The wheat still had its ears on, and David pulled them off as he went along. As he talked, he tamed the rustling tail of wheat-ears into a fat coil, a process that reminded me of hairdressing, and I remembered how the medieval skep's domed outline and coils were later repeated in the 1950s and '60s beehive hairdo.

We went to David's honey room, where the jars of glowing honey resembled big, boiled sweets, then moved outside to see his skep. It looked like a huge, straw thimble; when David turned it over, I could see the layers of honeycomb in beautiful, organic swags, ma.s.sed with bees-a mesmerizing sight.

Driving away from the gold skep and gold honey, and the shorn wheat fields that were Scandinavian blond in the bleaching light of late August, I thought again of how the skep was still the single most evocative image of beekeeping, instantly conjuring up a cottage garden full of drowsily buzzing bees in late-afternoon sun-even if, in reality, it was now made in a commuter village and sold to customers who did not use it for beekeeping at all.

"So we the bees make honey, but not for ourselves": a seventeenth-century woodcut showing a skep.

DEEPINTHECONFUSING forests of Shakespeare's forests of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream A Midsummer Night's Dream, t.i.tania ordered her fairies to find wax candles to light the way for her newly beloved Bottom (act 3, scene 1):

"The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees,/And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs,/And light them at the fiery glow-worms eyes,/To have my love to bed and to arise."

Shakespeare shows the contemporary confusion between the pollen loads on the bees' legs and the wax they secrete from within themselves.

One of the most extraordinary skills of the honeybee is its production and use of beeswax. When the bees have no more comb in which to store honey, the nectar they have collected stays in their honey stomachs and the stored sugars a.s.similate into their bodies; this enables them to secrete small, transparent plates of wax through the glands on the front of the abdomen. The wax is moved by their legs to their mouth parts, where it is kneaded until it is ready for use. With this new wax, they build more comb.

The honeycomb is built by a hanging curtain of worker bees, who pa.s.s the materials up a chain to their fellow builders. The cells of the honeycomb are hexagonal because this design needs the minimum amount of wax to hold the maximum amount of honey-almost 2/4 pounds of honey in just 1 square foot of comb. The bees are so careful with their wax because it takes nearly 16 pounds of honey to produce enough comb for a colony: wax secretion is therefore a very expensive item in the hive's energy economy.

Light as a feather, the wax comb is now ready for use. It hangs in parallel, vertical sheets, a network of regular cells placed back-to-back and tipped on a slight angle so the nectar and honey do not drip out.

HONEY WAS NOT always the most valuable product of the bees; in medieval Europe, beeswax was so important that it could almost be said that honey was a by-product of the wax. In England, at the time, the wax could be worth eight times as much as honey. No wonder, when it provided the most prized means of lighting after dark. Just as the bees can manipulate the warm wax to make comb, humans can easily mold and shape molten wax. It is flammable, as well as malleable, and so can be wrapped around a piece of fabric, or a wick, to form a candle. always the most valuable product of the bees; in medieval Europe, beeswax was so important that it could almost be said that honey was a by-product of the wax. In England, at the time, the wax could be worth eight times as much as honey. No wonder, when it provided the most prized means of lighting after dark. Just as the bees can manipulate the warm wax to make comb, humans can easily mold and shape molten wax. It is flammable, as well as malleable, and so can be wrapped around a piece of fabric, or a wick, to form a candle.

The cheapest candles of the medieval world were rush lights. Reeds were picked, ideally, in the early summer when they were young and juicy, stripped to just a single layer covering the pith, and dipped in melted fat. These rush lights could be made from beeswax, as Pliny the Elder mentions in the first century ad, but mostly they were made with animal fat, or tallow. Sheep fat was the best, with beef fat as second choice. The pig, a commonly kept animal that could be fed on household sc.r.a.ps, unfortunately had fat that burned with a thick, black smelly and greasy smoke; since pig fat tastes far better than sheep fat, perhaps this was ultimately providential. The smelly, sputtering nature of tallow candles shows why, in contrast, beeswax was so valued. Beeswax candles have a beautiful, clean, and cozy scent of honey, and emit a pure, unsmoky light. The seventeenth-century bee author, Reverend Charles Butler, summarized its merits: "... it maketh the most excellent light, fit for the eyes of the most excellent; for cleernesse, sweetness, neatnesse, to be preferred before all other."

There were many kinds of beeswax candles. Perchers were tall candles for altars and ceremonies. Quarerres Quarerres were large, square candles that were used in funerals. Flambeaux-torches made from material soaked in resin and coated with beeswax-were designed to burn so fiercely and brightly that they could be kept flaming in wind and rain and taken on processions. The way the cloth was twisted may have given rise to the word were large, square candles that were used in funerals. Flambeaux-torches made from material soaked in resin and coated with beeswax-were designed to burn so fiercely and brightly that they could be kept flaming in wind and rain and taken on processions. The way the cloth was twisted may have given rise to the word torch torch from the Latin from the Latin torquere torquere, to twist.

In great halls, wax candles of many sizes were set in candelabra. The brightness of their light enhanced the status of the lord of the household, and candles were part of the payments for members of the household. Domestic accounts go into some detail on such allowances, showing just how valuable wax was. In the fifteenth century, the Lord Steward of Edward IV had a winter allowance that included a torch to attend to himself, a tortayes tortayes (small tree) of candles to set at his livery basin, three perchers, and seven tallow candles. (small tree) of candles to set at his livery basin, three perchers, and seven tallow candles.

Beeswax could be readily available, if you kept bees, in which case you could make the candles yourself; but by the late thirteenth century, demand outstripped supply, and much wax was imported, mostly from Europe through the Hanseatic League. There were now also dedicated candle makers. These wax chandlers rose to be one of the eighty-four livery companies of the City of London. They started as a "mistery," which may come from the Latin ministerium ministerium, meaning occupation (the French word metier metier comes from the same root). Misteries were composed of master craftsmen, who served an apprenticeship and formed an organization that represented the skills and pride of a trade, maintaining standards by such means as fining makers who sold adulterated candles. In 1482, the wax chandlers were honored with a charter, decorated on its borders with honeybees amid flowers and bearing the royal seal made of resin mixed with beeswax. With the honor of a charter, like the other guilds, the wax chandlers were "invited" to contribute money to the Crown to swell its war coffers. comes from the same root). Misteries were composed of master craftsmen, who served an apprenticeship and formed an organization that represented the skills and pride of a trade, maintaining standards by such means as fining makers who sold adulterated candles. In 1482, the wax chandlers were honored with a charter, decorated on its borders with honeybees amid flowers and bearing the royal seal made of resin mixed with beeswax. With the honor of a charter, like the other guilds, the wax chandlers were "invited" to contribute money to the Crown to swell its war coffers.

The chandlers made candles in various ways. Molten wax might be dripped down a wick, building up in successive layers; a wick might be drawn through melted wax; the soft wax could be rolled around a wick; or it could be put in a mold with the wick placed in the middle. Some candles were really just long lengths of wick barely covered in wax. Long coils of these thin tapers were called trundles; in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century France, lengths of fiber, long enough, it was said, to encircle a town, might be dipped in wax and burnt as a protective charm. Whether or not one literally did go around a town, the idea ill.u.s.trates how candles were both practical and symbolic. Nowhere was this more evident than in the Christian church.

THE CHURCH was a voracious consumer of wax candles in the Middle Ages. Monks kept bees, and rents and t.i.thes from their substantial lands could be paid by their tenants in wax. Candles were needed in large quant.i.ties to light the large, dark s.p.a.ces of churches, chapels, and cathedrals. In the eighth century, Pope Adrian I burnt a perpetual light in St. Peter's in Rome consisting of 1,370 lights in the shape of a cross: it must have been a staggering sight in the dim world of the Dark Ages. was a voracious consumer of wax candles in the Middle Ages. Monks kept bees, and rents and t.i.thes from their substantial lands could be paid by their tenants in wax. Candles were needed in large quant.i.ties to light the large, dark s.p.a.ces of churches, chapels, and cathedrals. In the eighth century, Pope Adrian I burnt a perpetual light in St. Peter's in Rome consisting of 1,370 lights in the shape of a cross: it must have been a staggering sight in the dim world of the Dark Ages.

Candles have a many-layered significance in Christian belief; not only was light seen as symbolic of the awakened soul, but beeswax was regarded as pure because of the chasteness of the worker bees. If the wax was the spotless body, the wick was the soul and its flame a symbol of divinity, or the Holy Spirit. Some took the metaphor further, to portray the drones as monks, and their autumnal expulsion from the hive as a symbol of good moral housekeeping by the punishment of the lazy. Pure beeswax candles were burned at liturgical services, and there was a belief that the souls of the dead could only be at peace when watched over by the living. Candles were burned in their memory, a custom that continues today in the slightly different form of votive candles.

Honey, too, was also part of early Christian custom. Until the seventh century, people took honey and milk just after being baptized, a rite that echoes the early diet of the infant Zeus. In another story that connects the medieval world with that of the Greeks and Romans, St. Ambrose, the fourth-century Bishop of Milan-and the patron saint of beekeepers-was visited by bees in his cradle. The insects flew up high, vanishing as if to heaven. This was said to be a sign that St. Ambrose would be both great and eloquent.

Candlemas on February 2 is the day when the candles for the year are blessed and distributed. Based around the same time as the Roman pagan festival of purification, it is the festival of the purification of the Virgin Mary and marks the presentation of the infant Jesus at the temple, when St. Simeon, in the Nunc Dimittis, called Jesus "a light to lighten the gentiles." By the middle of the fifth century, candles became an explicit feature of the occasion.