CHARLES BUTLER: (1560–1647), sometimes called the Father of English Beekeeping, was a logician, grammarist, author, minister (Vicar of Wootton St Lawrence, near Basingstoke, England), and an influential beekeeper. [via wikipedia]
“It wasn’t until 1586 that it was recognized that the head of the honey bee colony is a female queen. This news was popularized by Charles Butler… prior to that, it was assumed the head of the colony must be a male – a ‘king’. Even William Shakespeare, in Henry V, refers to honey bees living in a kingdom, with a king as ruler.” [via buzzaboutbees.net]
“Soon after Queen Elizabeth I died, her beekeeper, Charles Butler, published The Feminine Monarchie (1609). On the surface, the book reflected a dominant philosophy of seventeenth-century England- that is, nature was a model for human virtue. Butler wrote of the bees: ‘In their labour and order at home and abroad they are so admirable that they may be a pattern unto men both of one and of the other’ The bees were loyal to the queen, refusing any type of anarchy or oligarchy. They labored incessantly for the good of the commonwealth. Therefore, according to historian Kevin Sharpe, ‘The keeping of bees was a pastime that was a lesson in statecraft and also one in personal conduct.’”
[quote from Bees in America - How the Honey Bee Shaped a Nation]
/HoneyLove
![PDF: Your Urban Garden is Better with Bees
[via feedthebees.org]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m4lm7yjr4h1qjgwupo1_400.png)
![The Rise of the Backyard Beekeeper By Michael Steinkampf “Backyard beekeeping is nothing new. Until Alexander the Great returned from India with samples of sugar cane, honey was the only sweetener known to Europeans, and it was not uncommon for households to have a hive of honey bees on hand for personal use; a prosperous colony can produce over 100 pounds of honey in a season…But as city-dwellers have become more interested in connecting with Nature, the renewed interest in small-scale agriculture has been accompanied by a resurgence of backyard beekeeping. Beehives seem to be springing up everywhere: Parisian balconies, the gardens of Buckingham Palace and the White House, and most notably the rooftops of New York City, which lifted its ban on urban beekeeping in 2010. In three years, membership in the British Beekeeping Association doubled to more than 20,000, as young urban dwellers strode to transform a rather staid pastime into a vibrant environmental movement… Honey bees do particularly well in suburban environments, where the diverse flora give a steady production of pollen throughout the year, and the absence of crowded bee yards and agricultural pesticides provide a healthy environment for honey bee colonies. Some allergy sufferers claim that the ingestion of pollen found in local honey helps relieve their hay fever. Honey obtained locally is more flavorful than most supermarket honey, which is intensely heated and filtered to prolong shelf life…”[click here to read the full article on bhamweekly.com]](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m3u5i4Cvs01qjgwupo1_500.jpg)
