As the orchards begin to blossom, I am always amazed that beauty can be so renewable.

I am also happily surprised at some of the reading selections on the Internet.

The subject of bees always interested me. Although there is nothing new about bees, there is so much about them that I personally don't know.

Today I was looking at sites with the search term pleasure drone, when after pages of listings for a metal band called Halloween and their song entitled Pleasure Drone, I stumbled upon a Google digital scan of a book about bees called Dzierzon's Rational Bee-Keeping or Theory and Practice of Dr. Dzierzon by Dr. Jan Dzierzon. Incidentally, my parents' wedding anniversary is on Halloween.

The book's table of contents is an education in itself.

The book is 289 pages and is an old fashioned and complete guide to beekeeping, published in the mid-nineteenth century. Like human nature, bee nature has not changed very much. There is a lot of sociobiology in the book.

Long before modern medicine, people recognized that honey had medicinal properties. "When used topically (as, for example, as a wound dressing), hydrogen peroxide is produced by dilution with body fluids."

Honey has a very acidic nature, a pH between 3.2 and 4.5. Because of this, undiluted honey can be used as a topical ointment in cases where medicinal antibiotics have proven ineffective, such as in cases of diabetic ulcer and in easing the damage that is done by colitis.

Wound gels with honey combined with other "Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA)" have proven effective.


In emergencies, honey can be used as a topical dressing. Pure honey, poured into a spoon, makes a wonderful cough remedy.

Honey has historic applications in cosmetics also. This is largely for the same reasons it is effective as a medicine.

"The beneficial effect of honey on the skin has an age-old repute. Poppea, the comely wife of Nero, who employed a hundred slaves to attend her beauty, used honey and tepid asses' milk as a face lotion."

Most likely it was the milk that was tepid.

Let's face it, the real joy of honey is its sweetness, however cloying or astringent. It can be clear or murky, sometimes described as smokey, with delicate hints of meadow flowers and savory herbs. It runs slowly and languidly, if at all.

Mellifluous.

The honeycomb, a seeming byproduct, is a marvel in its own right. Beeswax is an unctuous wonder with many uses.

Honeybees are insects that can be herded like sheep or cattle, insects that are somehow lovable despite their stings.

The idea that honeybees might become extinct is absolutely unacceptable. All the space debris and metallic docking stations, all the cigar-shaped rocket ships blasting off for fun-filled adventures in Buck Roger's 21st Century, all the wind-up toys banging clashing cymbals are metaphors needing a salve made of honey.

Those who write about the rapidly diminishing numbers of bee colonies claim to be completely in the dark as to what the problem is. A clear mind and steady hand that actually knows the answer is apparently impossible to find.

That is why I found Dzierzon's Rational Bee-Keeping or Theory and Practice of Dr. Dzierzon by Dr. Jan Dzierzon so dear.

Dr. Dzierzon seems to know every swarming and subtle thing about bees and their keeping, but in his day there were no cell phone towers or H.A.R.P. or evil death rays, excepting the sun, to complicate their keeping.