There were then no bees in Kentucky, and so our hunters generally would have had no wild honey; for bees generally keep pace with, and not much precede, the advancing settlements. Hence originated the name of English flies bestowed upon them by the Indians, who used to say to each other, when they saw a swarm of bees in the woods, "Well, brothers, it is time for us to decamp, for the white people are coming."
(Draper: 2B 184; 6 S 92-93)
(Source - The Draper Manuscripts)
I had no idea honeybees were an Old World thing. Neat. :)
4 comments:
I did not know that. Cool.
(personal note: my dyslexia kicked in, halfway through .. I read it "Hence originated the name of English rifles ..." and thought, HUH??)
I have read that before, but even so, people were using bees to find honey very early on in colonial settlement.
What about native bees, do you have any? We have a native bee here in Australia.
http://woodsrunnersdiary.blogspot.com/
Heh. Fascinating excerpt.
Naturally honey bees are an old-world species. Can't have mead without honey.
Native North American bees are of the bumble-bee variety for the most part. Though carpenter and leaf-cutter bees are also native pollinators.
Paul - tee!
Loup - I honestly don't have that answer for you. There's plenty of yellow-and-black striped critters that sting and aren't honeybees all over the US - but I don't know which arrived where when, and how. :)
Which means... thank you Mark!
And you're right, I should have said "originally exclusively Old World." I think there's a Greek mythic reference to, but can't recall it at the moment.
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