Charles Butler’s *The Feminine Monarchy, or the History of Bees* (1634 edition) — The Public Domain Review

The first work of its kind published in English, The female monarchy, or the history of bees (1609) by Charles Butler, a priest and logician, remained an influential textbook on beekeeping for centuries. Written six years after the death of Elizabeth I and dedicated to the Queen of England, the incarnation of the bee’s knees, his book buzzes with first-hand observations of the insects he kept in his Hampshire parsonage, which he calls ‘the muse birds’. He reveres the creatures, and his suggested protocols for earning their respect could almost be mistaken for a religious purity code. Because bees are “very chaste and neat,” they “utterly abhor” eaters of leeks, onions, and garlic; because they are sober and hardworking, they will “defend themselves with violence” if approached by drunken, overindulgent subjects. Gradually you get the feeling that Butler longs to be a bee, or at least to live in a bee colony. “To the industrious nature of bees, nothing is more odious than laziness and laziness.” His only grudge is directed at the drone bee, which deviates from the Protestant work ethic, for “he does not work at all, either at home or abroad, and yet spends as much as two workers.”