How Much Did the Romans Know About
Bees?
nd Annabeth Pan, 2 Vice President
The Romans were pretty impressive scientifically. In medicine, figures like Galen made some of the largest advances in medicine for hundreds of years in Europe. But what about something that I personally really like? They knew quite a lot— let’ s see how much of it was right and wrong by modern standards! Fortunately for us( yes, this includes you now) bug fans, Pliny the Elder dedicates an entire book of De Naturalis, the 11th, to discussing entomology( though it includes non-insect creepy crawlies as well).
Pliny is a fan of bugs, as he should be. He praises them highly:“ Nature is to be found in her entirety nowhere more than in her smallest creations.” He actually rightfully surmises that they don’ t have blood like humans’, but do contain some other“ life-giving fluid”— what modern entomologists call hemolymph.
To me, it seemed clear that his favorites were bees( apes; modern scientific name Apidae):“ among all of these species the chief place belongs to the bees”. He writes creatively about them, accurately capturing an impressive amount of their extremely complicated behaviors. For instance, he described specific roles for the workers, like being a guard or taking care of the physical hive, and foraging. Now we know that many of those different functions are real, and based on bee age. He even describes special pollen-carrying compartments on the legs of bees, which are modernly called corbiculae.
Understandably, he also messed some things up. For one, human social standards did hold him back; he assumed that bee society was patriarchal. In reality, it’ s extremely matriarchal, with the queen and all workers being female. He also claims that honey comes from … the heavens?“ Honey comes out of the air, and is chiefly formed at the rising of the stars, and especially when the dog-star itself shines forth.” I don’ t think you need a doctorate to question that one— in reality, bees create honey by drinking nectar and vomiting it up. He is also totally baffled by bee reproduction— possibly because bees do their reproduction inside the hive, where it’ d be hard to observe without more modern methods / tools. They just mate and the queen lays eggs; it’ s not that exciting. Thinking that the queen was a king may have thrown him off too.
This is just scraping the surface. There is far, far more to his entomology( this covers barely the first fifth of his 11th book), and likely even more for all of Romans as a whole. If both insects and Romans pique your interest, I’ d recommend reading up some more!
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