Well… a happy new year to one and all!

What on earth can I write about in January? Apart from ‘hefting the hives’ every now and then to ensure the bees have enough stores there’s little else going on up at the apiary! So, having looked through my up and coming events for 2023, (on new year’s day), I thought I would write about a man called The Reverend Charles Butler. Why? I hear you cry; because, my blog friends, on the weekend of the 19th & 20th August I have been invited to take part in the Charles Butler 400th Anniversary Celebrations which are taking place in his pastoral home of Wootton St Lawrence.

Who is The Reverend Charles Butler? Well it turns out he’s an extraordinary man.

Charles Butler (1571 – 29 March 1647)

Charles Butler, mostly known as the Father of English Beekeeping; as a young man he spent several years studying in Oxford, where he gained a Master of Arts degree. He was a student of logic, specialised in grammar, an author, priest and influential beekeeper.

In 1593 Butler became the rector at Nately Scures, a parish east of Basingstoke. He published his first book, a Latin translation of work on the teachings of Petrus Ramus, a French humanist and Protestant convert. While still the rector of Nately Scures he took on the position of teaching boys at The Holy Ghost School in Basingstoke but after two years he resigned from both posts and in 1600 became the Vicar of Wooton St. Lawrence, where he stayed until his death and was buried in an unmarked grave in the chancel of his church.

It was here he wrote a book, The Feminine Monarchie, a study of beekeeping. For the next 250 years it served as a practical guide for those wanting to keep bees until the development of hives with moveable combs which changed the practice of beekeeping forever. The book has ten chapters, covering the nature and properties of bees and their queen, the bee-garden and siting of hives, the construction of the hives themselves, the breeding of bees and drones, swarming and hiving, the work of bees, enemies of bees, how to feed bees, how to remove bees, and the fruit and profit of beekeeping. He was, incidentally, one of the first scholars to suggest that bees were led by a Queen rather than a King-bee as advocated by the Greek philosopher Aristotle.

Butler combined his observations of the honeybees with his study of music. Both, he thought, worked together in total harmony, thus serving as good models for a well balanced society. To this end he incorporated in his book a rather eccentric madrigal for four people, Melissomelos, or The Bee’s Madrigal, extolling the virtues of the bees, imitating the sounds of bees at swarming time and reproducing the real sound that a queen makes, known as piping! (you can hear this in the clip below at 2:04 mins).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p2eonteQEps&t=311s

The opening verse begins:

So of all Monarchies that Feminine,
Of famous Amazons excels the rest,
That on this earthie Sphaere haue euer bin,
Whose little hearts in weaker sex (so great a field)
No powers of the mightest Males can make to yield:
They liuing aye, most sober and most chaste,
Their paine-got goods in pleasure scorne to waste.

Butler’s admiration of the honeybees is clear. On the opposite page to the title page he has a picture of a honeycomb with the motto Solertia et Labore, (skill and industry), and in the preface he wrote; “The worke and fruit of the little Bee is so great and wonderfull, so comely for order and beauty, so excellent for Art and wisdome, & so full of pleasure and profit; that the contemplation thereof may well beseeme an ingenious nature.

All of this and so much more. To think I only started to learn about the honeybees in 2008! I feel very honoured to be a part of the Charles Butler 400th Anniversary Celebrations and hope that what I have to share at the celebrations will inspire some in the same way Charles Butler was inspired by the honeybees.

Butler’s church at Wootton St. Lawrence still stands. Wootton has retained the serenity of the downs, and this beautiful building has an atmosphere of wonderful stillness as soon as you step through the doorway. A lovely stained glass window was put in place in honour of Butler after the coronation of Elizabeth II.

At the dedication service in 1954, an Oxford choir came to sing The Bee’s Madrigal. So while you won’t find many statues to music theorists, in a church window in the tiny village of Wootton, you can see the image of an obscure scholar who is worth remembering. You don’t need to share Charles Butler’s religious convictions, nor his fascination with bees, to appreciate the value of many parts working together in harmony.

With special thanks to:

https://corymbus.co.uk/the-bees-madrigal/ (Simon Brackenborough)

and

https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/feminine-monarchy-or-history-bees (Specials Collections Librarian)

whose works have been accessed, adapted and at times copied for this blog.