For in Podolia, which is
now subject to the King of Poland, their hives are so great, and combs
so abundant, that huge boars, overturning and falling into them, are
drowned in the honey before they can recover and find the means to
come out.
Our honey also is taken and reputed to be the best, because it is
harder, better wrought, and cleanlier vesselled up, than that which
cometh from beyond the sea, where they stamp and strain their combs,
bees, and young blowings altogether into the stuff, as I have been
informed. In use also of medicine our physicians and apothecaries
eschew the foreign, especially that of Spain and Pontus, by reason of
a venomous quality naturally planted in the same, as some write, and
choose the home-made: not only by reason of our soil (which hath no
less plenty of wild thyme growing therein than in Sicilia and about
Athens, and maketh the best stuff) as also for that it breedeth (being
gotten in harvest time) less choler, and which is oftentimes (as I
have seen by experience) so white as sugar, and corned as if it were
salt. Our hives are made commonly of rye straw and wattled about with
bramble quarters; but some make the same of wicker, and cast them over
with clay.
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