BUGONIA
“Buccanneers of Buzz.” So Emily Dickinson described bees, subject of Bee Wilson’s The Hive, which shows that the subject can form a world history in miniature, and finds room for bugonia. This means ox-birth, which is not in the OED . Many, such as Ovid, thought that “swarms rush from the rotten ox; and one extinguished life produces a thousand” — for 2,000 years this explained bees’ existence. Many an animal was sacrificed, the Egyptians burying them with the horn tips sawn off for the bees’ escape. Samson found them appear his after killing the lion, which appears on tins of Lyle’s Golden Syrup (“out of the strong came forth sweetness”).
CAH