Muffets

[from Campbell, Mary Baine. “Busy Bees: Utopia, Dystopia, and the Very Small.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 36:3 (2006) 619-642]

Thomas Muffet (whose daughter Patience famously sat on a tuffet), as translated from his Theatrum Insectorum in Topsell’s Historie of Four-Footed Beasts:

To conclude this Section you see that Bees (creatures without reason) have not only providence and foresight, joined with art and industrie, perfect order and discipline in their government, being naturally loyal, valiant, and magnanimous, and abhorring as well rebellion and treason, as cowardice and sloth, all which plainly shew that nature in Bees laying down such a pattern should not only be imitated but surpassed by men, lest they be reproved by these unreasonable creatures.