A good concordance will help with references to bees in the Church Fathers, but it’s hard to work on the topic of bees without mentioning the Reverend Jonathan Swift, who (in the 1704 Battle of the Books ) gave the classic metaphorical use, the phrasing of which survives in English to this day: Bees fill their “hives with honey and wax, thus furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are sweetness and light.”
