5:36 PM :: Stephen (contact)

The Commonwealth of Bees: A librarian in the YLS Rare Books Room recommended to me Early English Books Online, a really impressive service that provides full text-searchable reproductions of English books. I tried a search for "law merchant," and in addition to some of the standard sources, I found this book:

5. Hartlib, Samuel, d. 1662.
The reformed Common-wealth of bees. Presented in severall letters and observations to Sammuel Hartlib Esq. With The reformed Virginian silk-worm. Containing many excellent and choice secrets, experiments, and discoveries for attaining of national and private profits and riches., London, : Printed for Giles Calvert at the Black-Spread-Eagle at the West-end of Pauls, 1655.

Among other invaluable advice, the treatise offers the following:

Necessarie observations concerning the Premisses.

From the middle of Aprill, until the middest of May , look diligently to thy Bees; for then are they near beginning to hatch, and do stand in need of most help, especially if the Spring be cold, and the wind holding any part of the North or East; whereby the tender buds or blossomes do perish, and the Bees are driven to the blossomes of Apple-trees, which is their utter overthrow and decay.