Ovid on Bugonia

“He said: ‘Do you ask how to recover your bees? Kill a heifer and bury its carcase in the earth, Buried it will produce what you ask of me.’ The shepherd obeyed: the beast’s putrid corpse Swarmed: one life destroyed created thousands.”

“However if trust is only placed in proven things, do you not see that whenever corpses putrefy, due to time or melting heat, they generate tiny creatures? Bury the carcases of sacrificed bulls (it is a known experiment) in the ditch where you have thrown them, and flower-sipping bees, will be born, here and there, from the putrid entrails. After the custom of their parent bodies, they frequent the fields, are devoted o work, and labour in hope of harvest. A war-horse dug into the earth is the source of hornets.”