251But if, since life has brought our misfortunes to bees too, their bodies languish with grievous disease (which you will be able to recognise by no doubtful signs: at once the sick have a different colour, rough leanness disfigures their looks, then they carry the bodies of the lifeless out of the dwellings and lead sad funerals; 257or they hang from the threshold with feet linked, or linger inside behind closed doors, all listless with hunger and sluggish with the cold that numbs them. 260Then a deeper sound is heard, and they hum in a long drawn-out drone, as at times the cold South Wind murmurs in the woods, as the troubled sea hisses with ebbing waves, as raging fire seethes in a closed furnace): then I shall advise you to burn scents of galbanum and to bring in honey through reed pipes, actively encouraging them and calling the weary to their familiar food.
267It will help too to mix in the pounded flavour of oak-gall and dried rose petals, or must boiled down thick over a strong fire, or raisins from the Psithian vine, and Cecropian thyme and strong-smelling centaury. 271There is also a flower in the meadows to which farmers have given the name of amellus, a plant easy for seekers to find; 273for from a single clump it raises a huge forest of stems; itself golden, but in the petals, which are spread thickly around it, the purple of the dark violet glimmers; 277harsh is its taste in the mouth; 277shepherds gather it in the cropped valleys and by the winding streams of Mella.
279Boil its roots in fragrant wine and set them as food at the doors in full baskets.