Like the bees themselves, Butler treats the flowers and plants around him as living agents shaping the world of the bees and the beekeeper. Flowers and plants move through multiple roles in The Feminine Monarchie: medicinal, ecological, architectural, behavioural, technological, temporal, culinary, and theological. In his book, Butler shows plants modulating through all these functions, and I will point to chapters that deal with plants and flowers in different ways; I've also supplied a list of plants that appear in The Femmine Monarchie with their names and places.

Chapter I

Butler begins his story of plants with the human body and the beekeeper's unguarded vulnerability, introducing flora not through the bees' biology but through the experience of a beekeeper being stung: we are introduced to plants as pharmacopoeia. Health and safety first. The plant remedies featured follow humoral logic: bee stings introduce heat and swelling, so plants respond with cooling and emollient qualities.

Butler lists houseleek, rue, mallows, ivy, marigold, and hollyhock as potentially soothing for pain and swelling, saying 'he has heard' they work (just as elsewhere in the book, he is highly selective and deliberate in how he frames the provenance of his knowledge). In addition to word of mouth on this topic, he also uses remedies from early modern herbals. There is one remedy from Rembert Dodoens that recommends mixing rue with hydromel, the mead drink detailed in chapter X.

Rue drunken with Wine, or rather with Hydromel, or the leaves stamped with Honie and Salt, and laid to the wound, is good against stinging of Bees, Waspes, Hornets, and Scorpions; Dodoens, l.2.c.83.¹

Even before Butler elaborates the hive's organisation or the bees' labour, he situates apiculture within a tradition of practical household medicine, underscoring the way that botanical knowhow and beekeeping knowhow are inseparable. If the book welcomes the reader into the hive, herbal remedies are a crucial part of the kit required to visit the hive, just as a modern laboratory may have an epi-pen and lidocaine wipes in the drawer. We get a vivid sense of Butler's surroundings in his garden, as he textually gestures to the plants he understands to operate in an interactive relationship with the bees, and to be woven into the relevant parts of his library and experience.

Chapter II

Beehives and bees are very greatly suited to gardens and flowers, a business of especial profit and economy, where circumstances have been favourable. NH XXI.70(41)

In Chapter II, plants define the physical environment in which bees live and work. Trees and herbs are understood as architectural features shaping air, shade, and bee behaviour.

Plum, cherry, apple, filbert, hazel, thorn are preferred for catching or receiving swarms due to their branching structure. Butler talks about lavender borders, which bees willingly rest upon. Other plants are dangerous. Beans, hemp and pease are all too tall, obstructing the flight of young bees. There are thick weeds and grasses, which chill the bees that fall among them.

These categories reveal an early modern understanding of plant microclimates.² Butler perceives how shade, height, and moisture-retention affect bees physiologically. Early modern herbals similarly discuss the agricultural implications of crop height and shading. Thomas Parkinson, writing in the 1640s, for instance, warns that tall plants create 'unwholesome shadow', echoing Butler's practical concern for the bees' inability to rise after falling into dense foliage.³ Although bees can of course live unkept, they ideally need a curated botanical environment — both cleared and cultivated — to thrive. Reading Butler we are reminded how closely all these spheres of knowledge sit: agriculture, husbandry, botanical knowledge, herbals, physic.

The procedural organisation of the beekeeping garden operates in Pliny's cultural tradition of sensory awareness. The quotation at the top of this section, which Butler attached to the reference-webbing of his book, is from a text that is all about considerations of how the garden feels to the bees. Eleni Hall Manoloraki has written about how Pliny demands 'simultaneous attunement to human and animal senses' and these early chapters are about exactly that — how the beekeeper attunes himself and his property to his bees.⁴ Attunement, in this Plinian metaphorical sense is made literal by Butler as we really do spend the first half of the book tuning our ear to listen to the bees' music in chapter V (a chapter that marks the moment at which reader, beekeeper, and hive begin to resonate on the same sensory register and the bees' voices become audible). The floral and vegetative environment of these early chapters is instructive, but it also acclimatises the reader to the sensory and acoustic world of the hive, bringing the reader into pitch.

Chapter III

In Chapter III, plants are no longer merely part of the landscape; they become instruments, building materials, and continued sensory stimuli. Butler writes about herbs as olfactory tools. To 'season' new hives, he recommends thyme, savoury, marjoram, balm, fennel, hyssop, mallow and bean-tops. Many of these plants are mythically and botanically layered. One such example is thyme, about which the Folger library has made this lovely video.

Natural material is used to craft beekeeping equipment. Wheat and rye straw form the hackle covering; bethwyn, bramble and brier serve as fastenings; hazel, willow and oak are used as wiping rods. (Some of this material will be from outside the garden, so the beekeeper ventures further afield.) This artisanal activity from the beekeeper involves skill and industry, and Butler's description allows the reader to experiment with inversions of scale and attunement. The beekeeper is building the hive and environment just as the bees build their comb and undertake their constructive processes: both are collecting material from the garden.

In the procedural sense, we are building a beehive; in the dramatic sense, we are setting the stage, in a palace, or theatre, woven from plant matter.

Chapter V

Chapter V treats plants as practical instruments for predicting, managing, and interpreting swarming behaviour. Butler recommends that the swarm-catching brush be made from rosemary, hyssop, or fennel, aromatic herbs whose scent and texture, length and brittleness help gather and settle moving bees. Elsewhere mugwort, marjoram, and wormwood are used to dislodge clustered bees or redirect their movement from inconvenient settling places. White nettle and true nettle become temporary resting surfaces onto which swarms may descend and cluster. The chapter repeatedly presents plants, herbs, and flowers as active behavioural tools. The beekeeper governs the swarm through scent, sound, irritation, attraction, and contact. The keeper acts less like a ruler than a conductor, cueing the environment itself and gradually moving the music into shape.

Butler repeatedly ties the movement of the swarm to seasonal flowering patterns, using plants as temporal indicators through which the beekeeper reads the colony's condition. Early swarms appear 'before knapweed blow', while the flowering of blackberry indicates late swarms. Once blackberries and honeydew fail, however, swarming becomes dangerous and largely unprofitable.

Here Butler describes the idea that the weather makes flowers more concentrated:

[I]n hot and drie weather the hony dewes are raised, and the adventitious moisture is drained from the flowers, the pure naturall juice onely being leaft in them: of both which they gather all the day long without interruption. (I2v)

Chapter V also attends to the sound of swarming. Butler repeatedly describes the rising 'noise' and agitation that accompany a colony preparing to cast. Swarms are first recognised acoustically. The beekeeper hears the thickening hum and restless motion of the bees before locating where they will settle. This practical attention to swarm sound culminates in Butler's famous musical notation of bee piping, included as a transcription of the queen's and young bees' calls during swarming time. The music does not appear separately from the chapter's practical concerns but emerges directly from them. Changes in buzzing, humming, and piping become diagnostic signs through which the beekeeper judges the colony's condition just as carefully as he observes blossom times and flowering cycles. Looked at through this lens, the magical shift by which all the hard listening work of the reader and beekeeper resolves, temporarily, into an audible bee voice with words, is brought about by sensory attentiveness to the environment. Like a magic eye picture, the reward for five chapters of sensory immersion, or the real work of setting up a hive throughout the early part of the year, is rewarded with translation and communication between bee and human (in that one direction).

Aromatic herbs are shaken or brushed through the moving cloud of bees; flowering conditions determine whether the swarm will thrive; enclosed straw hives amplify and contain the swarm's collective noise. Butler presents swarming as an event in which flowers, herbs, weather, sound, and insect movement interact simultaneously. In this respect, the chapter extends a tradition already visible in Pliny's Natural History, where bees are described as particularly responsive to fragrant plants and flowering gardens. Plants in Chapter V do not merely attract bees symbolically or ornamentally: they regulate the timing, movement, settlement, and behaviour of the swarm itself.

Chapter VI

Chapter VI is the botanical centrepiece of The Feminine Monarchie. Here Butler describes the cyclical progression of flowers through the zodiac months, constructing a phenological calendar long before modern ecology formalised the concept.

'Phenology' now denotes the timing of natural events, and the way that the phases of the year can be understood not through our conventional date/month system, but through tracking of signs like the first bud of various trees, or the first nesting of birds. The Woodland Trust runs a collaborative phenological calendar, which you can see here. Some consider Robert Marsham as the first phenologist, and his article Indications of Spring, published in the Royal Society's journal Philosophical Transactions as the first openly phenological text.⁵ However, it is clear that Butler's seasonal bee observations from Wootton, which rest on a culture of popular zodiacal almanacs, form an important part of the history of this kind of phenological thinking.

Plants appear in the text as seasonal markers. Each month — Pisces, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, Libra, Scorpio — is defined through its signature plants. Butler's lists align closely with contemporary herbal and agricultural calendars:

• Pisces: winter gillyflower, hazel catkins
• Aries: box, withy-palm, daffodil, lily, blackthorn
• Taurus: plum, gooseberry, cherry, pear, apple, crab, barberry, vetch, maple
• Gemini: beans, archangel, fumitory, ribwort, honeysuckle
• Cancer: benet, mallows, thyme, knapweed, blackberry
• Leo: lavender, melon, thistle, redweed
• Virgo—Scorpio: dandelion, heath, ivy, archangel

The sequence constructs a tonally shifting landscape through which the bees travel over the course of the year. Orchard trees appear alongside weeds, hedgerow plants beside cultivated herbs, heathland beside gardens. The chapter reads almost like a guided progression through the English landscape itself, its textures and colour schemes,⁶ following the changing availability of blossom, nectar, and pollen from late winter into autumn.

It isn't as though this was unfamiliar -- quite the opposite. Herbals frequently arranged material seasonally, while many almanacs included tables of flowering and agricultural labour. Butler extends these conventions to create a specifically apicultural calendar in which the hive becomes synchronised with the unfolding botanical year, and, by implication, the human almanac, and indeed older georgic patterns derived from Virgil's calendrical classic. All of these traditions are folded into Butler's particular situation in Wootton and its surrounding area.

We also find the idea of 'honey dew' which was, before modern entomology (and the knowledge that this is a residue left by sap-feeding insects), the concept that god sent down a sticky, delicious substance to land on the leaves of trees:⁷

But the greatest plentie of the purest Nectar commeth from above: which Almightie God doth miraculously destill out of the Aire, ( aerei mellis coelestia dona ) and hath ordained the Oake among all the trees of the Wood, to receive and keepe the same upon his smooth and solide leaves, ( Et quercus sudabunt roscida mella ) untill either the Bees tongue, or the heat of the Sunne have drawne it away. When there is a Honie-dew, you may perceive by the Bees: for, as if they smelled it v: by the sweetnesse of the Aire, they presently issue out of their Hives, in great haste following one an other: and refusing their old haunts, search and seeke after the Oake: which for that time shall have more of their custome, than all the Plants of the Earth. Sometime the Maple and Hazell, take part with the Oake: but little and seldome. While the Honie-dew lasteth, they are exceeding earnest, plying their businesse like men in Harvest: you may see them so thicke at the Hive-doore passing to and fro, that oftentimes they throw downe one an other for haste. (O4r-v).

Butler also ranks plants according to their value for bees and honey production. Thyme yields 'most and best honey'; vetch sustains bees for extended periods; maple provides prolonged nectar flow; heath produces distinctive late-summer honey. The chapter therefore constructs not simply a floral calendar but a hierarchy of deliciousness and taste (taste being another sense that gets attuned to the plants and the bees -- we taste what they taste, or at least the text makes us feel like it). Butler notes that out of disgusting plants delicious honey is made, with the bees conducting a kind of alchemy over bad smells and tastes. And he observes other behaviour: the bees only like to get one kind of pollen per voyage, no matter how many good things they see (this is now called 'floral consistency' or 'floral fidelity').

At the same time, the sheer density of botanical naming produces an effect of abundance and plenitude. The prose starts gathering names the way a bee gathers pollen, moving quickly from blossom to blossom, hedge to orchard, heath to herb-bed. In this sense the chapter does not merely describe bee behaviour but formally reproduces it.⁸ Into this natural and linguistic feast Butler thickens his observations, as those on thyme (O4r), a plant that (as we know) makes the best honey according to three different authors layered up in a lattice of bibliographic annotations.

Plants in Chapter VI also function symbolically and cosmologically. Honeydew gathered from oak leaves becomes a divine substance, coelestia dona — heavenly gifts — linking bee labour with providential order. The boundaries between atmosphere, vegetation, and divinity become permeable: heavenly dew descends upon trees before being transformed into honey by the bees. Such moments integrate empirical field observation with classical natural philosophy and Christian providentialism. Plants appear simultaneously as observable natural phenomena, economic resources, seasonal indicators, and metaphysical signs within a divinely ordered ecology, glittering with the sparkle of all these meanings without active tension between them.

Chapter VII

At the beginning of Wheat-harvest, the state of flowers decaying, which is alwaies about Virgo, the maine robbing beginneth. (FM, R1r)

In Chapter VII we meet enemies, and especially enemy bees. We see the exhaustion of the floral calendar established in the preceding chapter. Where Chapter VI unfolds through abundance, succession, and botanical plenitude, Chapter VII (at least in part) turns toward depletion, contraction, and scarcity. Wheat harvest, occurring around Virgo, signals not merely a calendar event but a turning point within the life of the hive. As fields are cut back and flowering plants begin to fade, the supply of nectar diminishes rapidly.

The landscape itself changes texture, and the expansive scene of summer begins to collapse. As flowers disappear, the bees increasingly turn toward robbing, invading weaker hives in search of stored honey. Competition replaces the relative harmony of the flowering months. Plants therefore structure this chapter, though now through their absence and decline rather than their abundance.

Butler uses the entropy of the season as a pressure or intensifier on the hive, transforming seasonal plant decline into a behavioural and political problem for the bees themselves. He conducts his own experiment, or observes nature doing so, and the natural scarcity is reminiscent of modern experiments on bee stress.⁹ The chapter therefore functions as the inverse of the lush catalogues of Chapter VI. Instead of accumulating blossoms and forage plants, it traces their disappearance from the landscape. Thinking musically, we might say the abundance dissipates. The sonic energy of high summer has dispersed, the numinous intensity has faded, and so have the flowers.

Classical natural history frequently associated failed forage and poor flowering seasons with disorder among bees. Virgil's Georgics repeatedly associates environmental instability with agitation and disorder within the hive, emphasising the bees' dependence upon temperate climates, floral abundance, and carefully managed landscapes. Likewise, Pliny's Natural History stresses that the quality and productivity of honey depend upon seasonal regularity, favourable weather, and access to flowering plants.

Chapter VIII

When the bees' natural foraging fails, the beekeeper must artificially nourish the hive with substitute foods: figs, raisins, apples, pears, and sweet wort.¹⁰ Butler presents these substances as emergency provisions administered during periods of floral scarcity, when the seasonal ecology described in previous chapters can no longer adequately support the colony. Plants are different again here. Earlier chapters focused upon flowers, nectar, and living landscapes; here those things appear in preserved, processed, and stored forms. Bees no longer gather directly from blossoms but receive sustenance transformed through human labour and preparation.

Butler would have read about artificial feeding in Aristotle, who explicitly recommends feeding bees figs and sweet substances, and more broadly in Roman writers like Varro, Columella, and Palladius, which he would have added to his own trial and error at the hive.¹¹

The foods Butler lists are also significant because they belong as much to the household pantry as to the garden or field. They are preserves, the purpose of which is to keep items from the plenitude of summer against the inevitability of natural decay.¹²

At the same time, these substitute foods mirror the bees' own practices of storage and preservation. Just as the hive accumulates honey against winter scarcity, the beekeeper draws upon dried, concentrated, and fermented fruit to sustain the colony through periods of environmental decline. Artificial feeding links human and insect survival strategies.¹³ The floral abundance of earlier chapters is transformed into stored sweetness capable of extending life beyond the natural flowering season.¹⁴

Plants in Chapter VIII are therefore no longer ecological partners within a reciprocal flowering landscape, but emergency rations administered within an increasingly fragile environment. The chapter reveals the limits of the hive's dependence upon natural forage and the growing necessity of human intervention once the botanical year begins to fail. Butler presents the beekeeper as a surrogate provider who temporarily replaces the absent flower, filling the ecological gap left by the collapse of seasonal bloom. In terms of book layout, the bees get their preserves, the memories of the full garden, a chapter before the humans. They are recompensed before their honey is enjoyed.

Chapter X

In Chapter X, the beekeeper harvests the fruit of this labour, and the final outcome of the bees' earlier industry with the flowers in the garden.

After killing or removing the bees, and taking the combs, what remains is to process the honey. By part three of this chapter, the world of plants and flowers is wholly in the kitchen. Butler lists numerous fruits, herbs, and spices (including, here, imported spices) used in marmalades, syrups, conserves, and salves: quinces, wardens, apples, roses, violets, and damsons alongside cinnamon, ginger, cloves, mace, thyme, rosemary, and bay. The floral world of the hive ultimately re-enters the human body through sweetened medicines, preserves, and restorative compounds.

Some recipes are unattributed, but are very similar to those found across early modern recipe books, while many are attributed to Guillaume Plançon ('Plantius'), the editor of physician Jean Fernel's work on physic. Others are caught up in huge cascades of references, such as the opening parts of section 3 (in the 1623 edition), where the majority of the text is made up of footnotes. Here, Butler confirms the worth of the work earlier in the book by ratifying the outcome. He writes about honey within a broader culture of household physic in which pleasure and remedy frequently overlap.¹⁵

The unusual length of Chapter X reflects the preservative logic that governs its subject matter. Just as honey extends the life of flowers and fruits beyond their natural season, the chapter itself prolongs and accumulates botanical abundance through proliferating recipes, compounds, and preparations. Its accumulative structure resembles the expansive forms of recipe books, herbals, and books of household physic, layering ingredient upon ingredient in a textual analogue to preservation itself.

The final chapter restocks the beekeeper with copious resources precisely at the moment when the flowering year has already passed. And so it can all begin again.

* * *

Following this line through the text, it is possible to see it as an ecological text avant la lettre — one that interweaves botany, agriculture, medicine, theology, and household practice into a single coherent natural philosophy. Bees may be the monarchy, but plants are the material kingdom upon which it rests.