Once the god Apollo noticed a beautiful girl named Cyrene as she fought off a lion while tending her father’s sheep in Thessaly. He fell in love with her and asked the Centaur Chiron’s advice about abducting her. Chiron said she would become a great queen in Libya. So Apollo carried her off to that land, where she gave birth to Aristaeus, meaned ‘the best’. Aristaeus became proficient in agriculture: tending olive trees, making cheese, raising cattle, and cultivating bee hives.
However, he made the mistake of lusting after Orpheus’ bride, Eurydice, who died as he pursued her. His bees started dying, so his mother Cyrene advised him to capture the sea god Proteus. Finding Proteus, Aristaeus asked him for prophesy.
The god told him to make sacrifices to the Dryads -the forest
nymphs and to Oreads -the mountain nymphs. Upon doing so
the bees revived, and the art of bee-keeping was preserved for
later generations.