Out of the Strong Came Forth Sweetness

Golden Syrup has had the same branding since 1885 which makes it the longest continuous branding in the world. But have you ever looked closely at the logo? Look below and see if you can notice something weird.

That is an ex-lion. Above the carcass are what look like flies, but are actually bees. The manufacturer and founder of Golden Syrup, Abram Lyle, was a religious man who chose the logo from a parable in the Bible. There is a story of Samson killing a lion with his hands and then returning to the body a few days later. On his return he noticed that bees had made a hive fill of honey: thus the moral of the story and the tag line of the product: out of the strong came forth sweetness.

I've been looking into this and no, there are no documented cases of bees using a carcass to make a hive. Some yellow jacket flies look a bit like wasps and do though, so it might be the source of the confusion. There is a related myth from throughout classical times called Bugonia which said that bees (or occasionally wasps) would come forth spontaneously from the bodies of large animals when they died. In several Greek writings farmers were encouraged to leave a horse or oxen corpse unburied so that bees might come.

For instance Florentinus of the Geoponica wrote "If any further evidence is necessary to enhance the faith in things already proved, you may behold that carcasses, decaying from the effect of time and tepid moisture, change into small animals. Go, and bury slaughtered oxen the fact is known from experience the rotten entrails produce flower-sucking bees, who, like their parents, roam over pastures, bent upon work, and hopeful of the future. A buried war-horse produces the hornet." Here it is presented as if it is commonplace and known by many.

This myth continued for many into the middle ages and Shakespeare's Henry IV had the line, "Tis seldom when the bee doth leave her comb, in the dead carrion." However this isn't the only persistent myth of where animals come from. The reason barnacle geese have their name is because it was once thought that the came from barnacles. From the 12th to the 18th century people have claimed to have seen geese growing upside down from pieces of wood in their barnacle shells until they break out and emerge. Kerry County Catholics only just unclassified them as fish (which qualified them as being edible on a Friday) and Judaism excludes any birds that grow on trees (which, just to be clear: birds don't grow on trees) from being kosher.  

I wonder how the proposal of a rotting lion corpse on a logo for a food product would go down in a marketing meeting today.