Aesop’s Fable ‘The Bear and the Bees’: To Bear in Silence

"The fable of the bear and the bees," 1672, by Jan van Kessel. Oil on copper, 1672. Public Domain

When we fail to restrain our passions or impatience, we cultivate harmful habits that can lead us to act out in detrimental and intractable ways. However, rather than being the slaves of these habits, we can prevent disaster by cultivating the virtues that counter these vices: temperance and patience.

In the fable, “The Bear and the Bees,” Aesop ponders the weak human inclination to give way to passions and impatience. By inspecting the actions of an impatient and greedy bear, he proves that we must restrain ourselves in silence.

Lost Temper

In Aesop’s story, a bear, roaming through the woods for food, finds a fallen tree that contains a beehive. Wanting some of the honey, the bear begins nosing around the log.

One of the bees, coming home and seeing the bear, flies and stings him. Irritated by this sting, the bear “loses his temper in an instant” and destroys the log and beehive.

The bear loses the honey and soon feels the anger of the bees for in retaliation, the bees attack the bear and sting him so much that he must run away.

Yet Thomas Bewick’s translation of Aesop’s fable highlights a deeper meaning that adds to the children’s story.

Bewick’s translation tells of how the bear climbs over a fence to get to the beehive. But, by climbing the fence, the bear makes a big mistake, for it intrudes upon the home of the bees. To satisfy its one desire, it disregards the fence to get to the honey.

The bear immediately begins to rob the hive of its honey. And the bees, out of revenge for this intrusion and destruction, sting it.

Though the bees cannot do much to the bear’s thick hide, they do not stop stinging him. Annoyed by the unbearable pain, “with impatience [the bear] tore the skin over his ears, with his own claws, and suffered ample punishment for the injury [it] had done the Bees, in breaking open their waxen cells.”

The Application

Aesop’s story concludes with the advice: “It is wiser to bear a single injury in silence than to provoke a thousand by flying into a rage.” Patience and restraint are crucial in our dealings with others and ourselves. If we do not bear wrongs patiently and silently, our actions will prove disastrous for us and others.

In Thomas Bewick’s translation, Bewick points out the added significance of the story and the gravity of the moral that we would otherwise not detect. He shows that, just like the bear, we often hurt or offend others because we seek to gratify our base appetites. He says that “there are those who would not scruple to bring desolation upon their country, and run the hazard of their own necks into the bargain, rather than [hinder] a wicked inclination, either of cruelty, ambition, or avarice.”

Rather than cultivating the impatience and vulgar passions that lead to such results, we should practice restraint. Before we retaliate, we must be silent and restrain ourselves. As Marianne Moore says in her poem, “Silence”: “The deepest feeling always shows itself in silence; / not in silence, but restraint.”

When we silence ourselves and our passions, we become our own masters. By conquering ourselves, we become better equipped to battle the hardships and attacks that come from without. For silent restraint gives us much more strength than any amount of anger or passion.