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| rok = 1975
| url = https://web.archive.org/web/20100107002245/http://www.zswsucha.iap.pl/STREFA_N/WiLeHi/lektury/kronika/0003.htm
}}</ref> Was this a reference to the Biblical "land flowing with milk and honey" or mockery made of the northern savages who, rather then feed on bread, wine and olive oil (like the civilized Mediterranean farmers dodid), make made their living by hunting, gathering and herding? Hard to tell; perhaps it was a little bit of both. Anyway, my point is that it's difficult to imagine Polish cuisine without honey cakes and honey-flavoured gingerbread, honey-sweetened tea, mead and honey liqueurs, such as ''krupnik'' or ''kramambula''.
But the bees' culinary role doesn't stop at their sweet secretion. Poland is one of the world's major producers of temperate-zone fruits largely thanks to these little fluffy workers in black-and-yellow stripes that tirelessly pollinate all those Polish apple, pear, cherry, plum, peach and apricot trees, not to mention berries, buckwheat, cucumbers and canola.<ref>{{Cyt
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You can see at the first glance that it's one big pile of rubbish. It wasn't the heir to the throne that was (usually) elected in Poland, but a new king after the previous one had died or resigned. The process was called an "election", not "selection". And whatever one might say about the actual political power of Polish kings, it was still too important an office to leave the job of picking the right candidate to a bunch of insects. Besides, no one in Poland has ever heard of King "Wiscionsky" or a diamond bee in any of the crowns known to have been kept in the royal treasurytreasure vault. Yet, someone thought the story was credible enough to put it in a book with the word "encyclopedia" in its title, so maybe there is a pollen grain of truth to it?
== A Drone on the Throne ==
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It's true that drones, or male bees, have no stings; but they don't produce honey either, so I'm not sure about the accuracy of this simile. But are we sure that Vladislaus IV is was the same as the king in the election-by-bees story? Not really; neither the surname nor the first name check out. And even though Poland has never had a king by the name "Wiscionsky", it did have one whose first name was Michael.
== Polling Pollinators ==
The Polish political scene at the time was divided into two main factions, with different ideas for Poland's foreign policy and its relations with Europe's two major powers – the Habsburg Monarchy and France. The pro-French party initially supported two candidates for the throne vacated by John Casimir's abdication – Prince Louis Bourbon, better known as the Grand Condé, and Prince Philip William Wittelsbach, Count Palatine of Neuburg. The pro-Habsburg faction, on the other hand, endorsed Duke Charles Leopold of Lorraine. The Grand Condé, famous as an accomplished military commander, was perhaps best suited for the job; which is probably why he was also the first to drop out of the race. As always in Polish politics, negative selection prevailed. It was now down to two contenders, neither of whom spared the expenses needed to bribe the senators (promises to the nobility could be made for free).
Where two are fighting, the third wins, as a Polish proverb goes. Eventually, the nobility got tired of the endless bickering among the senators and decided to take up the idea advocated by Crown Underchancellor Andrzej Olszowski to elect a so-called "Piast". House Piast was Poland's first royal dynasty, back when the throne was still hereditary and not elective, but the idea was not to elect someone with actual Piast roots in his family tree (if this had been the case, then Charles Leopold would have stood a better chance, thanks to Cymburgis of Masovia, a Piast duchess who was his great<sup>8</sup>-grandmother in two different lines; besides, the last actual Piast, George William of Brieg, was still alive). The idea was simply to elect a native Pole rather than any of the foreign princes. The only question was, who specifically was to become this "Piast" king?
And this is when, according to the legend, a swarm of honey bees arrived in the election field and sat on the Polish-born Prince Michael and the nobles concluded that if the bees had already made their pick, then the rest was just formality. All the senators could do was to agree with the choice made by the bugs and the nobility, and thus a completely astonished Michael was proclaimed king.
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But are there any Polish sources that mention the insect-shaped crown element? Not many, but here's an excerpt from an article sent in from an anonymous "apiarist from the Eastern Borderlands" to the interwar magazine ''The Polish Beekeeper''. It mentions both Piast the Wheelwright-''cum''-Beekeeper and the diamond bee:
{{ Cytat
