Changes

What Lelewel focused on were taxes and fines historically paid in honey and wax, as well as the history of Polish apiculture-related legislation. Which is, arguably, a rather big deal, as even today an act of law as important as the Polish Civil Code contains a separate article about chasing a runaway bee swarm.<ref>[https://supertrans2014.files.wordpress.com/2014/06/the-civil-code.pdf Ustawa z&nbsp;dnia 23 kwietnia 1964&nbsp;r. – Kodeks cywilny,] Dz.U. 1964 nr 16 poz. 93, art. 182</ref> But Lelewel didn't write a single word about any bee-shaped jewels. Why, then, did the anonymous beekeeper reference Lelewel when writing about the diamond bee? For this, I believe, we've got to go back to Bessler again. In Bessler's book, the story of a royal election settled by bees and the bee-shaped jewel in the crown is followed by a list of Polish apicultural literature. And the first work on that list is no other than Lelewel's book! My hunch is that the anonymous Borderland beekeeper found the information about the diamond bee in Bessler's book and thought (wrongly) that it was taken from the first source listed in the bibliography. Only this means that we've made a full circle and we still don't know where the hell Bessler got that diamond bee from.

While looking for any other references to a diamond bee, I found something slightly different – a bee on the diamond dress of Our Lady of Częstochowa (pronounced ''chen-staw-{{small|HAW}}-vah''). Also known as the Black Madonna, Our Lady of Częstochowa is Poland's most sacred Catholic icon. For centuries it has been decorated with so-called "dresses", or specially-cut metal screens covered with bejeweled cloth. The two oldest of such screens that have been preserved to our times are known as the ruby and the diamond dresses. The jewels that are sewn onto them are votive offerings gathered over the centuries at the Pauline monastery of Częstochowa, where the painting is kept. Many of these jewels are actually quite secular personal accessories that had been worn by kings, queens and aristocrats before they donated them to the Black Madonna. They come in many different shapes and sizes, including a few butterflies and one honey bee.