Aristaeus

Aristaeus, son of Apollo and the water-nymph Cyrene, and father of Actaeon. He received divine honours for teaching men how to tend cattle and keep bees. On the death of his son he is said to have wandered over many lands and to have been initiated by Bacchus into his mysteries in Thrace. Virgil (Georgics, bk. iv.) gives a long account of the strange process, learnt by him from Proteus, for producing bees by spontaneous generation.