A beekeeper's rhyme weighing up a swarm by the month it arrives: worth a load of hay in May, a silver spoon in June, nothing at all by July. A scrap of real country wisdom set to rhyme.
From Mother Goose / Nursery Rhymes (traditional). See the whole collection.
A swarm of bees in May
Is worth a load of hay;
A swarm of bees in June
Is worth a silver spoon;
A swarm of bees in July
Is not worth a fly.
About this rhyme
This is genuine, widely documented beekeeping folklore, not a Victorian invention: a swarm that leaves the hive early in the season has the whole summer to build comb and stores before winter, which is why an earlier swarm was traditionally valued far more than a late one.
Old beekeeping lore turned into rhyme: a swarm of bees in May is valuable, one in June still worth having, but one in July worth nothing at all, since it is too late in the season to build up honey stores. You do not need to know anything about bees for the rhyme to scan nicely, but it helps explain why.
Public domain. Text from The Real Mother Goose (Blanche Fisher Wright, 1916), via Project Gutenberg. View the source edition