Beekeeping
Butler was engaged in beekeeping in rural Hampshire and made the first recorded observations about the generation of beeswax, which was previously thought to be gathered by honeybees from plant materials. He was not the first to described the largest honeybee as a queen, rather than king (see Swammerdam) but he popularized the notion with his classic book The Feminine Monarchie, 1609. Butler misinterpreted the queen's function and thought that the workers lay eggs. An influential beekeeper, he was the first to assert that drones are male and the workers female, and is sometimes called the Father of English Beekeeping.
Read more about this topic: Charles Butler (beekeeper)