Go tell it to the Bees

There was a time when almost every rural British family who kept bees followed a strange tradition. Whenever there was a death in the family, someone had to go out to the hives and tell the bees of the terrible loss that had befallen the family. Failing to do so often resulted in further losses such as the bees leaving the hive, or not producing enough honey or even dying. Traditionally, the bees were kept abreast of not only deaths but all important family matters including births, marriages, and long absence due to journeys. If the bees were not told, all sorts of calamities were thought to happen. This peculiar custom is known as 'telling the bees'. 

The Bee Friend by Hans Thoma (1839–1924)

The practice of telling the bees may have its origins in Celtic mythology that held that bees were the link between our world and the spirit world. So if you had any message that you wished to pass to someone who was dead, all you had to do was tell the bees and they would pass along the message. 

The typical way to tell the bees was for the head of the household, or 'good wife of the house' to go out to the hives, knock gently to get the attention of the bees, and then softly murmur in a doleful tune the solemn news. Little rhymes developed over the centuries specific to a particular region. In Nottinghamshire, the wife of the dead was heard singing quietly in front of the hive:

'The master's dead, but don't you go; Your mistress will be a good mistress to you.' 

In Germany, a similar couplet was heard:

'Little bee, our lord is dead; Leave me not in my distress'. 

One Lincolnshire report from the mid 19th century notes: 

'At all weddings and funerals they give a piece of the wedding-cake or funeral biscuit to the bees, informing them at the same time of the name of the party married or dead. If the bees do not know of the former, they become very irate, and sting every body within their reach; and if they are ignorant of the latter they become sick, and many of them die.'

After the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the Royal Beekeeper, John Chapple, informed the bees of Buckingham Palace and Clarence House of her passing and the ascension of King Charles III. Chapple described the practice to the press as such: 'You knock on each hive and say, 'The mistress is dead, but don't you go. Your master will be a good master to you".' 

What a lovely old tradition.