# Is this true, The Queen's beekeeper has to tell bees she's died in baffling royal tradition.



## Robert59 (Sep 22, 2022)

The Queen passed away at Balmoral on Thursday, September 8 at the age of 96. The news was announced to the world at 6.30pm. But it is not just humans who had to be informed of the sad news.

A bizarre ancient tradition saw the royal beekeeper tell the palace bees that the Queen had died. John Chapple made the poignant journey to the hive on Friday where he carried out the ancient ritual.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/ukne...sedgntp&cvid=b15e85bbd47544f78548f433a13d964a


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## jujube (Sep 22, 2022)

It's a beekeeping tradition.  The bees must  always be told when the beekeeper dies.  I guess the Queen must have been considered the Head Beekeeper (the Queen Bee, of course), so it would be appropriate to inform them of her death.

My son-in-law has been a beekeeper since his teens, so I'm up on "bee lore".


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## Jamala (Sep 22, 2022)

This practice of “telling the bees” has its origins in Celtic mythology where the presence of a bee after a death signified the soul leaving the body. Celts believed 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.


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## Warrigal (Sep 22, 2022)

As Mr Spock would say, "Fascinating".


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## MountainRa (Sep 22, 2022)

It’s not just a British tradition. I’ve known people in the southern USA that also do this. Of course, we have a lot of Irish, Scottish, English traditions brought over by immigrants. So not a surprise that informing bees would be one of them.


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## kburra (Sep 22, 2022)

Just a nice story, thanks for posting.


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## Lavinia (Sep 23, 2022)

MountainRa said:


> It’s not just a British tradition. I’ve known people in the southern USA that also do this. Of course, we have a lot of Irish, Scottish, English traditions brought over by immigrants. So not a surprise that informing bees would be one of them.


Immigrants? I should imagine that the Pilgrim Fathers brought  honey bees with them as well as seeds.


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## MountainRa (Sep 23, 2022)

Perhaps immigrants was not the right word? I was trying to acknowledge that upstate SC was settled by Europeans once the Native Americans were forced out. And while Europeans brought bees, I was referring to traditions being brought over.
No offense meant to immigrants, Europeans, or bees. Or seeds.


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## Geezerette (Sep 23, 2022)

I’ve heard of this tradition before in rural areas of the northeast and   Virginia 
There was a novel called “Tell it to the Bees” but I haven’t read it.


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## Meanderer (Sep 24, 2022)

Telling the Bees​ 
                       By John Greenleaf Whittier 

Here is the place; right over the hill
   Runs the path I took;
You can see the gap in the old wall still,
   And the stepping-stones in the shallow brook.

There is the house, with the gate red-barred,
   And the poplars tall;
And the barn’s brown length, and the cattle-yard,
   And the white horns tossing above the wall.

There are the beehives ranged in the sun;
   And down by the brink
Of the brook are her poor flowers, weed-o’errun,
   Pansy and daffodil, rose and pink.

A year has gone, as the tortoise goes,
   Heavy and slow;
And the same rose blows, and the same sun glows,
   And the same brook sings of a year ago.

There ’s the same sweet clover-smell in the breeze;
   And the June sun warm
Tangles his wings of fire in the trees,
   Setting, as then, over Fernside farm.

I mind me how with a lover’s care
   From my Sunday coat
I brushed off the burrs, and smoothed my hair,
   And cooled at the brookside my brow and throat.

Since we parted, a month had passed,—
   To love, a year;
Down through the beeches I looked at last
   On the little red gate and the well-sweep near.

I can see it all now,—the slantwise rain
   Of light through the leaves,
The sundown’s blaze on her window-pane,
   The bloom of her roses under the eaves.

Just the same as a month before,—
   The house and the trees,
The barn’s brown gable, the vine by the door,—
   Nothing changed but the hives of bees.

Before them, under the garden wall,
   Forward and back,
Went drearily singing the chore-girl small,
   Draping each hive with a shred of black.

Trembling, I listened: the summer sun
   Had the chill of snow;
For I knew she was telling the bees of one
   Gone on the journey we all must go!

Then I said to myself, “My Mary weeps
   For the dead to-day:
Haply her blind old grandsire sleeps
   The fret and the pain of his age away.”

But her dog whined low; on the doorway sill,
   With his cane to his chin,
The old man sat; and the chore-girl still
   Sung to the bees stealing out and in.

And the song she was singing ever since
   In my ear sounds on:—
“Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence!
   Mistress Mary is dead and gone!”


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