If the bees were not told, all sorts of calamities were thought to happen.
This peculiar custom is known as telling the bees.
Humans have always had a special connection with bees.
In medieval Europe, bees werehighly prizedfor their honey and wax.
Candles made from beeswax burned brighter, longer and cleaner than other wax candles.
It was considered rude, for example, to quarrel in front of bees.
Telling the bees was widely reported from all around England, and also from many places across Europe.
Eventually, the tradition made their way across the Atlantic and into North America.
Little rhymes developed over the centuries specific to a particular region.
A widow and her son telling the bees of a death in the family.
Painting by Charles Napier Hemy (18411917)
Telling the bees was common in New England.
The 19th century American poet John Greenleaf Whittier describes this peculiar custom in his 1858 poem Telling the bees.
When the new owner draped the hive with a black cloth, the bees regained their health.
In another tale, an Oxfordshire family had seventeen hives when their keeper died.
Because nobody told them about the death, every bee died.
There are plenty of such tales in Morleys book.
Telling the Bees, by Albert Fitch Bellows.
circa 1882
The intimate relationship between bees and their keepers have led to all sorts of folklore.
Instead, bees were bartered for or given as gifts.
If bees flew into a house, a stranger would soon call.
If they rested on a roof, good luck was on its way.
But the relationship between bees and humans goes beyond superstition.
Its a fact, that bees help humans survive.
70 of the top 100 crop species that feed 90% of the human populationrely on beesfor pollination.
Without them, these plants would cease to exist and with it all animals that eat those plants.
This can have a cascading effect that would ripple catastrophically up the food chain.
Losing a beehive is much more worse than losing a supply of honey.
The consequences are life threatening.
The act of telling the bees emphasizes this deep connection humans share with the insect.
