The Buzz on the "Telling of the Bees"

Bees! Our flower friends, our pollinator pals, our bug buddies! If you can't tell, I’m a bee lover. So, when I found out about the adorable custom of “the telling of the bees,” I could not believe that I had never heard of it. This little ritual isn’t very complicated, but its history and origin are by far one of the most interesting things I’ve read about in a while.

So, what is it? Well, it's basically exactly what it sounds like. Popular in the 19th century, this tradition involved notifying honey bees of major events in the beekeeper’s life, such as a death or marriage. It can be best depicted in the 1858 poem by John Greenleaf Whittier, “Telling the Bees.”

In the poem, an unnamed speaker notes their return to their lover’s home after a year of absence. They see her draping the hives in a black shroud as if in mourning. The narrator notes, “She was telling the bees of one / Gone on the journey we all must go!” The poem then tries to narrow down who is the one who has “gone,” concluding with the narrator’s lover crying and asking the bees to “Stay at home, pretty bees, fly not hence! Mistress Mary is dead and gone!”

This belief in “telling the bees” of deaths in the family feels like quaint folklore you might find in a dark fairytale, but it was a real situation families faced at one time. It may have origins in Celtic mythology where the presence of a bee after a death signified the soul leaving the body, but it's most prevalent in practice in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in the U.S. and Western Europe. Bees are also said to have links to the underworld/afterlife, so it makes sense that by speaking to the bees, you would have a way to pass on a message to a lost loved one.

So, how do you inform your bees about a loss in the family? Well, you will need a piece of black cloth or crepe, mourning attire, and a sorrowful story involving the loss of a loved one. Once you have all of those, you simply have to knock on each hive individually and verbally inform the bees of what has happened (bonus points if you can sing it).

Why do this? Not only do bees produce honey for your tea and baking needs, but they are also integral to an ecosystem. Many families had gardens and land that benefited from the pollinators. If the bees left, a lot could be on the line for the family in the lines of food and income. It was commonly believed that if you didn’t let the bees mourn the loss of their master or mistress, the family could fall into a bout of bad luck. Letting the bees know that their master or mistress has died also tells them that they will be cared for by someone new and that they shouldn’t leave. I mean, you would want to know if you suddenly got a new boss, right?

The consequences of not telling the bees could be dire. A Victorian biologist, Margaret Warner Morley, in her book The Honey-Makers (1899), cites a case in Norfolk where a man purchased a hive of bees at an auction. When the man returned home with them, the bees appeared to be in poor health. It occurred to their new owner that they hadn’t been properly put into mourning after the death of their former owner. He quickly draped the hive with black cloth, and soon after, they seemed to regain their health.

If you followed the directions, and your bees were well cared for, there could be chances of your bees attending the funeral of the lost loved one. In 1956, at John Zepka’s funeral, attendees walked upon thousands of his own bees flying around the top of the tent and around the flower arrangements surrounding the graveside service. After the service finished, they flew away, presumably back to their hives. To many, this cemented the superstition of why you should inform the bees of deaths and losses in the family.

Now, the bees weren’t always being informed of sad news. Sometimes they were invited to share in happy occasions too! They were privy to the news of marriages, births, and other happy events and this helped build trust between a family and its hives. In many ways, bees were extended parts of the family, sharing in the gossip, news, and big events with everyone else.

This tradition isn’t as prominent today as it was in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. But, with beekeeping becoming more popular in rural areas around the US, I think we should bring it back! After all, bees are our friends and we owe them the simple courtesy of at least keeping them informed of what’s going on in the world they help create for us. What do you think? What would you "tell the bees?"

Memento Mori,

Nikki