Telling the bees, a wedding tradition

Telling the bees

Telling the bees. My Dad was a beekeeper. There were many things about living with a beekeeper that you just took for granted. Excellent and regular supplies of honey being the obvious one. You got used to not kicking your football certain parts of the garden; if you did, the game was called off until dusk when the bees were settling in for the night and you could get your football back without being stung. Other times I would call home and there would be no answer. A few days later my Mum would explain “sorry about that, your father was heating the honey with a paint stripper and accidentally melted the phone”. These kind of things happened often and working out the logical progression from solid honey to a melted phone was a standard process for me.

Along with seeing my Dad in his traditional beekeeping kit appear from a cloud of smoke or listening to him nonchalantly counting off the stings he had got that day, was the tradition of “telling the bees”. Any major event in the life of the family or household was told to the bees. Births, marriages and especially deaths as this meant that the bees had a new master and they needed to be reassured. On the death of Queen Elizabeth II, the Royal Beekeeper John Chappale told the bees of the Queens passing by gently tapping on the hives, letting them know their mistress had died and that they had a new master who would be kind. “It is traditional when someone dies that you go to the hives and say a little prayer and put a black ribbon on the hive,” he said.

Ancient bee mythology

Bees and all things bee-related have been held in high regard since early times. Not only a great source of food that can be stored for, well, just about ever, it’s waxy by-products supplied the ancient world with everything from candles to cosmetics. Like the bees themselves, the products of their labour show a lot of integrity and are very practical. But why the tradition of talking to bees?

The ancient Egyptians revered bees, they thought they were the messengers of the gods, calling them the “Tears of Ra”. It was an idea that shows up in Celtic traditions that bees are messengers between us and the spirit realms and were associated with wisdom gathered from the other world. Beekeepers kept up this tradition of letting the bees know about all the things that were happening in the beekeeper’s household. They do it in a calm and reassuring manner so the bees don’t desert the hive.

Telling the bees about a wedding

For weddings, the tradition changes from region to region. In Scotland it’s not unusual to invite the bees to the wedding and leaving a slice of wedding cake on the hive afterwards. In Germany, newly married couples must introduce themselves to the bees before they head off to their new home. In Brittany the hives are decorated with scarlet cloth and the bees are allowed to take part in the celebrations. I’m not so sure about that tradition, sounds like a recipe for disaster! Including the bees in your wedding tradition is meant to keep them happy rather than getting fed up and abandoning their hives.

So if you see a kindly old beekeeper, gently tapping on the hives and looking like he’s talking to himself, there’s a good chance he’s telling the bees, letting them know about your wedding day. It might be someone like my Dad who says he did it out of tradition but I suspect he did it as a quiet therapy and with great pride.