More Halloween Bees..they know more than you think they know! Halloween: ‘Affection of Bees.’ It happened in 1777 Image: A grieving family puts the hives in mourning. Submitted for ‘Women in Beekeeping’ week. In some localities in England, bees are invited to funeral’s, and a formal invitation is even sent to them. In Normandy bees are treated as a member of the family, and the dead person is always referred to as a relative of the bees. The death of any member of the family was announced to the bees, thus; your father, mother, brother, sister, uncle, and so on is dead. Among superstitions relating to sympathy between bees and their owner, is the belief that bees suffer great anguish over the loss of their master and the hives must therefore be put in mourning to pacify their sorrowing occupants; for unless this is done, the bees will either never afterwards prosper, die or abandon their hives. If their master died, his widow or nearest relative went out to tell the bees that their master was dead, and put the bees in mourning by draping a black cloth around the hives where they are kept in mourning for six months, during which time the bees are said not to hum. It has frequently been asserted, that bees sometimes take the loss of their master so much to heart, as to leave their hives, alighting upon the coffin whenever it is exposed to show affection to their loved one and to pay lasts respects. London Review, 1837 and misc. sources. Affection of Bees. An elderly lady at Nantes, who had an estate in the neighborhood of that town, where she used generally to pass the summer, had a remarkable partiality for bees, and kept a great number of them upon her estate. She took great pleasure in attending these little insects. Towards the end of May, 1777, this lady, having been taken ill, was conveyed to Nantes, where she died a few days after. On the day when she was to be interred, an enormous number of bees made their appearance in the house where the body lay, and settling upon the coffin, would not be driven away. A friend of the deceased, wishing to ascertain whether these were the same bees that she had taken such tender care of when living, repaired immediately to the estate, where he found all the hives emptied of their inhabitants. -The Republican Compiler, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania -1847 Read More History of Beekeeping: Like: https://facebook/Historical.Honeybee.Articles
Posted on: Mon, 21 Oct 2013 15:18:18 +0000
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