Why the Queen's bees needed to be told about her death

Amid all the protocol surrounding the death of Queen Elizabeth last Thursday — including how and when the public was informed — who knew there was also a protocol of sorts around informing her bees? 

Indeed, palace beekeeper John Chapple confirmed to The Daily Mail that on Friday, he quietly told the tens of thousands of bees that are kept on the grounds of Buckingham Palace and Clarence House that the Queen had died the day before, and that King Charles was their new master. 

You may forgive a few raised eyebrows. 

"Lots of people have looked at this story and gone ... that's very strange. This is these quirky British people doing odd things," folklorist Mark Norman told As It Happens host Nil Köksal. 

"But in fact, it's not that at all. It's a very old tradition."

Not sharing news invited ill fortune

The precise origins of "telling the bees" are not known, but Norman says the practice possibly comes from Celtic times. The keeping of — and reverence of — bees dates back to the ancient Egyptians, he added.

Back in the 18th and 19th centuries, he said, declining to share a family's news with their bees risked bringing about "ill fortune" and "bad luck."

Norman speculates that doing so once may have preceded a moment of good luck, sparking an ongoing tradition because no one would have wanted to jinx things.

"These sorts of things were absolutely believed and they absolutely had to take place because people couldn't risk the bad luck of having a swarm leave or having the bees die if they didn't follow this belief," he said.

Norman, who wrote a book called Telling the Bees and Other Customs: The Folklore of Rural Crafts, says the tradition stood for all homes of hives, not just those of royals, as bees were considered members of the family. 

"That goes back to the early Christian church, and parallels that were drawn with the bees in a hive and the family environment and the way that the hive works," he said.

As such, bees were to be informed of all the major life events of their family — not only deaths, but marriages or births, too. 

"They don't just want bad news."

Hives in mourning

In this most recent and widely reported case, though, the news was bad.

And to deliver it, Norman says the palace beekeeper would have gone to each beehive and knocked on the side — "this would be to get the bees' attention" — then he would have told them of the Queen's death.

This announcement would then place the hives into a state of mourning. Indeed, Chapple told the Mail he tied a black ribbon to each of the hives. 

Norman says many non-royal beekeepers have confirmed to him in the past few days that they still uphold the tradition of telling their own bees important news, too. 

"The fact that they still take place and these traditions are still observed just really highlights the value that are placed on bees and the importance that are placed on bees within a culture," he said. 

"And that really backs up everything that we see relating to much more modern issues, such as climate change and the loss of bees and pollinators and what sorry state we would be in without them."