In medieval Europe, bees were highly prized for their honey and wax. Humans have always had a special connection with bees.
This peculiar custom is known as “telling the bees”. If the bees were not told, all sorts of calamities were thought to happen. Traditionally, the bees were kept abreast of not only deaths but all important family matters including births, marriages, and long absence due to journeys. Failing to do so often resulted in further losses such as the bees leaving the hive, or not producing enough honey or even dying. Whenever there was a death in the family, someone had to go out to the hives and tell the bees of the terrible loss that had befallen the family. There was a time when almost every rural British family who kept bees followed a strange tradition. The bee friend, a painting by Hans Thoma (1839–1924)
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