Tell the Bees…

As I write, I’m sitting in the same coffee shop as I was in when a friend and I were talking about Wild & Other and the subject turned to our bee hives at Cow Close Farm, and that’s when she told me about an ancient practice of ‘telling the bees’. Being here has just reminded me of it and I thought I would share it.

Let’s start with a bit of background information and facts though. In early 2024 we thought that we’d really like to have some honey bees on Cow Close Farm, but wanted to get real experts involved so got in touch with the brilliant Chesterfield & District Bee Keepers Association – active in Chesterfield since 1947 – to see if someone could help us out. They introduced us to Alastair, who very kindly brought two hives to the farm, on the very simple agreement that he would look after both and that he would keep the honey from one hive and give us the honey from the other. If only all contracts were so simple!

In addition to those amazing facts, humans have been collecting honey from wild bees for 10,000 years and keeping bees domestically for their honey for 4,500 years. And for at least the last 600 years, beekeepers have held a practice of “telling the bees,” which most likely originated in Celtic mythology, and which “always involved notifying the insects of a death in the family.” The belief being that the bees somehow bore witness to the grief of the family and helped carry it away. When Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II died in 2022, the royal beekeeper visited all of the Queen’s hives to inform their inhabitants about the death of their owner.

Last summer, my friend’s sharing of the ‘telling the bees’ story came to mind as I walked around the farm just a few weeks after hearing of the death of my friend, Declan. While I don’t believe that bees can understand human grief or human words, I thought I would tell them about my grief anyway. I walked to the hives, where thousands of bees buzzed in and out, and I (safe in the knowledge that no other person could hear me) said out loud ‘My friend Declan died, and I’m really, really sad about it’. Simple really. And perhaps very silly. But saying it out loud helped, and a bit of weight lifted from my shoulders, perhaps carried away on the legs of 80,000 little bees…

All this is just an illustration of why we’re doing what we’re doing in and through Wild & Other. We’re creating spaces where we can connect with nature, connect with something bigger than ourselves, and where we can find rest, healing and wholeness. Come and see it for yourself.

Steve Coles
Steve is the Managing Director and one of the co-founders of Wild & Other.