Telling the Bees

This is Love

Vox Media Podcast Network

Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.8 • 9.4K Ratings

🗓️ 9 August 2023

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

For a long time, beekeepers have told bees their news. They’ve told their bees about weddings, and when people they know have died. It’s said that if they don’t, the bees will leave their hives, or stop making honey, or die. Sometimes, like after Queen Elizabeth II died, beekeepers draped hives in black ribbon. Sometimes they’d shift their hives slightly to the right. “This movement would signal to the bees that the universe had changed, ever so slightly.” Helen Jukes’ book is A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings: A Year of Keeping Bees, and Tammy Horn Potter’s is Bees in America: How the Honey Bee Shaped a Nation. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2BmMZr5 Want to listen to This is Love ad-free? Sign up for Criminal Plus – you’ll get This is Love, Criminal, and Phoebe Reads a Mystery ad-free. Plus, behind-the-scenes bonus episodes and other exclusive benefits. Learn more and sign up here. We also make Criminal and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop. Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for this show comes from Krakan.
0:03.0	Krypto is like the financial system, but different.
0:07.0	It doesn't care where you come from, what you look like, your credit score,
0:11.0	or your outrageous food delivery habits.
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0:18.4	Krakhan, see what crypto can be.
0:21.3	Don't invest unless you're prepared to lose all the money you invest.
0:25.0	This is a high-risk investment and you should not expect to be protected if something goes wrong.
0:32.4	My father-in-law, a gentleman by the name of Les, I suppose you could sort of describe him as a countryman.
0:39.0	He grew up on a farm. His father was a shepherd of many generations so the way to connect with him was through nature.
0:51.2	He got taken ill, he collapsed in his home, tained the hospital and was looking likely he was going to be discharged very soon and on the Friday night he had a heart attack and died. very much of a shock to us
1:05.0	to a shock to us all.
1:09.0	We had a call about 11 o'clock on the Friday night and it was absolutely throwing it
1:15.1	outside it was really poor weather and obviously with my wife I initially I told
1:22.2	her the news I comforted her, and then she said go and tell the bees.
1:29.0	There's an old tradition that when someone dies, you should go outside and tell the bees.
1:36.4	We don't know exactly how the tradition started.
1:39.9	For centuries, beekeepers have believed bees should be treated like a member of the family
1:45.9	and informed of all important news. Otherwise, they might get offended and leave their
1:51.8	hives, or stop making honey or die.
1:57.1	People would tell the bees about loved ones deaths so that the bees could mourn along with them.
2:04.0	Simon M's lives in the UK in Shropshire County.
	...

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