by Elizabeth Spence
My husband used to keep bees in our Tatamagouche garden. They lived joyfully in their little hives, going about their daily chores pollinating, making honey, buzzing around, occasionally stinging.
And then, one day, obeying the call of nature as they do every so often, they swarmed. Out onto a tree branch, then the scouts went off to find a suitable spot for the new hive. They are very good at their job, and they discovered the perfect place.
In the walls of the house.
People said:
“Oh dear! You have to get rid of them!”
“The wood will rot and you’ll have mold everywhere!” Etc. etc.
My husband, Robert, a brilliant scientist, wasn’t in the least concerned, because he knew the facts and understood.
By the time we moved to the Tatamagouche house permanently, the bees had already been there for a couple of decades, hard at work making their home and merrily going about their business. There was no sign of any damage to the house at all.
I would sit reading in the room next to the hive in the wall and listen to the genial buzzing sounds. The bees were living their contented life, working away amongst my flowers, returning, loaded, to their private place in the house. I was greatly soothed by the sounds of their living, inside and out.
Once in a while I would hear the virgin piping – a little squeak a new queen emits to call her cohorts to join her, preparing to set off to establish a new hive.
Gentle, benign, tranquil. Life carrying on as it always has.
And then Robert died.
My mind rushed back to distant childhood in the remoteness of West Wales and into the mists of ancient Celtic lore still swirling in the collective memory at that time. We knew that when there is a change of circumstance in the house – a birth, death or marriage – you “tell the bees.”
The bees are the intermediaries between this world and the next.
I knocked three times on the wall and told them the news. I knew that they would prepare the way and accompany Robert’s spirit as it soared away on its journey to the next world.
The bees were part of the community of the house and family and needed to be involved. If not, they would turn nasty and leave. Bad luck would follow.
They did leave. My time of sorrow and loneliness. It might have been because I forgot part of the ceremony of “telling the bees.” I should have attached something green to the wall as I was giving them the news. In Celtic mythology, green is the colour of death – it bridges this world and the next. (It was the Romans who decided that black was the colour of death). I didn’t do this, and seemingly paid for it.
“Oh, it was just colony collapse,” said some.
“It’s them mites,” observed others.
“Climate change,” announced still others.
The thing is though, that after two years, the bees returned. I thought I was dreaming when I heard them humming and singing in the wall again.
They were definitely back! And I got the message loud and clear:
“Time for you to get on with your life!” they said.
So I did.
I moved to another old house and I thought for a while that they had come with me. Odd buzzings here and there.
But no.
I do miss them. Their soft murmurings provided such a gentle accompaniment to the quiet times in my life. They are, after all, as I once remember reading, the world humming under its breath.
April 2025
Copyright©2025 Elizabeth Spence
2 Responses
Such a lovely story, Elizabeth. Glad you wrote it up and shared it.
How beautifully told, and how lucky you are to have had this colony of bees in your life. Perhaps during the two years they were ‘gone’, they had been busy, helping Robert get settled on the ‘other side’. I think you are very blessed, to have had them so ‘close’ in your life.