EXCLUSIVE: Royal beekeeper has informed the Queen's bees that the Queen has died and King Charles is their new boss in bizarre tradition dating back centuries

The Daily Mail ^ | September 10, 2022 | John Dingwall

[Twotone]

The royal beekeeper - in an arcane tradition thought to date back centuries - has informed the hives kept in the grounds of Buckingham Palace and Clarence House of the Queen’s death.

And the bees have also been told, in hushed tones, that their new master is now King Charles III.

The official Palace beekeeper, John Chapple, 79, told MailOnline how he travelled to Buckingham Palace and Clarence House on Friday following news of The Queen’s death to carry out the superstitious ritual.

He placed black ribbons tied into bows on the hives, home to tens of thousands of bees, before informing them that their mistress had died and that a new master would be in charge from now on.

He then urged the bees to be good to their new master - himself once famed for talking to plants.

The strange ritual is underpinned by an old superstition that not to tell them of a change of owner would lead to the bees not producing honey, leaving the hive or even dying.

[Jamestown1630]

Well, Charles has been rather busy the last few days (!) and perhaps hasn’t gotten to all the down-the-line details yet.

I very much doubt that - at least at this stage - anyone is thinking of taking away their titles and rights. (I don’t think that being told that you are not to use the ‘styling’ means that you’ve lost your place in the ultimate scheme of things. And I think the parents actually have to accept it, too.)

It’ll all come out in the wash. (And regardless of any ‘wishes’, I imagine the Government could have something to do with it in the future, if issues were to escalate further in an unfortunate way.)

[Jamestown1630]

Greg Gutfeld just said that it’s good the beekeeper told them, before they heard it on BuzzFeed...

(ok, I’m going, now...)

[GaryCrow]

For heaven’s sake! I thought that was just an old Southern tradition! I’ve even heard of the old folks that would tie a black ribbon around a hive to let the bees know of the keeper’s death.

Most of those old southern traditions came from their British heritage, even down to their speech. I’m from Mississippi and my dear grandmother, born in 1904, came from a well educated rural family of English descent. Her speech pattern was non-rhotic and she sounded like a well spoken Englishwoman even though I doubt she’d ever heard a native Englishwoman until radio came about in the 1930’s. A lot of the old timers sounded that way, sadly that’s been lost and now everybody in my area has the southern white trash twang we’re so used to hearing.