[1] The custom is best known in England but has also been recorded in Ireland, Wales, Germany, Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Bohemia (now Czechia) and the United States.
[2][3][4][5][6] Little is known about the origins of this practice, although there is some unfounded speculation that it is loosely derived from or perhaps inspired by ancient Aegean notions about bees' ability to bridge the natural world and the afterlife.
[7]After the death of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022, the Royal Beekeeper, John Chapple, informed the bees of Buckingham Palace and Clarence House of her passing and the accession of King Charles III.
The process is described in 1901 work of Samuel Adams Drake A book of New England legends and folk lore in prose and poetry: ...goodwife of the house to go and hang the stand of hives with black, the usual symbol of mourning, she at the same time softly humming some doleful tune to herself.
"[5] Another method involved the male head of the household approaching the hive and knocking gently on it until "the bees’ attention was thus secured" and then saying "in a low voice that such or such a person—mentioning the name—was dead.
[2] In some parts of the Pyrenees, a custom includes "burying an old garment belonging to the deceased under the bench where the bee-hives stand, and they never sell, give away, nor exchange the bees of the dead.
However, when the new owners tied a "piece of crepe" to a stick and attached it to the hive the bees soon recovered, an outcome that was "unhesitatingly attributed to their having been put into mourning.
[17] A section from John Greenleaf Whittier's poem "Tell the Bees" describes the practice:[18] Before them, under the garden wall, Forward and back Went, drearily singing, the chore-girl small, Draping each hive with a shred of black.