Telling the bees

In Suffolk a stray swarm settling on your premises and never claimed by its owner meant a death in the family within the year. Bees would not thrive if people quarrelled over them. When their keeper died they had to be told, invited to the funeral and have crape tied to the hive, and Chambers’s correspondent knew sickly bees bought at a dead farmer’s sale that recovered once they were put into mourning.