The bees’ shrine

Chambers printed a Cornish croon, The Brownie Bee, on a grandam’s tale of the west. An old woman in a Cornish valley kept bees that one summer stopped flying and stayed in the hive. To lure them out so her store would thrive, she took the consecrated bread at church, hid it and laid it by the hive. Next morning the bees were found to have built a shrine of wax over it, with roof and tower, and a sound like soft bells or a psalm was heard from the cells.