It’s called “telling the bees”. Long ago, almost every rural British family who kept bees followed a strange tradition. Whenever there was a death in the family, someone had to go out to the hives and tell the bees of the terrible loss that had befallen the family. Failing to do so often resulted in further loss such as the bees leaving the hive, or not producing enough honey or even dying. Traditionally, the bees were kept abreast of not only deaths but all important family matters including births, marriages, and long absence due to journeys. If the bees were not told, all sorts of calamities were thought to happen. This peculiar custom is known as “telling the bees”. Not only is this custom a clue to our deep and wonderous connection to Nature, it hopefully will have you out today talking to the trees and bugs and all the small things upon the Earth. Can someone please go out and tell the bees that NASA is dead? How do we know? See the next story:
–We found the grave!! Deep beneath the Pacific Ocean at Point Nemo, the region between New Zealand and South America farthest from any landmass, lies a mass grave containing hundreds of discarded carcasses. These bodies, often shattered into several pieces as they descended, were once satellites, rockets, space stations, and other spacecraft carefully steered into the remote patch of ocean, dubbed the Spacecraft Cemetery, when they ran out of fuel or were otherwise decommissioned. #DownRange indeed!
–Put me under a tree. If you can’t do that, burn me atop one, I suppose. Missouri, here I come!!