Tell the bees she is gone

Queen Elizabeth II, officially "Defender of the Faith" in the United Kingdom, will be buried after a state funeral in London.

In all of the exhaustive coverage of her passing since she died Sept. 8 in Scotland, there is one detail this columnist finds fascinating.

Someone had to go and tell the bees that the monarch was gone.

Every culture has its peculiarities.

In America's mother country, there is an arcane tradition believed to date back centuries, of informing the bees kept on the grounds of Buckingham Palace and nearly Clarence House that Elizabeth was gone and Charles III replaced her.

According to Britain's Daily Mail newspaper, the royal beekeeper tied black bows to the hives -- home to literally thousands of bees -- "informing them their mistress had died and that a new master would be in charge from now on, urging the bees to be good to their new master."

The newspaper went on to mention Charles III once became famous for talking to plants.

When I heard of this unusual tradition, the thought occurred that there is one person I knew who probably could have explained it to me.

The late Rev. Dr. Grant Gillard, who served First Presbyterian Church in Jackson for a quarter of a century, was a celebrated beekeeper.

Grant and I were friends and a cherished conversation at Ground-A-Bout in uptown Jackson is remembered to this day.

Grant kept bees, wrote books about them and gave talks about their importance.

In remarks to Jackson Rotary Club, Gilliard mentioned a quote attributed to Albert Einstein: "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left."

Whether the famous physicist made that remark or not, it seems clear the contribution bees make to the world.

The royal beekeeper's strange ritual is underpinned, according to legend, by an old superstition that not to tell the bees of a change in owner would lead to them not producing honey, perhaps causing them to leave the hive or even dying.

Silly? Perhaps.

I'm reminded of Shakespeare's words in Act I, Scene 5 of Hamlet at this juncture:

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, then are dreamt of in your philosophy."

Lots of things are not understood and often we dismiss them as unimportant because we fail to comprehend.

Because this is a religion column, and also because my own thoughts often travel to His words, it seems appropriate to pull Jesus into this conversation.

There is no evidence of Jesus discussing bees in the pages of Scripture but he did make reference to his disciples not understanding what He taught them.

"I have so much more to tell you, but you cannot bear it now." (John 16:12)

Yes, my friend Grant would have been able to explain this to me, he who understood bees so well.

God save the King.

The important word in that declarative sentence, dear reader, is the first one.