Nick and Jess + Green and Pink
Bees Attend Keeper’s Funeral
“A strange tradition, from the forgotten rural years when almost every family kept bees, was startlingly recalled after the death of John Zepka.
throughout his life, Zepka has raised, worked with and loved bees. He became widely known in the Barkshire Hills as a man who “had a way with them”.
When the cortege reached the grave, mourners found the funeral tend swarming with bees- on the tent ceiling and clinging to floral sprays. They did not annoy the mourners- just remained immobile. Nothing like it had ever been seen before.
Recalled was the tradition, “Telling the Bees”, kept alive in the poetry off John Greenleaf Whitier and Eugene Field. It held that the bees must be told when a member of the family dies- and the hive draped with a shred of black- lest the bees leave their hive”
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