Telling the Bees
Little Bee Little Bee
We tend to think of honeybees as being pretty special creatures. Bears don't catch more fish than they can eat in a sitting, leaving some for us to gather. Ants don't do much for pollenating crops. And among sting-y flyers, they seem to know that they have a one-and-done sting. So we think they're pretty special. But in pre-modern times, honeybees were a Very Special creature.
The Greeks, for instance, include quite a few prominent references to bees and honey in their mythology, a quick survey of which is available in the name Melissa.
Melissa was a nymph, nurse to Zeus, who discovered honey. She fed Zeus up on honey from when he was a baby. Her work with honey, teaching men to make mead, and eat honey instead of each other, caused bees to be named for her ( even works in latin, through the chicken-or-egg factor of being "Bees, the ones that do honey" - Apis mellifera ). Melissa gathered souls down from the bees to be born. And one way or another, depending on who you read, she ended up as a bee herself.
Did you catch the bees-and-souls thing?
The ancient Egyptians felt similarly. So did lots of cultures, actually.
So when it comes to beekeeping there is an old custom that calls back to the nearly universal sense that the bees are connected to something bigger, "thin" you might say. Telling the Bees got some royal coverage last week, but it has been around for quite some time.