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Telling the bees

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Posted on 2019-11-01 in
Comunicación de la muerte a las abejas. Fotografía tomada de Gure Herria. Euskal Biblioteka. Labayru Fundazioa.

The threat of the Asian hornet, and more notably, the environmental impact of pesticides have surely raised public consciousness of the dangers of bee mortality and the deadly consequences of their extinction to the planet.

In connection with bees and beekeeping, let us review a former custom, vanished sometime between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, according to which house bees were to be told of the death of their keeper. We are of course talking about a time when most farmsteads kept honeybees.

Telling the bees. Photograph taken from Gure Herria [Our People]. Euskal Biblioteka. Labayru Fundazioa.

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Bread and light for the dead

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Posted on 2018-11-02 in
Grave beeswax candle

Grave beeswax candle. Labayru Fundazioa Photographic Archive.

Field research shows relevant participants in old-time funeral processions, usually relatives or neighbours of the deceased, bore offerings of bread and light to be placed on the symbolic family grave in church. This tradition remained in many parishes until the 1960s. (more…)

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