There is no reason for the 7.7 billion people to be the only ones to be fed the royal family by the news channels continuously. Friday, when the British were mourning Elizabeth II and the royal staff were busy fulfilling the strict and stilted protocol of succession, a certain John Chapple was carrying out a very particular mission. The 79-year-old pensioner spent his day as royal beekeeper informing the several hundred thousand bees in the Windsor family that the queen – their patroness – had died. “The person who died is the mistress of the hives, so we couldn’t do more important,” he slips to the DailyMail.
For, as surprising as it may seem, Chapple did not act on impulse, out of sadness. Far from there. The beekeeper visited Buckingham palace and Clarence House – the place of residence of the new King Charles III and his wife, Queen Consort Camilla – to meet the Hymenoptera, to respect an ancestral tradition. According to this custom respected in many European countries, bees must be kept informed of important events in the life of their owners, such as births or weddings. And if the bees were not made aware of a death, the belief would be that they make their masters pay for it by stopping the production of honey, leaving the hive or letting themselves die.