NOTE: For more bee stories, be sure to look at the newly published book from Story Lovers World: Bees, Beetles, Butterflies and Other Beguiling Bugs: Folklore, Songs and Stories from Around the World. This book is available as a FREE PDF download through April 30, 2008 only. It features 125 stories about different kinds of bugs! Hurry, or you'll miss out!
http://www.story-lovers.com/bugbookv.2.pdf
It takes a while to download, so be patient! Some people report up to five minutes, so get it started, then go make a cup of tea or something while you wait!
•••••
BEE STORIES
(excerpts
from posts)
(If you want to retell any of the stories listed below, be sure
to obtain permission from the copyright holder if
the material
is not in the public domain)
1) It so happens that I've been developing two stories on bees that prompted me to research this subject several months ago. Here's a link that might be of interest to bee-ings . . .forgive me in advance if there is overlap with earlier postings. http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=bee+folklore&btnG=Search
Nancy C.
•••••
2) Dover has recently republished The Sacred Bee in Ancient Times and Folklore (Dover Books on Anthropology and Folklore)
by Hilda M. Ransome.
Cathy M.
•••••
3) Telling the Bees: Buried deep in folklore is the belief that when one passes away, particularly if that person was the family beekeeper, it was important to godown to the hives and 'tell the bees'. Somehow there was something meaningful, if mystical, about the ending of one life, and the bee's work of pollinating growing things, thus bringing new life into being."
http://www.vtonly.com/lorenov0.htm
4) Bee Folklore
Many famous poets and writers such as Virgil, Sophocles, and Plato were associated with the bee. A common story was that infants whose lips were touched by bees would become great speakers, poets, storytellers, and philosophers. Thus, bees were often called "birds of the muses."
http://gears.tucson.ars.ag.gov/beeclass/facts.html
Bees have often been regarded as wise and even holy insects, havingforeknowledge as well as knowledge of many secret matters. In antiquity theywere sometimes divine messengers, and their constant humming was believed to be a hymn of praise.
http://www.doghause.com/superstitions.asp
"A drop of honey will not sweeten the ocean."
http://ag.arizona.edu/pubs/insects/ahb/inf13.html
It makes me want to reread Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees
with fresh eyes. I've heard and read stories in the news which relate how many animals knew the tsunami was approaching and took measures not to be in its path. I wonder what the bees knew?
Jane C.
•••••
5) Meaning of Dumbledore
So maybe this is why J K Rowling so named Dumbledore - which we all know is an old form of Bee. I love the Harry Potter books. However, I never made this connection. So it prompted me to do a Google search which led me on a fascinating journey through the web following up on a few things mentioned in everyone's contributions.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/weirdwords/ww-dum1.htm
Janet D. England
•••••
6) This made me think of the old practice of telling the bees. PL Travers' classic and essential book for storytellers, What the Bee Knows: Reflections on Myth, Symbol, and Story (Arkana)
is named after it. Here are a few extracts from the eponymous essay:
"For the Bee has at all times and places been the symbol of life - life as immortality. In the Celtic languages, the Cornish 'beu', the Irish 'beo', the Welsh 'byw', can all be translated as 'alive' or 'living'... So, the Bee stands for - or is a manifestation of - the fundamental verb 'to be'. 'I am, thou art, he is', it declares, as it goes humming past.
[Amazon.com review by customer
P.L. Travers, while best known for "Mary Poppins", was also a scholar of myth. This slender volume contains a fair fraction of her work, mostly written for the magazine "Parabola" over the course of many years. Each essay studies a common theme or element of traditional stories. Travers has the ability to combine an absolutely astounding amount of information on myths and folktales from all over the world into insightful and fascinating text. Throughout weaves the story of her own life, told in snatches, reminding the reader again and again how story reflects aspects of our own lives. "Only Connect", the phrase borrowed from E.M. Forster by Travers, sums up the underlying purpose which motivates every essay. This book continually draws me back for the wisdom and inspiration it offers. I love it because it makes me stop and think.]
No wonder , then, that mythologically the Bee is the ritual creature of a host of lordly ones - symbol of Vishnu, Indra, and Krishna who are known in India as the 'Three Nectar-Born'. The bow Of Kama, the Hindu god of erotic love, whose arrow is tipped with bane and honey, is strung - how aptly! - with bees. In Greek mythology, the bee hovers over the head of Artemis and its Greek name, Melissa, is a title borne by the priestesses of Demeter, Persephone, and Rhea. Among the ancient Egyptians it was believed the bees sprang from the tears of the Sun god; in Christianity it is Christ who weeps them. Gaia, the earth, the Great Goddess of the Sumerians, and the Virgin Mary, are all apostrophised as the Mother Bee.
And as the myth descends into Time and becomes the tales that old wives tell, we hear of the 'Wisdom of the Bees,' and the 'Secret Knowledge of the Bees', and are counselled, in Scottish Highland stories, to 'ask the Wild Bee what the Druids knew'.
...But this apprising of the bees, telling them, for all one knows, what they already know, is not the business merely of great ones. The bees are constantly being told. No beekeeper would fail to do it. For if they are not courteously kept informed of everything that happens, they will take umbrage, swarm, and fly away, or die of grief or resentment. In the British Isles and all over Europe, the folk continually keep the bees abreast of the news, at national as well as local level; decking the hives with crepe or ribbon, whichever fits the case. On one occasion, an ancient great-aunt of mine, hieratically assuming a head-dress of feather and globules of jet, required me to accompany her to the beehives. 'But you surely don't need a hat, Aunt Jane! They're only at the end of the garden.' 'It is the custom', she said, grandly. 'Put a scarf over your head.' Arrived, she stood in silence for a moment. Then - 'I have come to tell you,' she said, formally, 'that King George V is dead. You may be sorry, but I am not. He was not an interesting man. Besides', she added - as though the bees needed the telling! - 'everyone has to die.'"
There are many more pages to this meditation, but you'll have to read it yourselves along with all her other marvelous essays.
Tim S. England
•••••
7) This reminded me of --
Author: Kidd, Sue
Title: The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd.
Comments: “Look what he’s done to you.” Emotional story of a young girl facing an unloving father, guilt, and the battle for civil rights, with the sweetness of honey and the humming of bees. “Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.”
Amazon.com
In Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, 14-year-old Lily Owen, neglected by her father and isolated on their Georgia peach farm, spends hours imagining a blissful infancy when she was loved and nurtured by her mother, Deborah, whom she barely remembers. These consoling fantasies are her heart's answer to the family story that as a child, in unclear circumstances, Lily accidentally shot and killed her mother. All Lily has left of Deborah is a strange image of a Black Madonna, with the words "Tiburon, South Carolina" scrawled on the back. The search for a mother, and the need to mother oneself, are crucial elements in this well-written coming-of-age story set in the early 1960s against a background of racial violence and unrest. When Lily's beloved nanny, Rosaleen, manages to insult a group of angry white men on her way to register to vote and has to skip town, Lily takes the opportunity to go with her, fleeing to the only place she can think of--Tiburon, South Carolina--determined to find out more about her dead mother. Although the plot threads are too neatly trimmed, The Secret Life of Bees is a carefully crafted novel with an inspired depiction of character. The legend of the Black Madonna and the brave, kind, peculiar women who perpetuate Lily's story dominate the second half of the book, placing Kidd's debut novel squarely in the honored tradition of the Southern Gothic.
•••••
8) I know we've had discussions on the Zen of Bees, but really, has anyone been in close company of a bee while telling? My story was at the Hoozier Festival (in Indiana) one year. It use to be September when the bees (or yellow jackets, or wasps, or whatever stinging insect) decided to take residence in my volumous skirt. I started to do the Tennessee two-step right there. Skirts a -flappin' and toes a-tappin! Thankfully, I wasn't on stage...yet. Well, that's my side of the story. Now, one of you creative geniuses can tax your imagination as you tell... the bee's side.
Marilyn K.
•••••
9) The Bee, the Harp, the Mouse and the Bum Clock and Other Tales
by Gwenda Ledbetter.
Jack sent by mother to sell branny cow, sees wee man with BHMB, bee plays harp, others dance, set all people to dancing and pots and pans and kettles and cans, man trades bee and harp for cow. Jack berated by mother. Jack goes with black cow, gets mouse, berated, takes spotted cow, trades bum-clock (cockroach), berated, went out on road, woman asked why he wasn’t competing for king of Ireland’s daughter – had to raise 3 laughs. Jack takes BHMB to castle, sees spikes with heads of failed suitors, King of Spain’s son in finery ignored by princess, sits in chair with perfumed powder. Jack leads menagerie into courtyard, all laugh including princess, sets them to dancing, princess laughs, but needs 3rd laugh, mouse goes to King of Spain’s son, runs through powder box and across his nose causing him to sneeze, princess laughs, King dresses Jack in fine clothes, princess falls in love, send for mother, 9-day wedding.
From Heavy hangs the golden grain
by Seumas MacManus, The Talbot Press, Dublin, 1951. p. 187 MacManus heard it from Sean O Cuinn of Glen Ainey in County Donegal.
Richard M. Dublin 10/19/05
•••••
10) John 'Brother John' Anderson here. I am the teller from the "River and Praire Story Weavers (in Kansas City, MO). This is an original story of mine and it is copyrighted. The original tall tale goes like this. Enjoy!
rajpabrojohn@yahoo.com
THEY KEEP COMING (Buzz-Buzz-Buzz)
This is a story/song about when I was a little boy,
peanut and jelly sandwiches and lots and lots of bees!
CHORUS:
They keep coming. Buzz-buzz-buzz
They keep coming. Buzz-buzz-buzz
They keep coming. Buzz-buzz-buzz
They keep coming. Buzz-buzz-buzz
VERSE #1
I didn't like taking baths. But, I loved my
favorite treat, peanut butter sandwiches. Sitting in
the yard. I enjoyed eating them. Especially when they
were nice and THICK!
The sticky-icky jelly got on my hands. I even wiped
it across my face. But, when I laid my head down to
take a nap. I awoke to the sound in that place.
CHORUS
VERSE #2
I couldn't believe as I swung my arms liked crazy
at the ten hundred, million, gazillion bees. Running
through the woods, I tripped over my shoes laces.
Oops! I thought I was gone for good.
I started skipping up the road, spinning like a
tornado through the yard and up the garden path. But,
when I got to the door of my famiy house. Those bees
were still trying to sting my sticky self.
CHORUS
I burst through the door of my famiy home. Now, It
was big as a king or queen's castle. It had sixty-five
rooms, with sixteen bathtubs, and the places that
headed were those tubs.
I hopped in one tub, two tubs, three, four, five.
Six, seven, eight, nine, ten bathtubs. Eleven, twelve,
thirteen, fourteen, fifteen and the last tub I dived
in for my life.
CHORUS
I held my head under the water, to hide away from
the bees, until I couldn't hold my breath any longer.
Now, when I popped my head up and out of the water. I
looked around. But, I didn't see the bees. Where were
the bees?
Suddenly, out the corner of my eye. I spied them
darting out the open window, "Bye-bye! Bye-bye!
Bye-bye! Bye-bye!"
After that day, I began to really love to take
baths. Don't you know after that I became the most
squeakiest, cleanest little boy that you ever did see.
After that scary experience, wouldn't you agree?
•••••
BEE BOOKS FOR CHILDREN
• Fuzzy Bee and Friends (Cloth Books)
by Roger Priddy.
Book Description
Ideal for babies and toddlers. Textured fabrics and bright colors help to develop children's sensory awareness.-Rhyming text helps kids improve their listening skills.
•••••
• The Magic School Bus Inside a Beehive
by Joanna Cole, Bruce Degan (illus). (1998 - Ages 4-8)
Book Description
When the Magic School Bus turns into a beehive, Ms. Frizzle's class learns firsthand about how workers, drones, and the queen bees live together. Readers will be abuzz with knowledge as they discover how honeybees find food; make a comb, honey, and beeswax; and care for their young, all from the bee's perspective.
•••••
• Bee-bim Bop!
by Linda Sue Park, Ho Baek Lee (illus).
Book Description
Bee-bim bop (the name translates as "mix-mix rice") is a traditional Korean dish of rice topped, and then mixed, with meat and vegetables. In bouncy rhyming text, a hungry child tells about helping her mother make bee-bim bop: shopping, preparing ingredients, setting the table, and finally sitting down with her family to enjoy a favorite meal. The energy and enthusiasm of the young narrator are conveyed in the whimsical illustrations, which bring details from the artist's childhood in Korea to his depiction of a modern Korean American family. Even young readers who aren't familiar with the dish will recognize the pride that comes from helping Mama, the fun of mixing ingredients together in a bowl, and the pleasure of sharing delicious food. Includes author's own recipe.
•••••
• Buzz-Buzz, Busy Bees: An Animal Sounds Book
by Dawn Bentley, Melanie Gerth and Heather Cahoon (illus). (2004 - Ages 4-8)
Book Description
Makes learning animal sounds simple and fun. Children will love the rhyming story and the fuzzy touch-and-feel bees who buzz by all their barnyard friends. Turn the last page to activate the sound chip and discover what they've been so busy making!
•••••
(This
web page updated 10/22/05; 3/10/08; 4/17/08)
