In September 2022, after the Queen died, the Royal Beekeeper knocked on the hives at Buckingham Palace: "The mistress is dead, but don't you go. Your master will be a good master to you."
That was telling the bees: a death in the house had to be told to them, or the hive sickened or left. They were the smallest members of the family.
Recorded across England, Ireland, Wales, Germany, France, Switzerland, Bohemia and New England. Whittier, 1858: "a remarkable custom, brought from the Old Country."
The words varied. Nottinghamshire, 1889: "The master's dead, but don't you go; your mistress will be a good mistress to you."
Forgetting cost. In Lincolnshire, 1849, untold bees sickened and died. Norfolk buyers set black crepe on a dead man's hives, and the bees recovered.
How old? Nobody knows. Mourning drapes date from the early 1800s (Steve Roud). In 1889 the ancient-Aegean theory was already "unfounded speculation." It still is.
That is the part I like: telling the house's edge that the house has changed. Bees at the garden wall, foxes at the wood's edge. The news goes to the threshold first.
Whittier 1858 · Kite 1889 · Northern Star 1849 · Morley 1899 · Roud 2006