[HN Gopher] Telling the Bees
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Telling the Bees
Author : drdee
Score : 199 points
Date : 2021-09-27 04:55 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| [deleted]
| elliottkember wrote:
| This is a very sweet way of coping with death.
|
| I think all of these other comments are focussing on the aspects
| of "upsetting the bees" (which I think is a red herring) and not
| seeing the therapeutic effects of a ritual. Saying things out
| loud helps bring closure. This is people dealing with sadness.
|
| "Little bee, our lord is dead; Leave me not in my distress."
| Y_Y wrote:
| I'd like to be able to email the bees. I suppose it shouldn't be
| so hard to have a GAN for translating from English into the dance
| of the bees.
|
| Maybe the danger is in translating back and learning what they
| know. The bees haven't read Ayn Rand, they're more a Hofstadter-
| Theseus consciousness with many finite lifetimes making a macro-
| scale Methuselah. They surely know about the Bronze Age Collapse,
| what happened on Rapa Nui, why out ancestors came down from the
| trees.
| WriterGuy2021 wrote:
| This could be seen as a metaphor for the practice of public
| relations. Like when we learn about the president's dogs. Sounds
| like a strange interpretation, I know, but folklore and various
| traditions have been known to contain veiled wisdom. Also, the
| behive has a lot of esoteric associations.
| vilius wrote:
| Bees to this day are very respected in Lithuania. A very close
| friend can be being called "Biciulis" which is derived from a
| word bee. As in "bee honey" = "Biciu medus". For english speakers
| the pronunciation can sound a bit contraindicative BIH-LIs
| davidw wrote:
| Looks like 'medus' and 'mead' have the same root, offhand?
| sanqui wrote:
| Indeed. And the Lithuanian word for 'bee', _bite_ , is also
| cognate with the English word as per Wiktionary[1].
|
| [1] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bit%C4%97#Lithuanian
| riffraff wrote:
| The proto-balto-slavic root for honey is "med", which is why
| the word for bear is usually some variation of "medved",
| meaning "honey eater", due to that weird process where
| something scary becomes taboo and gets replaces with some
| phrase.
|
| https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/Reconstruction:Proto-
| Slavic...
| flixic wrote:
| The name wasn't based on bees just because bees are respected.
| "Biciulyste" (meaning friendship, using the same word Biciulis)
| was usually a neighbor friendship with a particular purpose: to
| take care of bees communally.
| h2odragon wrote:
| We look at individual humans as pretty smart; but then the
| collective intelligence of a human city as pretty dim. We see
| individual bees as pretty dim; but perceive intelligence and
| agency in the swarm.
|
| Many species of bee live individually or in small groups. Are
| Carpenter bee tribes searching for the secret of fire? They're
| certainly industrious enough.
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| What would bees use fire for? Humans used it to create more
| edible food, for metallurgy, generate warmth, etc. I'm not sure
| if bees would need that, since honey is energy dense, they have
| built in weapons, and they sort of hibernate in the cold. And
| they don't have the ability to stoke and generate fire do they,
| human hands and cognition are useful fire tenders.
|
| Maybe given millions of years of further evolution, bees or
| ants could become more capable in their culture?
| EamonnMR wrote:
| What would bees use fire for? Same thing they use everything
| for: education. Specifically teaching all other animals not
| to mess with bees.
| throwanem wrote:
| If bees often seem to feel the need to teach you _that_ ,
| consider perhaps improving the diligence of your study.
| xivzgrev wrote:
| This is one of the reasons I love Hacker News - random and
| interesting bits of information. I had heard of people talking to
| plants, their pets, etc...but apparently bees too, and
| particularly around deaths.
|
| Grasping at straws here, I could see bees being very routine-
| oriented, and if a particular person (esp caretaker) was dead,
| that could upset them because the routine is now different. Why
| "telling" them appears to work is a mystery.
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| > Why "telling" them appears to work is a mystery.
|
| I think you're reading too much into myth and folklore. There's
| no real evidence for these practices ... but there doesn't need
| to be. It's not about whether the phenomenon is real, it's
| about a fun myth.
| LamdbaMamba wrote:
| Well... maybe. Whenever I see folklore like this I always
| suspect there are real effects but they may be attributed
| incorrectly. For instance, an ancient Greek feels sick, and
| worships at the temple of Apollo to ask the god to heal him.
| The Greek starts feeling a bit better when they leave. Apollo
| or the placebo effect?
|
| My first thought with telling the bees is that just speaking
| our thoughts to an impartial third party can help ease our
| burdens and make us feel better. Maybe it's a therapist, a
| stranger at the bar, or a garden of bees. Now this doesn't
| explain the supposed effect of bees dying/leaving if the
| practice is not followed, but it could explain why the
| practice continues.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > Apollo or the placebo effect?
|
| Note that the placebo effect is not about real improvement
| perceived by the sufferer except in a few very specific
| symptoms (pain, high blood pressure, and some psychiatric
| illnesses, mostly). In most cases, the placebo effect is
| simply optimistic interpretation/collection of data by
| people wanting to see the medicine work.
| smaddox wrote:
| I'm curious why you think this. Is there some research to
| support this view? From what I've read, the placebo
| effect seems quite real, with quite physical effects. And
| the surgical placebo effect is stronger than the
| medicinal placebo effect.
|
| It's not so absurd if you fully accept that the
| connection between mind and body is bidirectional.
| andyjohnson0 wrote:
| Placebos aren't curative. It's well known that they can
| affect a subject's _perception_ of how their condition is
| progressing, and this may have physical consequences:
| e.g. a reduction in psychological stress leading to
| reduced blood pressure, etc. But the placebo won 't
| affect the underlying condition. They don't make the
| brain somehow cure the body.
|
| Quote:
|
| _" Placebos won't lower your cholesterol or shrink a
| tumor. Instead, placebos work on symptoms modulated by
| the brain, like the perception of pain. "Placebos may
| make you feel better, but they will not cure you,"...
| "They have been shown to be most effective for conditions
| like pain management, stress-related insomnia, and cancer
| treatment side effects like fatigue and nausea."_
|
| https://www.health.harvard.edu/mental-health/the-power-
| of-th...
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I am curious why you think that it is different. The base
| assumption should always be that non-medicine have non-
| effects - apart from perceived effects and the desire to
| "co-operate" with the study (which is why we double-blind
| tests are so important).
|
| [0] is a Cochrane study that looked at this. Quoting from
| their conclusions:
|
| > We did not find that placebo interventions have
| important clinical effects in general. However, in
| certain settings placebo interventions can influence
| patient-reported outcomes, especially pain and nausea,
| though it is difficult to distinguish patient-reported
| effects of placebo from biased reporting. The effect on
| pain varied, even among trials with low risk of bias,
| from negligible to clinically important. Variations in
| the effect of placebo were partly explained by variations
| in how trials were conducted and how patients were
| informed.
|
| [0] https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi/10.1002/1465
| 1858.CD...
| philwelch wrote:
| There are multiple factors that contribute to the placebo
| effect. The psychosomatic response is one of them.
| "Optimistic interpretation/collection of data by people
| wanting to see the medicine work" is another factor, but
| one that's typically removed by double-blinding. With
| some conditions, just plain reversion-to-the-mean is also
| part of the placebo effect--if you take a pill to cure
| your headache and your headache goes away, who's to say
| the headache wouldn't have gone away of its own accord
| anyway?
| [deleted]
| mkmk wrote:
| Maybe it's as simple as a tradition that helps make sure
| that nobody forgets to take care of the beehives (an
| important part of a community's agricultural
| infrastructure) when somebody dies or leaves the home (due
| to marriage, etc.)
| TimTheTinker wrote:
| That's an excellent observation.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Referenced in the framing story at the beginning and end of _The
| Bees_ by Laline Paull, which is a novel from the perspective of
| bees that is really really good.
| diskzero wrote:
| My wife told me about this custom when we moved into a new house
| and found a small bee hive in a hollow of an olive tree. We made
| it a habit to give them updates about various events that
| occurred and it became an important bonding event. She is now
| critically ill and I am not looking forward to sharing her death
| with our bees, but I'll do it as what I hope will be an important
| part of closure and dealing with loss. The bees themselves have
| been doing quite well and have spun off swarms several times.
| They are docile non-Africanized bees and I hope they will
| continue to keep making more bees for a long time!
| 1cvmask wrote:
| From another wikipedia link:
|
| "In mythology, the bee, found in Indian, ancient Near East and
| Aegean cultures, was believed to be the sacred insect that
| bridged the natural world to the underworld."
|
| "According to Hittite mythology, the god of agriculture,
| Telipinu, went on a rampage and refused to allow anything to grow
| and animals would not produce offspring. The gods went in search
| of Telipinu only to fail. Then the goddess Hannahanna sent forth
| a bee to bring him back. The bee finds Telipinu, stings him and
| smears wax upon him. The god grew even angrier and it wasn't
| until the goddess Kamrusepa (or a mortal priest according to some
| references) uses a ritual to send his anger to the Underworld."
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_(mythology)
| Igelau wrote:
| This part interested me:
|
| > believed to be the sacred insect that bridged the natural
| world to the underworld
|
| When we were kids, my brother and I would keep away from dead
| bees because they "might come back to life". We had probably
| been warned that the bee might be dormant, or that the
| mechanism of the stinger can still trigger even after the bee
| is dead. Maybe a friend gave us a mixed up version of the
| facts. The way we had it set it in our heads was that dead bees
| could come back to life.
| throwanem wrote:
| Vespid wasps, especially the family of hornets and
| yellowjackets, have alarm pheromones. This is why it's a very
| bad idea to kill a wasp: her sisters are likely to smell what
| you did, and may come and try to kill you right back.
| Damaging the body of a dead wasp can also release the
| pheromone, eliciting the same response.
|
| I don't know that we need a just-so story to explain a
| folkway around avoiding interference with the remains of
| deceased hymenopterans, but if we do, this is probably the
| strongest candidate.
| mise_en_place wrote:
| The bee was very important for Indo-Europeans, because honey
| has a really good shelf life, a necessity when one is nomadic.
|
| From the Rig Veda I 154: "td'sy pri'ym'bhi paatho' ashyaaN'
| nro' ytr' dev'yvo' md'nti / u'ru'kr'msy' s hi bndhu'ri'tthaa
| vissnno': p'de p'r'me mdhv' uts': // tdsy priymbhi paatho
| ashyaaN nro ytr devyvo mdnti / urukrmsy s hi bndhuritthaa
| vissnnoH pde prme mdhv utsH // tad asya priyam abhi patho
| asyam naro yatra devayavo madanti | urukramasya sa hi bandhur
| ittha visnoh pade parame _madhva_ utsah ||"
|
| _Madhva_ seems to be an epithet for the Vedic Vishnu, Indra,
| and later Krishna. The Sanskrit word for honey is _Madhu_ ,
| sharing the same root as _mead_. So you could loosely translate
| it as "mead-sweetened". My hypothesis is that soma was not a
| psychoactive drug but mead drank in a ritual context.
|
| The bee was so important to the Vedic religon that the earliest
| iconography of Vishnu is simply a bee resting on a lotus
| flower. This leads me to believe the Vedic non-Puranic Vishnu
| was a mead swigging warrior, as opposed to the later Puranic
| Vishnu/Krishna, who himself was likely a disciple/devotee of
| Shiva as evidenced by his many Shiva rituals in the Bhagavad
| Gita.
|
| It's hilarious to think how Krishna was retconned as Vishnu,
| when he is himself a huge devotee of Shiva!
| namanyayg wrote:
| > Krishna was retconned as Vishnu
|
| I know that Krishna = Vishnu but never knew it was retconned.
| What's the source?
| mise_en_place wrote:
| That's merely conjecture on my part. The two are quite
| different based on their descriptions. The Vedic Vishnu is
| described as a fierce warrior, like Varaha, a wild boar.
| Krishna is way more calm, reasonable, and shall we say
| crafty. The two also represent the shift from a hunter-
| gatherer society to a more agrarian based society.
|
| Technically both Vishnu and Krishna are relatives, since
| they both descend from Kashyap, so I could see why his
| contemporaries saw him as the reincarnation of Vishnu.
| MrZongle2 wrote:
| Say what you want about bees; they know how to keep a secret.
| retzkek wrote:
| The Gardeners do this in Margaret Atwood's _Oryx and Crake_
| (MaddAddam trilogy), one character derives much comfort from
| telling the bees. I didn 't know it was an actual custom, how
| wonderful. I believe there's a certain wisdom in these old
| customs, that helps keep humans connected with the non-human
| world.
| grilledcheez wrote:
| I'm halfway through The Year of the Flood, loving the trilogy
| so far. This post also made me think of Toby and old Pilar.
| teachrdan wrote:
| I used to be an adult ESL teacher and had students who had
| immigrated to the US from all around the world. I mentioned this
| practice one in class, and a student from Guatemala made clear
| that, at least where he was from, people were still telling the
| bees. I wonder if this is due to convergent evolution or colonial
| influence?
|
| [0] I learned about telling the bees from the incredible Museum
| of Jurassic Technology in LA:
| https://www.mjt.org/exhibits/bees/bees.html
| hmahncke wrote:
| Great museum and a great exhibit! Really compelling description
| of folks remedies in a way that respects the construction of
| knowledge.
|
| Unfortunately the museum is still closed due to COVID, but
| they've said they're not permanently closed...
| pope_meat wrote:
| Huh, I guess I know why my bees died now. But in my defense, I'm
| a very private person.
| axus wrote:
| Kind of like the brown M&Ms; if you don't bother to notify the
| bees, what else aren't you taking care of?
| chatoyance wrote:
| Superstitions around the world are interesting because they often
| seem so completely arbitrary.
|
| IMHO, superstitions are ritual tribal beliefs, false knowledge,
| overactive risk aversion, and false modesty.
| dwmbt wrote:
| how do you feel about personal superstitions, developed through
| individual experience? in my household, before bed, i ask for
| blessings from my parents and return the sentiment. i'm not
| pious, nor even religious in the standard sense, but whenever i
| forget to or don't have the chance, i feel terribly anxious,
| like something terrible will happen to them/me overnight. i
| know this comes off as irrational, but it makes me feel safe.
| diskzero wrote:
| I think they serve a purpose, which I hope is mostly
| positive. I have my own as well. Some might be seen as
| prayers or silent meditations. They help me feel better and
| cope with stressful situations. I don't tell anyone about
| these or force anyone to do them. Is is irrational? Maybe,
| but it brings me peace without harming anyone or making the
| world a worse place to live in.
| _dain_ wrote:
| That's a complete tautology.
| scubbo wrote:
| I heard of this from Granny Weatherwax.
|
| GNU Terry Pratchett.
| zem wrote:
| I learnt of it from Kipling's wonderful "Puck of Pook's Hill"
| riffraff wrote:
| Ah, I read the article and this seemed familiar, and I thought
| it felt pratchett-ian.
|
| Now it makes sense :)
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