[Some years since, observes a correspondent of the Athenæum, quoted by Brande, a gentleman at a dinner table happened to mention that he was surprised, on the death of a relative, by his servant inquiring “whether his master would inform the Bees of the event, or whether _he_ should do so.” On asking the meaning of so strange a question, the servant assured him that Bees ought always to be informed of a death in a family, or they would resent the neglect by deserting the hive. This gentleman resides in the Isle of Ely, and the anecdote was told in Suffolk; and one of the party present, a few days afterward, took the opportunity of testing the prevalence of this strange notion by inquiring of a cottager who had lately lost a relative, and happened to complain of the loss of her Bees, “whether she had told them all she ought to do?” She immediately replied, “Oh, yes; when my aunt died I told every skep (_i.e._ hive) myself, and put them.... “Into mourning.” I have since ascertained the existence of the same superstition in Cornwall, Devonshire (where I have seen black crape put round the hive, or on a small black stick by its side), and Yorkshire. It probably exists in every part of the kingdom.... The mode of communicating is by whispering the fact to each hive separately.... In Oxford I was told that if a man and wife quarreled, the Bees would leave them.][640] “In some parts of Suffolk,” says Bucke, “the peasants believe, when any member of their family dies, that, unless the Bees are put in mourning by placing a piece of black cloth, cotton or silk, on the top of the hives, the Bees will either die or fly away. “In Lithuania, when the master or mistress dies, one of the first duties performed is that of giving notice to the Bees, by rattling the keys of the house at the doors of their hives. Unless this be done, the Lithuanians imagine the cattle will die; the Bees themselves perish, and the trees wither.”[641] At Bradfield, if Bees are not invited to funerals, it is believed they will die.[642] In the Living Librarie, Englished by John Molle, 1621, p. 283, we read: “Who would beleeve without superstition (if experience did not make it credible), that most commonly all the Bees die in their hives, if the master or mistress of the house chance to die, except the hives be presently removed into some other place? And yet I know this hath hapned to folke no way stained with superstition.”[643] A similar superstition is, that Beehives belonging to deceased persons should be turned over the moment when the corpse is taken out of the house.[644] No consequence is given for the non-performance of this rite.