Sacred Bees Were Integral to Rosslyn Chapel

Fascinating - a home for the buzzing bees was purposefully built into the Chapel!  Guess we shouldn't be surprised that this ancient symbol of the Goddess (bee) was incorporated into this benchmark of symbolism, whose mysteries have yet to be deciphered to this very day.

From BBC News
Page last updated at 11:35 GMT, Tuesday, 30 March 2010 12:35 UK
Rosslyn Chapel was haven for bees

An ancient chapel has revealed a new mystery with the discovery of a 600-year-old hive built into the stones.

Builders renovating Rosslyn Chapel, which was made famous in The Da Vinci Code, found the "unprecedented" hive while dismantling a rooftop pinnacle.

The bees entered the hive through a hole in a carved flower crafted by the chapel's master stone masons (photo, right).

The 15th Century Midlothian building is undergoing a £13m conservation and site improvement project.

The discovery was made when two pinnacles, which had been made unstable by nesting jackdaws, had to be taken down stone by stone and rebuilt.

Malcolm Mitchell, of Page Park Architects, said: "It was a big hollow about the size of a gas cylinder and the hive had obviously been abandoned."

'Teasing' masons

It is believed that the bees left the hive when a canopy was put over the chapel during renovation works. Another pinnacle had a similar hollow, but no access hole.

"Master masons built these in, whether it was under direction or not. What you find at Rosslyn is there are so many irregularities and nuances in the stone work and it's as if the stone masons are teasing us from the past," Mr Mitchell said.

"These hives were never intended to be a source of honey. They were there purely to protect the bees from our inclement weather."

"There doesn't seem to be any precedent.

"Bee hives in the past were normally portable. Often they were made of wicker baskets or ceramics, but the intention was that you would have access to them.

"At Rosslyn they are there purely for the bees."

He said there appeared to be a coating to protect the sandstone from the insects, which can damage masonry.

The hive has been sent to local beekeepers in an attempt to identify the type of insect that made them. It is hoped the bees will return once the renovation works are complete.

Several unusual findings have been made during the project, including two skeletons.

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I hope the bees return, too.  They are a very old sign that the Great Mother Goddess has blessed a place.  Did you know that in ancient times, bees were almost always kept by women?  In England, even into the late 19th century, female beekeepers were considered embued with certain powers, including the ability to foretell the future.  I understand that it was said that the bees, who daily saw the secrets of the community on their busy rounds of collecting pollen from local gardens, would confide their secrets to their beekeeper as they returned to the hive in the evening to settle in for the night.  I do not know if this is true, but the character "Queenie" Turrill, as poignantly portrayed in the BBC televisied series "Larkrise to Candleford" by actress Linda Bassett, was clearly depicted as having an almost surreal connection with the bees in her hives, and could foretell certain events that would affect the community based upon the collective behavior of her bees. 

Check out The Bee Goddess.

It's no joke that once again in 2010 there is bad news about the continuing mysterious deaths of countless bee colonies through what is euphimistically called "colony collapse disorder."  Without the bees to pollinate our crops, we are toast, people.  Toast.  A world without bees is a sterile world cast into a downward spiral of famine, starvation and the death of millions of people and animals through lack of food - fruits, vegetables, grains, flowers.  Meanwhile, the scientists argue about what is causing the deaths of billions of our bees, bicker bicker bicker and not a fricking thing is being done to actually SAVE the bees.  Like - DUH!