Beekeeping in the Discworld and Beyond

Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld novels died today. The former Electricity Board Press Officer created the Discworld mythos and went on to become one of the UK's most popular writers. The Discworld novels are set on a flat world supported on the backs of four massive elephants standing on a gigantic turtle paddling through the ether. The dramatis personæ of the thirtyodd volume series included four beekeepers.

The first is revealed in Eric. The book opens with Death, the anthropomorphic personification of death, inspecting his hives. Everything is black in Death's kingdom so obviously he has black bees.

Adolescent Demonology and a Beekeeping Death

Five books later in Lords and Ladies it's revealed that Granny Weatherwax has a half dozen hives from which she takes a little wax and honey as she feels they can spare. It's later revealed in Carpe Jugulum that she made her own beekeeping equipment and didn't use smoke or a veil. Still in Lords and Ladies we're  introduced to Mr Brooks, the Royal Beekeeper at Lancre Castle. Mr Brooks is accorded a title and respect due to his secret knowledge of bees, smokes a pipe, makes his own deadly wasp poison and spends a lot of time in his shed. At one point he explains a little about bees to the Queen of the kingdom, continuing his discourse even after ordered to stop. The fourth beekeeper is found in A Hatful of Sky. A Research Witch and former Circus Performer, Miss Level who also talks to her bees.

Meet the Elves, get inside the mind of the Bees

I think it's interesting that he made two of his most enduring characters (you can't really get more enduring than Death) beekeepers, as well as those characters there are frequent references to bees, beekeepers and beekeeping elsewhere in the series. In Small Gods whilst setting the scene bees buzzed in the bean blossoms. In Wyrd Sisters beekeepers are listed alongside witches and big gorillas as creatures who go where they like. In Reaper Man the thought processes or lack thereof of the bee and ant are touched upon in a conversation. Away from the Discworld in his novel Dodger set in Victorian London there is a reference to one of the female characters, Angela Burdett-Coutts, keeping bees. Burdett-Coutts was actually a real person and was president of the British Beekeepers Association for 28 years.

The title of this blog is actually a reference to Lords and Ladies when Weatherwax accesses the mind of a bee colony. Leafing back through a few of his books it appears that Pratchett knew a thing or two about bees, beekeeping and beekeeping history. He talks of watching activity at the entrance, supersedure, swarming and wasp attacks. Two of his characters talk to their bees, which is a reference to the old English practice of Telling the Bees. A folkloric tradition of keeping ones bees appraised of the keepers family. As far as I know Pratchett didn't keep bees himself, but  his friend and Good Omens co-writer Neil Gaiman does so it's not unlikely he had some exposure to the world of the apiarist.

He was a busy chap in life, as well as his writing he became a Trustee of the Orangutan Foundation, and petitioned for more funding into Dementia research as well as campaigning for right to die. Now he's passed away I have no doubt his literary legacy will live on.