LOCATION 1: PRINCESSHAY’S ROOFTOP APIARY

Bee Station 1: The Arrival of the Bee Box

Bee Station 2: Hope and Despair Statues

'Tell the Bees' (extract) by Sarah Lindsay

Tell the bees. They require news of the house;
they must know, lest they sicken
from the gap between their ignorance and our grief.
Speak in a whisper. Tie a black swatch
to a stick and attach the stick to their hive.
From the fortress of casseroles and desserts
built in the kitchen these past few weeks
as though hunger were the enemy, remove
a slice of cake and lay it where they can
slowly draw it in, making a mournful sound. 

Tell it to the Bees refers to the 19th Century practice of ‘telling the bees’ about significant life-events and worries: illness, death and bereavement, marriages and births. It was thought the bees needed to know these things – to share in them – and that the ‘tellings’ prevented them from leaving the hive, swarming or dying.

In this walking-performance we – like the bees in this rooftop apiary – are going to go out into the city. The "bee stations" that we will vist enroute are chosen because they bring life-event and bees together and demonstrate the very human need to tell our stories – to mark, remember and transform them. In the context of the Covid -19 Pandemic – its effects and our recovery from it – they are resonant in meaning.

The first bee-station was the beehives we have just visited. The second bee-station is here, on the street next to the apiary. It is the two sculpted figures called 'Hope and Despair' that mark the devastating bombing Blitz on Exeter in 1942. The figure on the right is with her face covered by her arms is 'Despair' (at bombing) and the one on the left is 'Hope' who holds a flaming torch as a motif to symbolise her guiding us towards a bright future – full of light and hope.

We are now going out into the city, notice signs of honeybees – insects, flowers, berries – and life-events happening around us. On the way downstairs, a film shows Jason Willis the beekeeper here at Princesshay at work. Notice the queen bee – she is, says Jason, ‘Devon born and bred’. Notice too that one of her wings is clipped. This prevents her flying any distance should the colony swarm. The queen's life is dedicated to reproduction. She only leaves the hive once – her ‘Virgin Flight’ – to mate, and if she swarms.

LOCATION 2: EXETER CATHEDRAL 

Bee Station 3: Astronomical Clock – Waggle Dance & Solar Navigation

Bee Station 3: Astronomical Clock – Waggle Dance & solar navigation

Dating from 1484 the clock is a working model of the solar system as it was then understood. The gold ball in the centre is the earth. The outermost black disc, decorated with fleur-de-lys, represents the sun. It is worth noting that the annual cycle of the honeybee is influenced by daylight, warmth and sunlight and Bees navigate by the sun and that they use a waggle dance to communicate to the other bees where to find nectar and pollen.

Bee Station 4: Bishop Edmund Lacy’s Tomb – beeswax votive of a woman praying

Bishop Edmund Lacy was known to have suffered from a debilitating leg condition and his tomb became mediaeval pilgrimage site – a shrine that people came to for healing and to make prayers for physical ailments – for themselves or for others, and for their animals. To do this they hung beeswax votives of the afflicted limb or body part that needed healing – legs, feet, arms, hands, torsos, heads (cattle, sheep – that needed healing. To the side is a 20cm high beeswax votive of a woman praying – this is a 3D copy. During the reformation this sort of pilgrimage practice was swept away and the votives were hidden behind the stone canopy above where they remained – undiscovered – and only found when repair work was taking place to the cathedral following the bomb damage in 1942 (WWII). They are of great importance as there are no other survivals of this kind in Great Britain.

Bee Station 5: Minstrel's Gallery – piping angels/queen bees with wings cut

The Minstrel's Gallery, used by musicians and singers in the 14th century is decorated with 2 carved angels who had their wings cut to fit into the spaces. Some beekeepers cut the queen bees wings to stop them swarming far away from the hive. Notice the angels with trumpets, horns and pipes. 

The queen pipes. So, when she emerges from a queen cell, just before she is going to hatch you can hear. It is called piping. You can hear them and then you can see them because [the cells] is like a thimble, and the edges around the tip of the thimble [are cut open] and you can see the queen emerging. Then you can hear her piping. The first one [queen] to emerge will go around to the other queen cells and sting through the wax [to kill the other queens]. You only have one queen in one hive, normally. Maybe it’s a warning sound to the other queens, certainly it’s a sign of communication to tell the workers and the drones there is a new queen emerging. If they gone through a natural process of swarming, it’s the old queen who goes out with the swarm so [the piping] heralds in the arrival of a new queen. So, it could be telling them, all sorts of things really, “don’t panic, there is a queen here, I am your new sovereign”. (Peter Hunt)

 When the queen pipes, the worker bees momentarily stand still to listen.

High up in the Minstrels Gallery – hidden from sight – the saxophonist plays. Her music connects the wax votive of the praying woman and the queen bee – as a symbol of wellbeing and healing – and is informed by medieval music associated with Mary (The Blessed Virgin) which morphs into an echo of the piping sounds made by the virgin queen when she emerges from her cell.

LOCATION 3: THE CATACOMBS & PARK

Bee Station 6: Catacombs – epedemics & egyptians

The Catacombs were built in response to a major cholera epidemic in 1832.  In 2009 Exeter City Council suggested these Catacombs could be used to store bodies in the event of a swine flu pandemic. In 2019 this was a site of a bee swarm (bee swarm when the hive is too full. Half the hive leave in search of new home). The headline in Devonlive read: 

Police called as huge swarm of bees invades Exeter city centre. A man has spoken of his shock after stumbling upon a huge swarm of bees […] on the branch of a tree.

We are now going down and inside The Catacombs. Please put masks on to go inside.

The audience are led into the catacombs. Inside, they are shown a film of Peter Hunt’s examining his beehives and discussing diseases and viruses: 

[in the UK], we have a couple of viruses, also we have Varroa [mite]. Varroa, you can see on the bee, and the viruses – we have got two, European and American Foul Brood – you can tell is there by looking into cells smell and by smell. It’s quite a strong smell of death. Disease is one of the reasons we need better hive managers. We don’t want to be helping colonies that are spreading diseases. A bee that is contaminated with disease is sick. It goes out into the field of clover for example, and it will meet with bees that come from clean hives. By mixing with them it can pass the disease from one hive to another, as well as from one bee to another. The once clean bee takes it back to their hive. That’s the issue.

In the centre of the catacombs, the ‘ghost’ beekeeper stands in an arched alcove and holds an iPad on which plays a film of bees inside their hive. 

Bee-Station 7: Blasted Tree

A black sheet – visually resonant of a bee swarm – hangs in the skeletal form of a blasted tree. The Catacombs designed in the style of an Egyptian tomb.

The Catacombs are designed in the style of an Egyptian tomb. Ancient Egyptians used honey to: sweeten food, put on wounds to prevent infection, pay taxes. Honey was also used in religious ceremonies: sacred animals were fed cakes sweetened with honey, Mummies were embalmed in honey, sarcophagi were sealed up with beeswax, jars of honey were left as offerings for the dead. The Egyptian Book of "the Otherworld" compares the voices of souls to the hum of bees.

High above the catacombs the saxophonist steps forward and plays. Her music sweeps over and across the park and audience below and is informed by the sound of the hive preparing to swarm (they swell, swarm, then settle) and the piping noises the scout bees make when encouraging the swarm to leave the hive and search for a place to live. This is underscored by patterns, tones and rhythms found in by Egyptian music.

LOCATION 4: WAR MEMORIAL (1923), NORTHERHAY PARK

Bee Station 7: Statue of the VAD Nurse – lost bees and keepers & frontline workers

The population of honeybees went into decline following WW1. Beekeepers were at war, and many did not return. There was no one ‘tell the bees’ of these losses. Hives swarmed and colonies were lost. Farming practices changed: intensive farming and pesticides led to loss of wildflowers and forage. A trend that continues today.

This War Memorial commemorates the 958 men and women who died between 1914 and 1918. The memorial includes a sculpture of a Voluntary Aid Detachment Nurse. This nurse holds a bandage. At her side is a sheaf of corn and a shrapnel shell. The VAD nurses were frontline workers – as organise and necessary to the war effort as worker bees are to the hive. They provided vital aid to naval and military forces and cared for sick and wounded. It is said, their self-sacrificing and unselfish devotion to duty earned the gratitude of thousands of wounded soldiers and sailors.

A wreath of corn is laid as a mark of respect for all the frontline workers then and now. The saxaphone plays The Last Post.

LOCATION 5: ROUGEMENT GARDENS

Bee Station 8: The Tree Dell – Telling the Bees

You are now invited to ‘tell the bees’ of your own life-events, things that have happened during the last 18-months of lockdown – small things and major things, sad and happy. Or things where hope has emerged from despair. When you have finished, you are invited to place it in the honey-frame which will go in the portable bee box. Your reflections are private and will be sealed with wax – never to be opened.

Each participant is given a sheet of paper on which to write their ‘tellings’ and an envelope in which to place and seal them. As participants write, Roz plays a medley of all the tunes gathered at each location.

After they place their envelopes in the bee box each person is given gifts from the bees in exchange: Princesshay’s or Peter Hunt’s Blackaller Apiary honey ‘for sweetness and healing’. A beeswax candle – hand dipped by Exminster Bees ‘to keep for yourself or give to someone else in need of light, warmth and hope’, and a postcard of an image created from a montage of all the sites visited ‘for telling the bees’.

Bee Station 9: Leafy Cul d Sac, where the wild foxes live – honey cake & mead

The performance ends in a leafy cul-de-sac where Devonshire Honey Cake made by St. Sidwell Street Bakehouse and a glass of Mead is served and salutations and thanks are given ‘to the bees’

I’d never known before that Princesshay rooftop was home to creatures making forays out onto plants and patches of wildness beyond the shopping centre – thus tempering my sense of this being a nature-barren consumerist place. I loved the way the walk took us then on a route by such a varied lot of stopping points bringing new discoveries, deeper and richer ways of seeing and being in known places – such as our great Cathedral, Northernhay Gardens, the Catacombs. Although there were themes lightly touching on bees’ relation to sunlight, warmth and healing I didn’t make any association with Covid or lockdown until I came to ‘writing to the bees’ sitting quietly in the fitting setting of the Rougemont Gardens. 

 

This was a wonderful inspiring performance, which took me to places in Exeter I never knew existed, despite having lived here for nearly 19 years. The theatrical elements – the costumes, ‘statues’, haunting music, mimed instructions, discreet props and spoken delivery – worked really well to create an atmosphere of performance. The performance was moving in more sense than one, as my companion was brought to tears by the invitation to reflect on the impact of the pandemic. [...] The gifts at the end of the walk were beautifully thought through and offered, as were the mead and honey cake. Thank you for all these memorable treats.

 

When discussing the impact of the music in the performance, many participants cited the resonance of the saxophone playing from the Minstrel’s Gallery:

It was beautiful: you heard it and felt it, not only spiritually and emotionally but also physically. I could feel it resonating, pulsing throughout my body, particularly my heart. For me, that was one of the key highlights from the tour, bringing together the past and the now. Musicians have been playing in the same place since Medieval time… The contrast I felt between the beautiful music freely filling the space, and the story of the bees having their wings clipped by humans, so they were constrained seemed particularly tragic…. really moving.

 

Looking up at the Minstrel’s gallery, the light in the Cathedral combining with the sound created a haunting atmosphere, particularly as we couldn’t see the saxophonist.

 

I’ve never been to Exeter before…I came because I wanted to see Louise Ann’s work…. I enjoyed exploring Exeter as well as engaging with the environment [...]. I enjoyed the narration of the environment through Bee Stations. It was a more exciting way of discovering Exeter – Events of the city and the way it has developed with the natural world and history. I enjoyed the connection with the Blitz and 1942- the medieval music in the Cathedral, the importance of food for people, diseases and the different stages in people’s lives. I thought reflecting on the bees and the pandemic and narrating the life of bees through centuries interesting. There was a lot of archaeological layering… linking back to historical sites, such as on the roof top staring at the sculptures and thinking about the bombing in 1942. The saxophonist was a lovely addition. I thought the ghost-like woman with the black flag was like a warning or had a spectral quality. There was a sense of anticipation – predicting what might happen. I enjoyed looking up in the gallery and was very aware on the light and the saxophonist. I like the images and the small films in the catacombs and the connection between bees and diseases – dead people going into hives. Then we were ghosted by Covid with the nurse and key worker association. I thought the four figures (beekeepers) echoed some of the sculptures. I liked the friendly natural registers which were used.

 

It was thought-provoking and emotional. I enjoyed that we saw a familiar environment in a different way. When we were going round, I heard about the Plague and Swine Flu and the diseases of bees, but they were all beyond my experience. I didn’t want the tour to be related to this pandemic, but it built up slowly in a safe way. Very carefully considered. My brain made me think – ‘Who owes what to who?’ It made me think about the relationship between bees and humans. I started to appreciate the sounds, smells and the environment more.

 

It made me think about how we impact on the environment and on bees. I knew generally where we were but didn’t know the stories. It makes you appreciate the area more. I wasn’t sure what I was coming to and wasn’t sure at the beginning, but I wouldn’t change anything. 

 

I thought the pace was really good, steady but not too slow. It gave you time to reflect. It was also very open-ended, so you came slowly to reflect on your own life events. If we had been asked to reflect on our experience of the pandemic earlier in the tour I couldn’t have done it, but by the end I felt safe to share. 

 

I connected with the War memorial – the stop where we recognised the contribution of front-line services not only then but now. I really hope we don’t lose that feeling of thanks in future.

 

I really liked the connection between the bees and humans… Thinking about past epidemics in the catacombs (swine fever) and the plague with what we are currently experiencing. I didn’t expect to go to some of the places we did like the catacombs.

 

It gave me time to reflect on what you’d seen. The journey was interesting – At first, I felt I was on a usual walking tour and then and the stops progressed I became increasingly more emotional – particularly when the wreath was laid at the memorial. When I came into the gardens and started to tell me thoughts to the bees, I felt very moved… I didn’t expect that. It was quite an emotional journey.

 

I thought it was thought-provoking. As if we have been in a bubble and need to pinch myself to come out of it. It’s been deep.

Participant feedback was gathered and collated by Elaine Faull in person following the performance and then via emails and texts.

Tell it to the Bees to be exhibited in Opening Up: Threads and Beelines

6-11 December 2021 at Maketank in Exeter