In our culture, bees seem deeply ingrained in the rituals of mourning. In Greek mythology and many other traditions, African and Amerindian, bees shuttle between life here above and the underworld. The Delphic oracle was closely associated with bees. It seems fitting that the Taiwanese woman who had come to the hospital complaining of a swollen eye should have acquired her tear-drinking bees while visiting a relative’s grave. But poets seem to have known about the special significance of bees all along, and their connection to what Virgil called lacrimae rerum, “the tears of things.”
Source : The Bees That Live on Human Tears
