Pushing Daisies: BiciulysteNovember 24, 2010
One of the most unusual Lithuanian rural traditions is “biciulyste” – friendship through bees. This is a very complex system with mythological underpinnings; it reveals the family order, the status of the woman as homemaker, relations between men and women, and generally speaking – basic social mores. Beekeeping is primarily a man’s work, and a woman has no right to interfere: taking care of bees is not unlike befriending women. This friendship through bees has become an auxiliary familial structure. A traditional wedding is the ideal model for the eldest son, the future family heir, to find himself a wife; taking care of bees and finding a family with no male heir, but with many daughters, is the duty of the younger, second son. The role of creating relationships falls to the swarm of bees, at the point when it lands and settles “where the girls are.” The people must then share the hives – and it is this manner of friendly relationship which can end in marriages between families.
For many years, neither bees nor honey were bought or sold; everyone had a right to beekeeping friendships: a peasant could be a bee-friend to a landowner as well as to any other, noble or less than noble, person. Inevitably however, this custom imposes upon the beekeeper the duty to surreder half of this honey to the landowner; this obligation, a gift in kind, later becomes a tax paid to the estate. All the same, beekeeping friendships remain alive to this day.