First off, the monarchy in England have their very own Royal Beekeeper. Second, he’s crazy. Actually, there’s been a long line of crazy beekeepers who bee…..lieve, that if you don’t tell the bees that the queen or whoever has been in charge has died, that all the bees will die or fly away. The beekeepers put black bows on all of the hives while saying a prayer. It, somehow, relays the information to the bees. It’s a superstition that goes waaaaay back hundreds of years. The current Royal Beekeeper said, “You knock on each hive and say, ‘The mistress is dead, but don’t you go. Your master will be a good master to you.’”
The palace gets about 200 jars of honey each year from the bees a lot of which goes into cream sponge cake. By the way, if you’re not using Chantilly Cream, well then, it’s not a true United Kingdom cream sponge cake, ha-rumph! Honestly, buy a couple sponge cake patties from a bakery, pour a liberal amount of honey over the top of one, slap the other cake on top of it and cover with Cool Whip. It’ll be just as tasty.