To paraphrase the preamble in the March/April, 2015, issue of Orion, written by H. Emerson Blake, we cannot fly like honey bees. We cannot sense or savor the world as they do; we kill other species, and our own, more indiscriminately than do bees; we foul and savage the planet more than does any order of insects. Pollinators of all species are rearing their next generations to continue their genome as extensively as possible while, at the same time, creating the succeeding crop of plants that will provide the resources for the new wave of their extended family.
Yet we have one thing, one incredible gift, that, as far as we know, they do not – imagination.
Call it what you will – creativity, vision, inspiration, inventiveness, resourcefulness, ingenuity; originality, innovation – imagination is associated primarily with, but not confined to, the arts, using storytelling, literature, painting, sculpting, music, dance, theater and craft as means of both expression and renewal. Where do most bee books begin? With pictures of neolithic paintings on rock walls in caves in India and Spain of men collecting honey using ladders and baskets high off the ground. Life 10 000 years ago was hard – very hard – and existence uncertain, yet it was important for these Iron Age souls to express themselves artistically in an attempt to make sense of what it meant to be in the world.
Today almost every fact a child needs to know can be found on the internet. So what do we teach at school? Certainly there is a knowledge base that is important, but do we assess critically just what facts need to be part of that base? In the early 1950’s a committee of educators, chaired by Benjamin Bloom, devised what has become known as Bloom’s Taxonomy, which emphasized the importance of being able to analyze, synthesize, evaluate and apply information, rather than merely understand and regurgitate it. And the indication of a good education is when innovation, inspiration and vision happen instinctively. “Creativity is just connecting things,” argued the late Steve Jobs. “When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while. That’s because they were able to connect experiences they’ve had and synthesize new things.” That last sentence is also not a bad description of the scientific process, with the proviso that the synthesis be tested, retested and proven according to accepted norms.
Creativity is more than an outlet for emotion, important as that is. It is also the way that we attune ourselves to our surroundings, that we realize our potential to adapt and change as required by our environment. “Poetry is all about freedom,” writes the British poet, David Whyte. “Not the freedom from things but the freedom to be completely in the experience, and therefore to change your perspectives on that experience completely, and to actually allow yourself to be somebody new in that discovery. Poetry is the art of letting yourself say things you didn’t know you knew.”
Read those last two sentences from David White again, this time with your honey bee activities in mind. And then do the same with these words from Deepak Chokra : “Enlightened leadership is spiritual if we understand spirituality not as some kind of religious dogma or ideology but as the domain of awareness where we experience values like truth, goodness, beauty, love and compassion, and also intuition, creativity, insight and focused attention.”
The Eastern Apicultural Society meeting in Guelph, Ontario, in 2015 was a thought-provoking experience. After hours of research-based lectures, each with imposing power point slides, my notes covered less than two pages. Perhaps I am at the point in my growth as a beekeeper where extensive listening is needed to unearth those vital nuggets that enlarge or change my perception. Each one of those gems comes in a larger context, connects with what I already know, and creates a larger truth with enhanced compassion and love for the amazing world of the honey bee.
The second gift from those four days in Guelph was the discussions around the breakfast table, or on the bus, or at the book-signing table, with people like Les Eccles, Phil Craft and Mark Winston, when the language and the topics were more personal, more directly relevant to my needs in my apiary.
The key to managing honey bees is to have the imagination to make the connections between our observations and our reading, our senses and our knowledge, and to “…experience values like truth, goodness, beauty, love and compassion, and also intuition, creativity, insight and focused attention.” Indeed everything one finds in a great work of art.
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Go to your fields and gardens
And you shall learn it is the pleasure of the bee
To gather honey of the flower.
But it is the pleasure of the flower
To yield its honey to the bee.
For to the bee a flower is the fountain of life.
And to the flower, a bee is a messenger of love.
Kahil Gibran, The Prophet, 1923.
Our Green Cathedral 