Sitting at our kitchen table one morning in March, 2011, replete with breakfast, Jerry Hayes observed that beekeeping is not so much a hobby as a journey – an intellectual, emotional and spiritual journey. Intellectual in that increasingly one has to be a well informed, well read apiarist for a colony to survive; emotional in that honey bees tolerate us participating in their lives, which is amazing for an insect species; and spiritual in terms of the sense of wonder that arise as one begins to understand the interactions and complexity of a living hive.
Dr. Wayne Esaias, with his work on nectar flows and climate change, points out that the honey bee was introduced from Europe, where it was superbly adapted, to the Americas in the 17th century. The 400 years since that introduction are but a drop in the bucket of evolutionary time. Apis mellifera has not yet fully acclimatized to our conditions and is thus reliant on the beekeeper for resources in a dearth in return for the precious gifts of honey and pollination. Increasingly the successful management of honey bees requires an intellectual commitment, an emotional connection with their predicament and a sense of awe at how they function and what they achieve.
“Age-old wisdom and beauty,” writes Gunther Hauk, “come together in the honey bee.” We talk easily about compassion and love but they are more difficult to find in action; instead our egotistical selves lead to the exploitation of nature as we stumble from one calamity to the other, whether in Tripoli in Libya, Fukushima Daiichi in Japan, the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico or the dramatic hurricanes typhoons and wild fires of 2017. In the face of our successes and failures to create man-made wisdom and beauty, the bees offer an inspiration as to how we can solve the problems facing both them and ourselves.
A colony of honey bees has a long term view on life despite the short life of the worker and drone bees. Everything is designed to assure the survival of the colony. If some Native Americans require that we consider the impact of our actions for the next seven generations, the actions of honey bees impact directly at least two consequent generations They swarm, for example, because two colonies have a better chance of allowing for survival than just one (a kind of prehistoric insurance policy;) they zealously protect and tend to the queen, knowing that their future literally rests in her hands (or her ovipositor.)
So the question arises, what is our ‘queen’? What is it that we must protect at all costs if we are to survive as a healthy, prosperous society? What is it that lives longer than any of us as individuals, that gives birth to new life and without which we shall all surely perish? Our planet earth is the obvious answer, and I would add ‘beauty,’ those qualities that please our intellectual, emotional and spiritual senses, those attributes that fill us with awe, a state in which love, compassion, empathy, brotherhood and peace combine with industry and commitment to enable us to find joy both in the chores of daily life and in the challenges of long term survival.
Paulann Petersen captures these sentiments in her poem, A Sacrament, if one ignores her reference to a drone in a biological sense.
Become that high priest, the bee. Drone your way from one fragrant temple to another, nosing into each altar. Drink what's divine— and while you're there, let some of the sacred cling to your limbs. Wherever you go leave a small trail of its golden crumbs. In your wake the world unfolds its rapture, the fruit of its blooming. Rooms in your house fill with that sweetness your body both makes and eats.
Our Green Cathedral 