The Magnificent Honey Bee

Did you know?

• A honeybee colony is not just a community of individuals but is a 'super-organism; a single bee-ing made up of some 50,000 individuals with a shared consciousness.
• One honeybee scout who locates a rich food source can recruit, through her dance-language, thousands of her sisters to visit that same location. This makes honeybees the most efficient pollinators of our field and orchard crops.
• A single pound of honey consists of the concentrated nectar of up to three MILLION flowers!  One teaspoon of honey represents the life's work of twelve honeybees.
• A Queen bee, the Mother of all the bees in her colony, can be created from any fertilized egg raised in a special cell and fed Royal Jelly by the worker bees. She can live for more than six years, while her infertile daughters have a life-span of only a couple months. 
• The honey bee hive is the most hygienic structure found in nature. Bees never poop inside the hive. In fact, they constantly clean the hive and gather anti-microbial resins and saps from special plants, with which they lacquer it's entire inner surface.  This lacquer is called propolis - 'the defender of the city'- and is collected by beekeepers and made into medicinal products.
• Two out of every three bites of food you eat are directly or indirectly dependent on Honeybee pollination of crops.
• All of the products of the hive, from honey to venom, have medicinal properties and uses that are valued all around the world.  
• Honey is naturally anti-septic and anti-microbial and, as long as it is kept in a sealed container, has a shelf life of over 4,000 years!

​WHAT'S WRONG WITH THE BEES?

You may have seen news stories about the massive die-off of honey bee colonies, sometimes called 'Colony Collapse Disorder'. Our current industrial agricultural model (fossil fuel, chemical and GMO dependent mono-crops) is both dependent on Honeybees as essential pollinators, and RESPONSIBLE for what has been termed the 'mysterious' death of millions of colonies.  Though some would have us believe this crisis is mysterious, others - beekeepers, environmentalists, natural/organic gardeners - know it is the result of multiple factors which have combined to form an environment lethal to our most essential agricultural partners.  Their death is an urgent message to us.  We must change our current agricultural practices to be in harmony with nature's laws.  

Alternative agricultural models, based on an understanding and mimicry of healthy natural ecosystems, are emerging.  Permaculture, Agro-forestry, Diversified Organic Farming, Korean Natural Farming, Bio-dynamic and most indigenous models such as the Hawaiian Ahu'pua'a System can produce more than enough to feed us, without destroying the fertility of the soil or using chemicals that poison the earth and our own children.

Considering the gravity of the worldwide situation, all efforts in making the world more friendly for the bees will be in our own interest as well: Convincing your neighbor to stop spraying their dandelions (bees first spring food source), or signing a petition to ban GMO or pesticides in your food, planting a pollinator garden in your backyard, or joining a community garden and growing fresh food for your family.  Perhaps you will become a bee-keeper yourself, and discover the magnificent joy of keeping your own bees!  

R E C O M M E N D A T I O N S

Books for a better, different understanding of bees

The Song of Increase
Listening to the Wisdom of the Honeybee for Kinder Beekeeping and a Better World
Jacqueline Freeman

The Shamanic Way of the Bee
Ancient Wisdom and Healing Practices of the Bee Masters
Simon Buxton

More Titles...

Towards Saving the Honeybee
Gunther Hauck

Keeping Bees With a Smile
Fedor Lazutin

The Voice of the Infinite in the Small
Joanne Elizabeth Lauck

​