Artemis Smiles
a Honeybee Sanctuary
Twenty years ago I received a 'call for help' from the Honeybees during a spontaneous initiation into an ancient lineage of European Bee Shamanism. Over a two-year period the bees communicated to me their role in the evolution of human consciousness and how they were working to assist humanity's evolution at this critical time. They also revealed the various factors responsible for their immanent, but as yet not evident, global decline. "The Queen has fallen", they said.....
The bees asked for a sanctuary where the loving, reverent and mutually beneficial relationship they had once enjoyed with humans could be restored. In response to this plea, I moved to the Big Island and established Artemis Smiles Honeybee Sanctuary. Having never studied beekeeping, I was taught and established my beekeeping practices through shamanic communications with the bees. I observed the natural behavior of wild bees, and the bees themselves became my beekeeping instructors. Following the bees preferences, practices now called restorative or preservation beekeeping, my rescued wild colonies were able to evolve resistance to the parasites and diseases that decimated the Big Island bee populations after the arrival of varroa mites in 2008 and Small Hive Beetle in 2010.
The Sanctuary is now home to a thriving 'genetic bank' of treatment-free survivor colonies. The many years of educating and advocating for the bees has paid off. Awareness of the critical role of pollinators, especially honeybees, has grown rapidly. Preservation beekeeping has now become a major movement around the world, along with a tremendous growth in small-scale 'back yard' beekeeping. I am so blessed and proud to have contributed to the renewal of our sweet relationship with the bees.
The bees asked for a sanctuary where the loving, reverent and mutually beneficial relationship they had once enjoyed with humans could be restored. In response to this plea, I moved to the Big Island and established Artemis Smiles Honeybee Sanctuary. Having never studied beekeeping, I was taught and established my beekeeping practices through shamanic communications with the bees. I observed the natural behavior of wild bees, and the bees themselves became my beekeeping instructors. Following the bees preferences, practices now called restorative or preservation beekeeping, my rescued wild colonies were able to evolve resistance to the parasites and diseases that decimated the Big Island bee populations after the arrival of varroa mites in 2008 and Small Hive Beetle in 2010.
The Sanctuary is now home to a thriving 'genetic bank' of treatment-free survivor colonies. The many years of educating and advocating for the bees has paid off. Awareness of the critical role of pollinators, especially honeybees, has grown rapidly. Preservation beekeeping has now become a major movement around the world, along with a tremendous growth in small-scale 'back yard' beekeeping. I am so blessed and proud to have contributed to the renewal of our sweet relationship with the bees.
Where Do Our Bees Come From?
Our honeybees originated from wild colonies that were removed from homes or other inconvenient sites, and relocated to the Sanctuary where they inhabit a variety of hive styles. These rescued colonies and their descendants have many important genetic traits and adaptations that are critical to the survival of the species.
Honoring Nature's Ways : Restorative Practices
Over the past two decades, I have studied and worked with the bees intensively, work that included experience in the commercial beekeeping industry. What I have learned about the bees biology and natural life processes allowed me to establish and teach 'best practices' for keeping bees. My priority is the long term health and vitality of the bees, not human economic interests. Other like-minded beekeepers such as Jacqueline Freeman, author of The Song of Increase, refer to these practices as "bee-centric"; rooted in the innate wisdom of this species, whose remarkable adaptive abilities have allowed it to survive for over 50 million years on planet earth.
vs. Conventional Beekeeping
Intensive 'human-centric' management of the honeybee practiced by most commercial beekeepers over the past 50 years, has led to their massive die-off and the global crisis we humans face with the loss of these essential pollinators. Like most other agricultural plants and animals, bees have fallen into the 'soul-less' realm of factory farming. Artificial insemination, chemical treatments for human-induced 'diseases', the killing of older queens, the stress induced by trucking tens of thousands of colonies from one pesticide soaked mono-crop field to another are but a few of the factors that have led to their decline. It is by no means the 'mysterious' die-off we have been led to believe.
At our Sanctuary the bees are thriving, and teach us how to live in harmonious relationship with Mother Nature ourselves.
Compare 'healthy' versus 'harmful' beekeeping practices.
Over the past two decades, I have studied and worked with the bees intensively, work that included experience in the commercial beekeeping industry. What I have learned about the bees biology and natural life processes allowed me to establish and teach 'best practices' for keeping bees. My priority is the long term health and vitality of the bees, not human economic interests. Other like-minded beekeepers such as Jacqueline Freeman, author of The Song of Increase, refer to these practices as "bee-centric"; rooted in the innate wisdom of this species, whose remarkable adaptive abilities have allowed it to survive for over 50 million years on planet earth.
vs. Conventional Beekeeping
Intensive 'human-centric' management of the honeybee practiced by most commercial beekeepers over the past 50 years, has led to their massive die-off and the global crisis we humans face with the loss of these essential pollinators. Like most other agricultural plants and animals, bees have fallen into the 'soul-less' realm of factory farming. Artificial insemination, chemical treatments for human-induced 'diseases', the killing of older queens, the stress induced by trucking tens of thousands of colonies from one pesticide soaked mono-crop field to another are but a few of the factors that have led to their decline. It is by no means the 'mysterious' die-off we have been led to believe.
At our Sanctuary the bees are thriving, and teach us how to live in harmonious relationship with Mother Nature ourselves.
Compare 'healthy' versus 'harmful' beekeeping practices.
Natural 'Restorative' Practices |
Conventional/Commercial Practices |
Bees make their own honey and brood combs, building them together from the wax they produce in glands on their abdomens. Natural comb cells vary in size and shape, optimizing communication within the 'super-organism', and reducing the ability of parasites and diseases to thrive. |
Plastic or wax artificial combs, embossed with a uniform hexagonal pattern, are re-used and transferred among various colonies. In addition to limiting communication and the ability of the bees to shape their 'body' according to its various functions, these re-used artificial combs become heavily contaminated with disease spores and chemicals. |
Long live the Queen! Allowing a Queen to live out her entire life-span (up to eight years!) is essential for natural selection to occur, allowing adaptation to local environmental conditions and evolutionary stressors such as disease and parasites. Age equals genetic wisdom. |
'Re-Queening' is the common practice of killing queens after a single season, and replacing them with 'factory-raised' Queens, who are bred for maximum honey/brood production, at the expense of other traits more important to the bees' survival. |
Gentle, loving handling of bees and harvest of combs. Combs removed one by one from the hive and brushed free of bees. Excess honey is cut free and the frame/support immediately replaced so that the bees can build fresh brood or honey comb as needed. |
Harvesting in commercial operations is a rough, industrial process that results in the death of thousands of bees. Honey is contaminated by the gut bacteria and bodies of bees that go through the processing machines. |
Allow bees to swarm: The bees natural form of reproduction infuses them with vitality and allows them to evolve resistance to disease and adapt to their local environment. |
Suppress the bees natural swarming instinct by destroying queen cells, clipping the Queens wing and supering the hive. Selective breeding through artificial insemination reduces bees genetic diversity. |
Respect the bees as intelligent, sentient beings, and their honey as a gift. Cultivate a loving personal relationship with your bees. |
View bees in a purely economic, mechanistic, impersonal manner. |
Keep bees in one location, where there is a diversity of pollen and nectar sources. Conventional agricultural sites may result in massive losses due to pesticide and herbicide poisoning, choose organic. |
Migratory beekeeping (moving colonies from one large mono-crop to another), exposes bees (and honey) to chemical pesticides and herbicides, spreads honeybee parasites and diseases and heavily stresses colonies. |
Only excess honey and pollen is removed from any colony, always leaving the bees plenty of their own food. Never feed artificial foods such as sugar or soy. |
High value honey crop is removed, and bees are fed sugar syrup and artificial pollen instead of their own 'super-food'. These low quality replacements result in weak malnourished bees. |
Provide the bees with a hive structure that is designed for their benefit rather than honey production. Avoid the use of excluders, unnatural materials, bee 'medications' or pheromones. |
Pharmaceutical drugs (miticides, antibiotics) are used to manage diseases in weak and stressed colonies or to stimulate honey production. For example, pheromone wafers ("smell diffuser") are placed in the brood area to make the bees believe that babies are starving. They work much harder. |
How amazing!Honeybees have the ability to recognize individual humans. Our bees know they are loved and have no reason to fear us, and as a result they can usually be handled without the use of protective gear. Just as a child needs love to thrive, so we have found our bees thrive on the love we give them. Our love is reciprocated in the gifts they give us; sweet honeycomb, a variety of medicines, and the fertility of the land.
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We work with the bees in very special ways....
Honey bees have an ancient and pervasive association with the Divine, which is shared across cultures and spiritual traditions. We believe that the crisis the honey bees are experiencing today has, at its root, a shift in human consciousness. The bees have 'fallen' - from creatures associated with Divinity to lowly insects exploited for commercial gain. We believe that through renewing our relationship with the honeybee as sacred guide, we can restore our direct connection to the divinity within ourselves and within all Creation.
In working with our bees it has become clear to us that the bees are interacting with energy fields, frequencies and dimensions far beyond what humans can perceive. The famed nuclear physicist Barbara Shipman has shown that the bees are interacting with the quantum field; the pre-manifest level of reality. We have developed and utilize a variety of metaphysical methods to communicate directly with our bees as well as what interspecies communicator Sharon Callahan refers to as the "over-lighting spirit of the hive". The use of techniques such as meditation, shamanic "journeying" and divination in order to communicate with honey bees may seem unrealistic to some, yet these ancient techniques have been used in many cultures until the modern age, the same cultures that esteemed the bee as messenger, ornament, companion, and even embodiment of Divinity. (For more information visit our Mother Temple page)
We use these techniques to determine the needs and preferences of individual hives so as to work with them more effectively. We also use these techniques to help the bees, individually and collectively, as they face the many challenges the world of modern technology and agriculture present them.
For those who are interested, our Mother Temple community offers exploration of the spiritual wisdom, esoteric lore and sacred nature of the bee. We encourage connecting with these aspects of the Honeybee as a tool for those who wish to enhance their relationship with their bees, with the Divinity expressed in Nature and with their own Divine light.
The Bees tell us the most important thing we can do for them is to LOVE them, and you don't have to be a beekeeper to do that! Every loving or grateful thought becomes a prayer on the pre-manifest plane, and helps to lighten the burden of disregard and exploitation the bees experience in their current relationship with humankind. Like the Mayan shamans and the ancient bee-priestesses of the Mother Goddess, we 'feed' our bees love through ritual, prayer and sacred mantra. We speak lovingly and encouragingly, and thank them for all the sweetness, wisdom and beauty they bring to the world.