In this season of giving thanks, my heart is full of honeybee love, which makes my world go round. Love suffuses everything we do and guides us. It calls out reverence and devotion in us and shines a light on our essentially benevolent and generous nature. It is why we grieve any bee or dog or cat or horse or tree that ever dies in our care as we move from our first awkward years of stewardship, towards competence then grace. And it will bring us to our knees the first time this “sacred other” goes silent, when we simply can’t believe they died because we loved each other so profoundly.

One of my beloveds, Tusacarora elder Ted Williams, always reminded me of the importance of our good thoughts. He said we really only have four things in life: our good thoughts, good feelings, good words and good deeds (and that they are important in that order). Good deeds can be challenging enough but we all know what it is like to try and herd our cat-like thoughts on any given day. Whew.

Our thoughts have power. Remember that wonderful 100^th monkey thing? That phenomenon in which one (usually very simple) thought or behavior passes from one individual to another and eventually suffuses a group, achieving critical mass and catalyzing a seemingly instantaneous change that is then available to the rest of the population? A new norm is born and takes up residence in our minds and lives, like it’s always had a room in our house.

It can be extremely humbling to live within the monkey-filled field of the small sacred things, because we don’t always see the change we are part of, manifested in our lifetime. My grandfather told me that he knew he wouldn’t live to experience equal and civil rights in our country. And he didn’t. But he believed in them and acted accordingly. I believe we all see some of the effects and fruits of our labor in our lives. And at other times, I think we are asked to faithfully offer our thoughts and actions up to the great great grandchildren we will never see the faces of. So much of this requires just simply doing the right thing (and especially what feels right to us). Many of our efforts will be un-thanked. But I don’t think we are ever confused about what matters if we are really paying attention. In our heart of hearts, the welfare of all life, bees and all, matters.

I believe love is the ultimate form of activism, the ultimate good thought, embodied through action. Because when we love someone (two-legged, four-legged, winged, rooted or finned), there will always be times when that love is challenged. We will disagree, misunderstand, insult, mistrust, irritate, betray, get bitten, hooked … and stung. And sometimes our beloveds will die. And then (big Medicine of all medicines) we can (and I believe have to) choose to love again … and again. And we do so because well, we love this other and like how that feels back. When I look back on years of talking about bees with children, I would say the single thing that most impressed them was my love for honeybees. That an adult could stand up in front of them and publicly and passionately love honeybees as much as they love their dogs, cats or grandparents, was a revelation (especially an adult bedecked with antennae and wings).

So love the bees or at least love who you love so passionately that it wells up and out of the cup of you like a great, warm, honey-ed libation, pouring over all of life (which happens to include the bees and everyone you care for). Prepare to fall in love more than ever you thought you could, for love will do its work and love will bring us home sweet home.

Blessed be. Blessed bees.

Tulip poplar blooms

Our honey flow has started here in the mountains of western North Carolina … about a month early. Blackberry bushes, tulip poplar trees and black locust are throwing out blooms like there is no tomorrow, offering up the best of their best in this wildly vibrant spring. An old timey bee guy I know who has lived here all his life, told me he has never ever seen a spring like this. My bee yard looks and sounds like rush hour in L.A. Bees are coming and going from the hives in an explosion of winged traffic; Sam Comfort calls this flying with purpose. It is astonishing to sit and watch. I have been in the yard, on and off, throughout these past weeks, reveling in the divine revelation of it all.

New queens were born in Fern, Muriel, Sacre Coeur, Rinpoche and Guadalupe nucs (short for nucleus or small starter colonies). These precious souls join Crow, Ganesha, Hanson, Madonna, Never Forgets, and Milagro hives. What a family, eh? And, wonder of wonders, I saw the virgin queen from one hive step out and take her mating flight. Virgin queens have no hips, but all being well they soon become voluptuous (and I’ll confirm that soon when I go in and check for eggs).

Blackberry blossoms

I’m in a bee delirium. I go to the apiary each morning and I can hear it even before I enter it; the bees have gone utterly Dionysian with their precious spring-imbibing selves. It is so full of life here! I put my ear to the hives and the Milagro and Ganesha colonies roar like honeybee-powered engines. The bees are bursting out of their britches. And some plants and trees that normally bloom in succession, are blooming at the same time (which really is odd as socks). I can’t think why a single human being in western North Carolina could be anything but happy right now. All our sap is rising …

Pollinator couple on the Pieris bush.

There are four Pieris (Lily of the Valley) bushes outside my home office; one is by my window at eye level. We have 4,500 pollinators in our area and I swear that most of them were on that bush this spring; it is a pollinator orgy over here and every winged one of them is in a good mood. It was like the Star Wars bar scene every day … and the most interesting sighting was a very odd-couple pairing of a large bee with a much smaller “hitchhiker” bee on its back. I apologize for the picture quality (it’s blurry), but it was the best I could do in that moment.

For days, I saw this duo on those bushes. The smaller bee looks like a honeybee, but with my glasses on (!) I realized it was too small for a honeybee. I posted this on my Facebook page and other circles and it sparked conversation and interest from here to Australia. I have been in touch with various entomologists from around the U.S. and the consensus is that the pair is either southeast blueberry bees or carpenter bees, but no one is absolutely sure because while some solitary bees (which these are) have smaller mates that can do that on-the-back thing, everyone needs to see a clearer photo to be sure of who’s who. I tried to get a better picture for days but “dating season” was over, even when I looked around on other blooming plants. This is a next-year thing. The rhythm and calendar of my life is now marked by bee-ish events and that fills my heart with gladness.

What else? At this time of year, I am constantly (and happily) answering bee-ish questions by phone and email. I field other calls like an air traffic controller, connecting people spotting swarms with friends who want to catch them. I visit some yards and do post-mortem sleuthing. I’m volunteering for a research project for The Center for Honeybee Research that has two yards of hives at the WNC Nature Center (some overlooking the red wolves and the others, the bears). And I continue to do remote teaching for the College of the Melissae: Center for Sacred Beekeeping that is growing at the pace of its own frenzied spring … they are a wonderful community to bee-hold.

New colonies delivered to Start's farm.

This week marks the third and last occasion of helping some friends with 600 nucs that are delivered to a farm. A small bee-sotted team of us join Stuart, Jon and Carl (the nuc biz guys) to check each colony to be sure it is whole, hearty, queen-right, and all-ways-right before being picked up by the bee stewards who paid for them. We are knee deep in bajillions of bees … for hours of humming hours. The nucs are chemical-free, full to bursting, healthy new daughter colonies that take the pollen for great queen / genetic lineages. Doing the “bee math” and estimating about 10,000 bees per colony, I will have personally met around 1,200,000 more bees by the end of this adventure … I am a wealthy woman.

New daughter colony bursting with bees.

I am in such an altered state after this happy work each year that it feeds my soul like a fine time-released feast. I think, talk and dream about bees, smell like bees, am stained with propolis, have farmer girl’s nails, my favorite bee yard clothes are turning into comfy “blankies”, and I have constant hat hair.  What more could a girl want?

Comfy bee clothes slowly turning into "blankies" ...

So, my friends, Caveat Bee-ster (made-up Latin for bee-lover beware): This kind of great good fortune could happen to you. If I am incoherent the next time I see you … if I am just staring at you blissfully and wordlessly, just know that I have continued to have the most amazing bee spring ever and that somehow you’ll be able to receive darshan from the bees through me, one way or another. I remain at the feet of the Sri Sri bee-jis (all six of them). This surely is a path to enlightenment.

Til next time beeloveds … Carpe bee-um

Blessed be. Blessed bees.
Debra

You and Grandma Ruth have been on my mind. I’m in my 60th year and a beekeeper now, married to a man named Joe that you both would have liked a lot. We have 15 acres north of Asheville, NC, in the southern Appalachians. I am in my bee yard daily, watching the bees … and I often think of you both.

Roy Bateman in his soybeans. (Illinois, 1952)

Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, your farm (always “The Farm” in my remembering) was a magical destination for me … a whole world I was free to roam and the first place I traveled to, by myself, as a child. Dad put me on the train in Chicago, along with chewing gum and abundant magazines, and off I went (to you) like the queen of the cosmos. I adored the farm and I adored you both. I ranged and rambled like a free-range chicken … and everywhere felt safe.

I know you weren’t a beekeeper but you farmed all your life, your land tucked between Farmer City and Mahomet … corn, soybeans, cattle, chickens, and some pigs being the mainstay of your life. Mom told me that you pretty much never left home except for when a war borrowed you for a few years. You loved that land and I believe it loved you.

I found a photo of you in your soybeans, flowering like a sturdy plant in your own fields. I particularly love it and have a copy in my study. Cousin Nancy and Aunt Amy discovered this caption on that same photo: Pop wanted to show how high the corn and beans got in the Summer of ‘52. That, apparently, was a summer of epic growth (and since I was conceived and born that year, something must have been in the air).

Back in the day, in a sea of many cousins, I feel like I was probably one of the least likely to take up beekeeping … everyone else seemed to have far better (what I would call) earth skills, which I so admired. But the bees got me and when they did, I started thinking even more about you and Grandma Ruth. And just so you know, after getting my undergraduate degree in college, I never did get my Ph.D. In 1974, I went to Europe for three months and stayed 11 years (I was in England). Life had better plans for me than the ones I was making … and my Ph.D. became a BEEh.D.

The honeybees have been struggling. They are up against a mite called Varroa destructor, a phenomenon called Colony Collapse Disorder, and a whole host of effects from modern pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and (in my opinion) other poor human choices. I am trying to help. As an educator, speaker and writer (and an everyday, devoted beekeeper), I have brushed up against some amazing bee-ish movers and shakers … the Bee Illuminati (as I call them). I want to introduce you to them through this series of ongoing articles; they offer great insight on important territory and talk about things I don’t hear enough about (or even at all).Times have changed but I guess they always do. In 2012, here are some things I am concerned about … As I drive through Illinois these days, soybeans and corn are planted much closer to the road and ditches, crowding out wildflowers and so-called weeds. Pollinator habitat has been gussied up, sprayed away, or claimed as a few more feet for crops. A cousin who still lives in Illinois said that many butterflies and moths he used to see when he was growing up, have all but disappeared; and he is hard pressed to see monarchs or milkweed any more. The crops have become mono-crops and most seeds, genetically modified.

Grandpa in his ten-foot-high corn.

The rows of corn I played hide-and-seek in as a child, are now planted so close together that you can’t move through them. You’d have to do some serious tromping through the corn these days to get a photo like that one of you in ’52, standing next to the ten-foot-high stalks. One summer when I was visiting the farm, I saw a hound dog burst through the cornfield, into the yard by the barn. It was distressed and lost, and paced the periphery of the field, looking for a way back in … unsuccessfully. It returned home another way. Hound dogs are trackers, yet this one was at the mercy of modern agricultural practices.

Aunt Miriam (very generously) bought the farm after you and Grandma passed on. So it stayed in one of the tributaries of the family. She holds an annual family reunion. Last time I was at the farm, I looked out over the fields with a different eye … a beekeeper’s eye and not a growing-up-child’s eye. And I had a heart-stopping thought: I realized that with the way things are now, no one could keep bees on your farm. They would starve because there is not enough food for them to eat. Corn is generally a wind-pollinated plant and not honeybee-dependent, but if there aren’t many other food sources, bees will go to corn pollen for the short season that it is available. But right where you lived all your life (and for miles around), there isn’t enough plant diversity anymore, across a whole year, for bees to forage the kind of nectar and pollen they need to live well (or at all).

And what is equally distressing is that just last week, “new research has linked springtime die-offs of honeybees critical for pollinating food crops … with technology for planting corn coated with insecticides.”* All of this is extremely sobering and frankly Grandpa, I have often felt grateful that you passed when you did.

In your last years, you told me that you knew you wouldn’t live to see everything put right where Civil Rights were concerned. That’s true, but across your life there was some progress. And in mine, even though the bees are still deeply challenged and there is plenty to worry about in the world, good things are happening, too. On the bright side, which is the place I choose to live, amazing people like these writers (some of our collective “better half”, like you and Grandma) are sharing their wisdom and casting a vote for the betterment of honeybees (and all life). They are folks I think you would have enjoyed sharing tales and time with on a Sunday afternoon, after church.

The world is full of heroes and sheroes … some unsung and some “sung”. This series is my song to you, Grandpa … and to Grandma and Mom and Dad and the bees and the land and farmers everywhere … and to the lineage that runs through me like a river, quenching some part of myself that I didn’t know was thirsty. I still miss you. But somehow, once the bees got a hold of me, you came back into my life with a mysterious and marvelous vengeance. Somewhere in the hum and full fat fragrance of the bee yard, I catch the OshKosh B’Gosh essence of you … and it gladdens my heart.

Come along, Roy, and meet some of my friends.

Love
Debra
March 23, 2012 (Happy birthday, Grandpa. You’d be 123 today ….)

Grandma Ruth on a tractor.

P.P.S. Nancy, Sally, and Aunt Amy have been particularly helpful in ferreting out old photos, along with information about them. Look at this one they found of Grandma on a tractor. Isn’t she something? To your last days, you could still bring a blush to her cheek with your teasing; and I treasured her response: Oh get on with you (as she flicked her apron). I don’t ever remember a cross word coming my way from either of you. You and Grandma set the bar in the fine folks department and my time with you was golden.

* ABC News and Science Daily

Love, it is said, is a many splendored thing. And I believe that love expressed is a wildly potent thing – percolating out into the wider world in its organic exponential fashion, pollinating in the oddest places and spaces. In this holydays season, let me share a Tale of True Love …

Laurie and Brian's bee yard.

2011’s amazing bee-ish tide brought Laurie and Brian, two new beekeepers, to my shores. They jumped into beekeeping with gusto. It was a joy to help them in their bee yard and to witness their devotion to becoming good honeybee stewards of two precious hives. By fall, these hives were brimming with vitality and ready for winter in every way.

Laurie and Brian and the bears' bee yard ... after the bears had Thanksgiving.

By Thanksgiving, there was much to give thanks for. And by the end of Thanksgiving, when Brian and Laurie were out of town, a family of bears had also celebrated. They tore up the hives, flinging boxes, frames and (of course) the bees around like confetti. What was bliss for them was deeply heartbreaking for Laurie and Brian … and life threatening for the bees.

Bears are not the bad guys here. They are somebody’s children, too. And like the bees, they have to forage for food. It is natural that brood-and-honey-filled hives would appeal. And it is unnatural that bears should choose to be in such close proximity to humans. Who would think that a bear fence would be needed so close to downtown Asheville, NC? But like many species these days, their habitat has been encroached. This was also a very droughty year, affecting both bees and bears in many parts of the country. So the bears came, they smelled, they conquered … and feasted.

Lauren and John (who saved the day).

Laurie called me after “the event”, utterly distraught. The only smidgeon of good news was that dear friends, John and Lauren, had immediately gone to the bees’ rescue. They gathered up two small balls of bees from the ground (the only remnants of the two hives), re-housed them in hive boxes, and drove them to their bee yard a few miles away. These two folks are some of the true heroes of this tale because without their intervention, the bees would have died that night. The cold and damp would have meant a sure death.

Rescued bees in John and Lauren's yard (far right).

Laurie was also disheartened because she had already talked to another beekeeper who had advised her that softball-sized populations of bees, going into winter with no food, are unlikely to live. They are too small a group to maintain the warmth the cluster needs to survive the winter. They cannot be without food, but they are unable to forage for food in the cold. The need for the bees to cluster and maintain the warmth of the colony usually trumps their choice to break cluster and take food … even food that may only be inches away (like in a baggie of sugar water a beekeeper places inside the top of a hive). By winter, bees need to have food right there on the frames, right where they are clustering (like wintering in a cottage with honey-filled walls).

The odds were sobering, if you could call them odds at all. But love is a mighty thing and bee love is no exception. Neither Laurie nor I were willing to let the bees die if there was anything under the sun, moon or stars we could do. We discussed a few emergency feeding strategies and I told her I’d call her back the next morning with any further inspiration … and inspiration She came.

That night, just before bed, a tiny thought circled and landed in my mind. I wondered, Welllll if the bees were in a warmer place in the winter, the size of their colony wouldn’t matter as much. They could break cluster and be fed by a beekeeper until they got on their feet(s). Hmmm …. And by the next day, with Laurie and Brian’s blessing, we all turned and earnestly faced south … towards Charleston …

The bees' foster family: Candy and her son Andrew.

I talked to my mentor Carl who pointed me to Stuart who recommended I call Larry (a Charleston, SC beekeeper) who talked to the secretary of his bee club who sent out an email that was answered by Candy who welcomed Laurie and Brian’s hives to winter over in her bee yard – in a field on John’s Island outside Charleston. Voila! A foster yard had manifested in a warmer place and “epic” started creeping into the telling of this bee-ish love tale. (Beekeepers Janet and Diane figured into this adventure, too.)

Foxie, one of Ken and Mary’s Rescue Poms, flies like a bee during her agility training.

I also remembered that friends Ken and Mary (having retired from beekeeping to focus on their passion for raising and training Rescue Pomeranians), had given me some unharvested frames of honey, stored all year in my basement. I ferreted out two frames, took them to Laurie and she put them in the hives. With a full frame of honey each, the hives were good to go (food-wise) for a while. Miraculously, the weather was also warm enough one afternoon for Laurie and Brian to go into the hives and confirm that both colonies’ queens were alive and well. They had survived! Long live the queens!

Brian's race car (and bee) trailer.

And so the Great Bee Migration was orchestrated. Brian (as it happens) is a race car driver and had a race in Savannah, SC the following week. So he and Laurie fetched their bees from John and Lauren’s yard, put them in the trailer with his race cars, drove to Candy’s yard in SC, settled the hives in with friend Lyman’s help, said their fond goodbyes, thanked their lucky stars (and Candy), and drove on to the race … hoping, as we all hope, that April will bring a reunion and a return to Asheville … to a yard surrounded by love (and a bear fence). And until then, what will be, will be(e).

Brian and Lyman release the bees into their foster yard!

When Laurie got home from SC, she shared this: Every single (bee) is so precious … Moving them south we hope will give them half a chance. The mountains are cold but hopefully these mountain bees will return to thrive. Trying not to get my hopes too high – but feeling good after seeing them with the will to continue through it all … It’s so good to bee in this community!

I think that most days, the little things are really the big things. Simple acts of caring, despite many un-simple moments of anxiety, inconvenience and distress (for bees and humans), ignited a community of folks that mostly didn’t know each other before this saga began. Who’d have foreseen the divine constellation of us, this colony of champions that was enlivened by this adventure? Such is the path with bees. And such is the opportunity of love, if we allow it.

Brian and Laurie ... true bee-loveds and some of the best friends honeybees ever had.

I shared this tale with my friend Deborah Littlebird in New Mexico and she reminded me that all of this goodness unfolded because we slowed down enough to listen to our hearts. I want to thank a whole lot of hearts and a whole lot of people who listen to their hearts. And I want to thank the bees, one more time, for bringing out the best in us.

I am convinced love is a conspiracy … and will always win in the end.

Happy holidays to you and yours.
Blessed be. Blessed bees.
(And blessed bears and a whole heap of great folks …)
Debra

P.S. And thank you E.V., Mary Beth, Tory and Bret for the (s)heroic love tale you also played out a few days prior, a short distance away, when (probably the same) bears brought you together for another epic bee rescue. Rock on Lavender Hive!

LISTENING TO THE BEES ... photo courtesy of Jeff Ashton

When a hive dies, thousands of bees … sometimes as many as 50,000 or more … pass away.  Across my years of beekeeping, it could be said that I have only lost 30% of my hives and that statistic is not uncommon.  But I don’t think of my honeybees as so many numbers.  They are family and the loss of family is a deeply felt thing.

I am an aural beekeeper.  I put my ear to the side of each hive daily and listen. I wish them well and tell them I love them with all my heart.  I can identify a dozen versions of contented sounds and just as many ways of expressing disturbance. And none of my hives are the exact same pitch. A hive is thousands of individuals and a hive is also one entity, a collective that Jurgen Tautz calls a superorganism. When bees die and that collective is no more, the silence is a loud, unholy, heart breaking stillness.

DESCANSO ... in Kaylynn’s studio outside Taos, NM.

The loss of life in my bee yard this winter was staggering.  Some hives died from the disease / fungus Nosema ceranae and others died from causes still unknown.  My strongest colony disappeared in the heart of winter, abandoning brood (the various stages of young bees-to-be).  Bees don’t abandon their young and they don’t leave home in the cold.  And so I have honored my dead through grieving and in this season of loss, have also been blessed and uplifted by Descansos, the sacred bee-honoring shrines created by my friend Kaylynn Sullivan TwoTrees.

SIGNAL STREET GARDEN DESCANSO ... for bees who died due to illness and mysterious disappearance (NC)

Kaylynn is an artist, elder, visionary, and beloved friend who lives in New Mexico. Her wisdom weaves through my life like some bee-ish fabric that leaves silk breathless (and even envious).  She is one of the great loves of my life.  Some years ago, she began a body of evolving work called Descansos for the Bees, which she defines in this way:  A Descanso is a Spanish word meaning rest or resting place. This word today is used to describe the memorial marker found along most high ways in the U.S.  A Descanso is usually erected at the site of a tragic accident in which someone’s life was cut short.  These Descansos are part of a series of resting places / memorials to commemorate the tragic accidents of the loss of our honeybees.  They are created from artifacts and interpreted residue from encounters with bees, beekeepers and bee yards around the country as a contemplation / celebration of the regenerators of the landscape and to mourn the continuing disappearance of our pollinators.

In 2009, when I lost my first hives, Kaylynn asked for some of the bodies. I mailed her a package of their tiny precious forms and also extended the invitation to some of my community here in western NC.  We sent bees, queens, pieces of wax comb, and residue from the bottom boards.  And unasked, our circle sent these items wrapped in red cloth, a grandmother’s hankie, and tucked in parcels with sage.  We sent our stories and shared our losses.  And our bees became part of Kaylynn’s first honeybee-inspired Descanso, called Nature’s Lucid Dreaming, at the Avery Museum in Charleston, SC.  This mixed media installation was part of the Tasting Cultures: The Art of African / American Foodways exhibition, curated by the incomparable Sarah Kahn, Founder of Tasting Cultures Foundation and her husband Henry Drewal.

NATURE'S LUCID DREAMING (Avery Museum, 2009)

Joe and I drove to South Carolina and attended that show.  When I walked into the room featuring Nature’s Lucid Dreaming, I was first greeted by the sound of my bees, which had been recorded for the installation.  And then I saw the bodies of my bees and some of the bees from my community.  I saw the precious things we had shrouded our bees in, there beside small six-sided vessels, pictures of Kaylynn’s family, and handmade paper crafted from plants pollinated by bees.  I witnessed a deep and personal honoring of the departed.  And I wept.  For me, Kaylynn had created an exquisite wailing wall and a monument to my winged family.  I was undone.  And in the curious way that pure grieving can surprise us, my tender bee-stewarding heart was also renewed and restored, the way that prayer can restore.  Nature’s Lucid Dreaming was a powerful living prayer.

NATURE'S LUCID DREAMING (detail)

Kaylynn’s work has continued to unfold over the years.  Some of the Descansos are a permanent installation in Signal Street Garden, courtesy of her good friend Linda O’Toole in Ojai, California.  Another piece is in Kaylynn’s studio outside Taos, NM.  And two Descansos are currently part of the Tasting Cultures: The Arts of Latino Foodways exhibit in Milwaukee (thanks again to Sarah Khan who is a great good force of nature).  For those of you who live in this area, check it out.  The show is up through July 21.

Descansos continues its life as Kaylynn follows the call.  She invites more donations of bees, hive residue, and also and especially, the bodies of queens.  One special shrine has a special need of those.  I wish, really, that I never had a single bee to send her.  But such is beekeeping life in the modern world.  If you are moved to contribute, please go to the Holy Bee Press Facebook page and check the Events section in the left hand margin.  All the information is there.  And if you are not a Face Book-ian, you can email Kaylynn for more details at: ktwotrees@gmail.com. You will be credited for your contribution and cherished … and you and your bees will become part of what she calls her hive of remembering.

SIGNAL STREET GARDEN ... another Descanso

Blessed be. Blessed bees.

(Signal Street Garden, Ojai, CA photographs by Eryn Talevich, courtesy of Linda O’Toole.)

WELCOME TO HOLY BEE PRESS!  We are a crossroads of honeybee conversation and world bee salon.  You’ll find some wonderful articles and bee-ish products here … and books will follow later this year. Please join this bee-appreciative community by subscribing to our email list in the right hand column of this page.  And invite friends and family who are similarly inclined.

For anyone entertaining becoming a beekeeper or just simply swimming in the sea of honeybee appreciation, prepare to fall in love … and for generosity and gratefulness to well up and out of you so overwhelmingly that you feel like life is pouring a libation through you.  Prepare to feel like dying of sadness the first time a hive crosses over because of ill health, and then let your heart break … open.  Start finding a thousand ways to say thank you for all the blessings that being around bees will bring you … because thank you in itself will never feel adequate.  And prepare to fall in love with yourself and all life more than you ever thought possible … for the bees will bring you Home.

I want to thank Julie Parker of Handwoven Webs for her divine stewardship in co-creating the face and form of this blessed website and blog.  She is the bees’ knees to work with.  I am also eternally grateful to Clare Melinsky, way over there in Scotland, for the honeybee lino-cut that graces our banner.  Visit her website to see more of her work.  I have been a fan of hers for years.  Both of these women are two of the great lights of my life.

Blessed bee.  Blessed bees.