In February, I had the tremendously rich experience of teaching Apis Sophia Exstasis in my home state, after 3 years of teaching the same body of work in France. Under a constant deluge of wet weather, a group of us gathered in the Mendocino oak savannah to experience what I now regard as six days of ceremony. It was utter magic.
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There was once a temple built of beeswax and feathers. It sat in a mountainous region near a cave where bees, or was it souls, came and went.
On looms of spirit, nymphs wove the purple threads of form, while honey pots filled, and the the divinatory bees in their maiden nature, swarmed in and out.
Read MoreI’ve been in a big renegotiation about my relationship to work. I took this December off from classes and clients because I didn’t really get a maternity leave when my daughter was born. I worked all days and all hours throughout my entire pregnancy.
Read MoreWhen a colony dies, it’s important to investigate the cause so that, perhaps, you can improve in your stewardship the following year. This is a photograph of a colony that lost their queen. What you see are a number of emergency queen cells. There were more on the other side of the comb.
Read MoreThere is poetry in all things if you look for it. Language, and how we speak about a thing, carries incredible power. Language shapes our world view. It shapes our understanding and our relating.
Read MoreI was having a book discussion with women from my beekeeping apprenticeship last week and we got onto the topic of sovereignty and body autonomy. I teach about asking the bees for permission each time you enter a hive or manipulate them in some way.
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My daughter is one month old today. I am still landing in the steady belief that she’s really here, she’s really my daughter, and I get to keep her. Becoming a mother has been a lifelong dream of mine. I walked into it with no illusions. I knew it would be hard. I knew I’d need a lot of support. I knew I wouldn’t sleep much. But there really are no words to prepare you for what happens to your heart when your make a whole human, and they look up at you and smile in the early dawn light.
Sitting at the edge of spring, and the edge of motherhood, I am becoming aware that these years of “singleness” (whatever THAT means), have also afforded me the opportunity to cultivate something precious. A deep, wildly sensuous affair with the living earth. Do you ever pick a single rose petal from a flower just to caress your lips with it until the petal becomes translucent?
Read MoreI wanted to be held by a man. Someone who loved me so much that he wanted to create life with me. I wanted to share the moment of that positive pregnancy test with him, in joy and disbelief. I wanted him to bring me hot cocoa and soup and marvel and my shapeshifting. It was a fantasy, but not entirely unrealistic, after all, couples experience this all the time.
Read MoreRendering comb down to golden disks of beeswax is one of the ways I process the loss of a hive. By giving my attention over to extracting the pure, golden, divinely scented wax from the skeleton of a hive, I feel connected to the life-death-life cycle of that hive.
Once, I drove through the narrow country roads of west Cornwall to find a sacred well. It was autumn and the sea looked Caribbean turquoise. The map wasn’t very good, but my friend and I found the well, partially overgrown with ivy, but not forgotten. One of the old places, where women’s water wisdom once offered healing and insight. A nearly obscured heritage. ⠀
Read MoreWe’ve given her many names: Callieach, Persephone, Nepthys, Kali. But her original name was Earth. Mother. Crone. Womb and Tomb. There is no death goddess who is not also tied to, or herself a goddess of rebirth. They are not separate, because life is not, and never can be separate from death. This is why the Kelts built passage tombs or long barrows. We are born of the Mother and return to the Mother, her dark and earthly embrace.
Read MoreYou may think you know her. You may have read about her behavior. You may have studied her. You may have experienced her habits. She may be nearly predictable. But, she may not behave like you expect. She is a Queen, after all.⠀
Read MoreDo you feed your bees?
Bees get their nutrients from flowers. Pollen provides protein, fatty acids and minerals, while nectar provides energy through carbohydrates (sugars) and minerals/vitamins.
Read MoreHymenoptera: veil-winged. An order of insects including wasps, sawflies and honey bees, but particularly connected, linguistically, to the goddess culture at its ties to the honey bees. Hymen is derived from Greek and means “membrane” or “veil”. It denotes not only the veil within the virginal maiden, but also the veil draped before in innermost sanctum of the temple of the goddess. It also came to represent the veil between the outer world and the hidden inner world of women’s mysteries, both physically and spiritually.
Read MoreI dreamt last night of a hive torn to pieces. Every bit of comb on the ground was covered in bees. It was the largest hive I’d ever witnessed. Night was approaching and I had to gather all the bees and broken comb. I had to provide them with a new home in a hollow under my bed before it got too cold. Many people around me were oblivious, but some unexpected friends and family came to help. No one had protective clothing. We gently took up each comb with bare hands. Despite the darkness, despite the cold, despite the gravity of destruction, the bees didn’t sting. They understood we were here to help.
Read MoreIf you reach your hand back into the mythscapes of history, you will find, over and over, the story of the sacred other. The lover. The Twin. The Sister. The Brother. The Sacred Adversary. The Mirror. The Queen and her King.
Read MoreI’m about to board another flight to London. I seriously can not wait for scones and tea at No. 9 on the Green in Wimborne. I am visualizing pouring cream into a saucer as I write. Heaven.
Read MoreI’d like to take a moment to talk about why Feminist Beekeeping is a thing at all.
First, let’s understand a few things.
1. We are all struggling with language and the meaning behind words.
California is burning. Greece is burning. Norway is burning. England is burning. The land is hot, cracked, brittle. The veins feel feeble, dry. As a child of California, I know fire season, but not like this.
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