Bees and Us

By: Martin Riedel

This article originally appeared in the Winter 2020 issue of BEEKeeping Your First Three Years

Bees, bees, bees buzzing all around… buzzing over here, buzzing over there… coming and going… what secrets do they hold?

Bees holding secrets and information… can that be?

They do give us honey… of that we are sure, but knowledge?

That’s quite unlikely! Or is it likely? Let’s take a peek!

Where? Inside the hive that is! Where bees buzz all day and night long singing and dancing the song of the colony in unanimous harmony. Joy or frustration. Peace or danger. Contentment or anger. Health or sickness. Vigor or weakness. Vitality or exhaustion. Flow or no flow. Songs and dances everyone who handles bees learns to eventually identify and recognize if nothing else for their very own safety… especially if they wear no protective suits.

Now, with a little bit of contemplation, it is possible to recognize that all the songs and movements bees make emit frequencies and vibrations that constantly bathe the hive with information thus imprinting the honey with the energy of the colony. Its joys, its problems, its dedication, its health, its well being, and yes, even its feelings…

Are they happy with where they are? Do they like the nectar that’s available to them? How do they feel about how humans treat them? How do they feel about their surroundings? It’s all in the honey.

Yet not only that, the honey of each colony also contains a compendium of knowledge about the environment and all the plants within flying range. Is it a forest, open range, or something in between? Is the land cultivated? Is it contaminated and toxic or is it healthy and alive? Is the hive surrounded by the chirping of birds and the soothing sounds of flowing wind or by the annoyance of farm machinery, or worse, city noise? Is it a wet or dry season? It’s all in the honey.

I would imagine that with a little bit of practice one could learn to taste a single drop of honey and in but an instant know all there is to know about the hive, the surrounding area, and even the beekeeper(s) as well. Not unlike a well trained wine connoisseur does with wine.

Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? Yet we already do this to a very limited extent for we do know how to distinguish between different types of honey. For example, Spring honey looks and tastes different than Fall honey, mesquite honey looks and tastes different than citrus honey, some countries ban the sale of GMO tainted honey, and so on.

Amazingly enough, this realization was soon followed by the awareness that this ability to obtain knowledge through foods also extends to milk, cheeses, fruits, vegetables, and so on. In reality, everything we taste, eat, and even breathe contains knowledge that is probably greater and certainly more valuable and usable than all the libraries of the world put together.

Of course, we are not extremely conscious of this ability because to be so would place us in complete awareness of the destructive and abusive practices being used by commercial, and yes individual, operations. It would also place us in complete awareness of Creation’s Caring Love and expose all lies. And who wants that, right? Yet even in complete denial of this ability, we can’t escape the consequences of our choices. The sorrowful state of bee colonies worldwide, the bland taste of today’s food, and the state of our bodies, minds, and society as a whole attest to this in an undeniable way … even to those who pretend no harm comes from unhealthy choices. Neither can we deny Creation’s Caring Love of which we are reminded every time we are touched by a flower, a sunrise, a sunset, a gentle soothing rain, a calm snow covered landscape, a stately tree, or by innumerable other ways that are utterly personal to each of us.

In awareness of this, I now wonder, how can we expect to live in a continuous state of natural Joy, Peace, Love, Abundance, Health, Respect, and Thanks Giving when all the food, liquid, clothing, and air we come in contact with only contains the energy (and therefore information) of sorrow, abuse, hard work, slave labor, pestilence, herbicides, pesticides, toxicity, noise, pollution, anger, greed, debt, destruction, hatred, mechanical intervention, and so on?

Could it be it is not a coincidence that people who live uncomplicated lives close to Nature tend to be happier than city dwellers? Could there be a more profound reason that explains why home grown food is superior to mass produced one? Could this help explain why there aren’t enough drugs or entertainment, and for that matter civilization or technology, that will ever be able to correct the problems humanity is currently facing?

Could things be so powerfully simple and obvious?

Perhaps we should have a drop of honey so we may know… for you see? There is so much we can learn from bees…

…and until that ‘aha’ moments arrives, we could Endeavor to make the life of our bees a little bit more Joyful by taking care of our immediate environment in natural ways and by utilizing hives that support their natural behavior. Of course, I would imagine that growing our own food with a song of Beauty, Joy, and Thanks Giving in our Hearts, buying locally grown food from people who grow their garden in such state of awareness, and (dare I say) Blessing everything else we buy from the grocery store couldn’t hurt either.

In the words of Charles Marz, who, after almost 60 years of beekeeping experience, wrote an article for the 1977 July edition of Gleanings in Bee Culture:

“[ … ] when you finally admit that the bees are smarter than you are,
that is when you really start learning.
[ … ] they are the world’s greatest physician,
to treat you both physically and spiritually.
[ … ] Just ask the bees,
you can learn more from them than from all the books in the world.”