To Walk a Pagan Path: Practical Spirituality for Every Day (25 page)

honeybees, but ultimately only one of them—the queen—

is really important in the grand scheme of things. For your

hive, your queen truly is the Great Mother. All of the other

bees are quite literally her children. The majority of these

are hard working daughters who raise younger siblings for

the good of the hive, and who store honey both for them-

selves and for you. (To be perfectly honest, though, they are

not really doing anything for you. Domestic bees store far

more honey than they actually need, but the only reason you

are not breaking the law when you steal that extra honey is

because it is we humans who make the law.)

A minority of the bees in your hive will be sons, male

bees, who do not do much of anything. It is not because they

are lazy; they are not equipped to do anything. Male bees

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the birds and the bees

(drones) cannot even sting. In the autumn their sisters drive

them from the hive, after which they soon die. There is prob-

ably some kind of moral lesson here.

Beekeeping is one of mankind’s oldest industries, dating

back to 2000 B.C. or earlier. The first hives were probably

made of logs (Ambrose, p.4). Early beekeepers approached

honeybees as sentient and responsive beings, and this atti-

tude continued well into the Christian era. In an 11th centu-

ry Anglo-Saxon manuscript, a charm to capture a swarm of

bees instructs the beekeeper to say:

Sitte ge, sigewif, sigað to eorðan!

Næfre ge wilde to wuda fleogan.

In this charm the beekeeper addresses the swarming bees

as “war-women” (
sigewif
), and commands them to settle to the ground. The beekeeper does not call upon a deity or

some other supernatural entity to control the bees. Instead

he speaks to the bees directly, saying, “Settle ye, war-women,

sink to the ground! Never should you, wild, to the wood fly”

(Griffiths, pp.195–196).

Folk tradition called for the beekeeper to share the news

of any important family events—births, deaths, marriages—

with his bees. To fail to do so was to invite bad fortune. The

beehive, which is itself a complex community, was consid-

ered an integral part of the greater community.

As a totem animal, the honeybee is symbolic of both fer-

tility and productivity (Andrews, p. 337). Bees are sacred to

both Artemis and Demeter, to Apollo and to the Egyptian

god Ra. Honeybees may have exceptional totemic signifi-

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the birds and the bees

cance for Pagans who follow a strong Mother Goddess tra-

dition. The honeybee’s stinger is sometimes considered a

phallic symbol, which is ironic since only the females—work-

ers and queens—have this accessory.

One of the best ways to find a beekeeping class is to

contact one of the many beekeepers’ associations found

throughout the United States. If the association does not

offer classes, they can very likely direct you to somebody

who does. They may also have other activities (workshops,

lectures) that you can participate in.

Getting set up initially will be your biggest investment in

both time and money. Obviously you will need a hive. I rec-

ommend the traditional Langstroth moveable-frame hive.

Proponents say that some new, innovative hive designs are

superior alternatives to the Langstroth hive, and there may

be some merit to these claims, but there are certainly disad-

vantages to using an experimental design. The Langstroth

hive has been in common use since 1861, and has been intro-

duced to all parts of the world (Ambrose, p. 13). The major-

ity of beekeepers you meet will be familiar only with the

Langstroth hive, and supplies for repairing and maintaining

this design are readily available from beekeeping supply com-

panies.

You will probably have to order your hive, and when it

arrives you will need to assemble it. The wooden pieces will

be pre-cut and only need be nailed together. This is not espe-

cially difficult; if you can assemble a plastic model, you can put a hive together.

The Langstroth hive consists of box-shaped compo-

nents called “supers”. Your kit will probably include two

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the birds and the bees

large supers, also known as hive bodies, which will eventual-

ly house the queen, workers and drones of your colony. (In

some regions a single hive body is considered sufficient. This

will be addressed in your local beekeeping class.) More shal-

low supers are for your bees to store their excess honey in.

These will be added to your hive as needed. In addition to the

supers, the hive should have a bottom board, a queen exclud-

er, an inner cover and an outer cover. Hive kits often include

a small wooden stand.

In your beekeeping class you will learn about other nec-

essary equipment: the hive tool (a sort of miniature crow-

bar), the smoker, protective clothing, the bee brush, a feeder

and extracting equipment. Most of this you will buy, but try

to find somebody who will let you rent an extractor and an

uncapping knife. You will only need these one day each year,

so it does not make sense to purchase them. Conversely, a

professional beekeeper will have extracting equipment sit-

ting around useless for most of the year and can make a lit-

tle extra cash by renting it to the hobby beekeeper. If you do

find a beekeeper who will rent you the extracting equipment

you need, be sure to return it in pristine condition!

Ideally your beekeeping class will have at least one hands-

on session where you can work directly with live bees and

get past the “creepy bugs” prejudice that so many people suf-

fer from. This is extremely important to do
before
a package of ten thousand honeybees arrives at your post office. Your

instructor, an experienced beekeeper, will show you how to

approach the hive, use a smoker and handle frames without

freaking out.

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the birds and the bees

You will order your bees from a supplier. If the variety of

breeds confuses you, just order Italian bees. It is a very pop-

ular breed, and the bees are relatively docile. I also like Buckfast bees, but I think every beekeeper has his or her favorite

variety. The bees will typically come as a “package”, and you

will need a queen of the same variety. In fact, as I said earli-er, the queen is really the only bee who matters. If Her Royal

Majesty is a Buckfast, it does not matter that you ordered a

package of Italians; in a couple of months you will have a

hive populated entirely with Buckfast bees.

Your bees will arrive in the spring when the tempera-

tures are warm enough to ship them safely. While waiting for

the little ladies to make their debut, you can work protective

magic over the hive itself. Be sure to approach this in a way

that will exert a calming influence over the bees that will be

residing within the hive.

You may want to ask for the protection of a god or god-

dess of your tradition who takes a special interest in bees or honey. As a Saxon Pagan, I would ask this of Ing Fréa. The

Hellenic Pagan would pray to either Artemis or Demeter,

depending on who he or she has a closer relationship with. A

Kemetic (Egyptian) Pagan could appeal to Ra.

Whether using magic or prayer—or a combination of

both—do
not
burn incense inside or close to the hive. The scent that you find pleasantly appealing could be a source of

acute irritation to the honeybees who will eventually inhab-

it the hive.

When your bees finally do arrive, you will probably need

to pick them up at the post office. They will be in a box with

screening on two sides to provide ventilation. The queen

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the birds and the bees

is usually packaged in the box in a special little cage of her own. By this time you will have set your hive up outside and

finished your beekeeping classes. You should know how to

install the bees in their new home.

Let me share a secret with you here. Your bees did not

take the same beekeeping class that you did, nor did they

bother to read any books about beekeeping. They are going

to do whatever they please, without a care for what humans

write or teach about them. So do not be caught by surprise

when your bees do not follow a prescribed behavior.

I learned this when I set up my first hive back in the

1990’s. I hung the queen in her cage between two frames in

the hive body, as I had been instructed. Then I mixed water

and honey, and sprayed the box of bees with this mixture

so they would “easily pour” into the hive. Up to that point,

everything had gone according to the plan. Then I very care-

fully pried open the box, and the plan was discarded. There

was no pouring involved. Instead I suddenly had a swarm

of thousands of bees flying around me in a dark, humming

cloud. I think about twenty bees actually managed to pour

into the hive. Their 9,980 sisters decided to fly about the yard instead. But I had the queen safely in the hive and, as I have

said, she is the one bee who really matters. By nightfall all (or at least most) of the bees had entered the hive and were busy

organizing themselves.

Your experience will very likely be similar. After the ini-

tial period of panic—both for you and your bees—while you

get them established, they will settle down and eventually

you will too. Always remember that your queen
is
the hive.

If she is doing well, then the hive is probably doing okay. And f 188 2

the birds and the bees

once the little ladies have settled in, they pretty much take

care of themselves. You will need to medicate them for the

few diseases that afflict honeybees (your beekeeping instruc-

tor will go over this with you), and you will probably want

to feed them in the early spring and occasionally check to

make sure that Her Royal Majesty is attending to her per-

petual egg-laying duties. You will have to care for the hive a

bit in the spring, and then harvest the honey in the fall, but

between these two periods there really is not much to do.

The bees will feed themselves throughout most of the year,

and take care of their own sanitation needs.

What more could you ask?

*

Even if you do not want to care for your own birds or bees,

you can still connect with the creatures that live around you.

Plant to provide food and habitats for the birds. Pyrocantha,

holly, barberry, privet and coralberry are all good choices.

Plant pussy willow or a red bud tree to provide early spring

food for the honeybees; or seed your lawn with white clover.

In recent years the honeybees of North America have suf-

fered from Colony Collapse Disorder, so they can use all the

help you can give. It is very likely that any honeybees who

visit your garden are in fact domestic bees belonging to a

beekeeper who lives within a couple miles, so you will also

be helping out a human neighbor.

But whether the bees you provide with pollen and nectar

are domestic or feral, the nature spirits will undoubtedly be

pleased and the land around you will more readily flourish.

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Quite a few Pagans including Wiccans, Celtic Pagans, Saxon

Pagans and ADF Druids observe a high summer holiday at

the end of July or in early August (in the northern hemi-

sphere) celebrating in one way or another the first grain har-

vests. The Gaelic name for this holiday is Lughnasadh, and it

honors the memory of Tailtiu, the foster-mother of the Irish

god Lugh. Lughnasadh is the name favored by Pagans who

follow most Celtic paths, although a Welsh Pagan may prefer

the Welsh name Calan Awst (“the August gathering”). The

Saxon name for the holiday is Lammas, from the Old English

hláfmæsse
, meaning “loaf festival”. This name is favored by Pagans who follow Germanic-inspired paths such as Fyrn

Sidu or Seax Wicca.

The name Lammas tells us something about this holiday.