For a while now in our little house we have been talking about bees. Bees are wondrous things. They are symbolic of community and industry, pollinate crops and make delicious, sweet and unctuous honey which takes on the flavour of the flowers which they have fed on - in our garden here I think it might be veg flowers of all descriptions, combined with nasturtiums, geraniums, chives and thyme. There is something ancient, arcane and mysterious about bees - I feel compelled to learn more about keeping them and yet all that learning seems bound up in an oral tradition which has to find you - the bees have to choose you it seems.
Last year we met an old beekeeper at a wedding. The event was special in that it was a collaborative occasion where lots of guests had contributed something of value to make the whole - a bit like bees really - the champagne, the flowers, the pig for the hog roast, the cheese for the cheese board, the cake, the entertainment - and the mead! The mead was a gift from the bride’s father, the old beekeeper. And very delicious it was too.
The beekeeper told us that he learned the craft from another who had also donated his first swarm. When I met up with some Druid friends last week it seems that some of them are learning beecraft the same way. So I will need to commune with the bees on another level to ask for the help we need to get going!
Synchronicity being as it is, its no surprise that my current muse is the Oxford folk band Telling the Bees, who have just released a new album Untie the Wind, which I can’t wait to get my hands on after the teasing tastes of unctuousness I have sampled via the Order of Bards Ovates and Druids’ podcast. Their new website is sensitive and evocative - a visually beautiful honey-like piece of rustica, and they describe their work as redolent of a ‘darkly familiar England of rustic charm and savage beauty’. Tracks like Wood and The Worship of Trees strike such a chord in my beating Pagan heart with lines like ‘lately I have succumbed to a old atavistic urge - the worship of trees‘.
And ‘if you follow the bees and they will bring you the sun’ … come on, bees!
There’s also a great band called..The Bees! A bit retro -Byrdsy-sounding. Their track ‘Washing the Rain’ is one of my favourite jumping around tunes! xx ps loving the blog honey!
Thanks for that Dawn - are they on Myspace Music?