besig
busy
“Worker bees are always female.” I read this statement as a child. But given what we know now about gender and that it is not binary, I have to question whether the little honey bees in my lavender bushes are female because they don’t reproduce, and this thinking illuminates my own binary thinking. Let’s just stay safe and stick to they/them pronouns when talking about bees. The bees themselves don’t mind either way. They are too busy making honey. And it’s this function – Bees make honey – that I’m interested in. Honey is the offering to the goddess of childbirth and when I put the bees onto my birthing amulet, it was so that they can provide a perpetual supply of the offering to solicit Eileithyia’s aid.
Honey has excellent anti-bacterial qualities and if you are allergic to pollen, the remedy is to consume honey made from the flowers you are allergic to. When I was in high school, a doctor didn’t prescribe probiotics with the antibiotics and I was instructed to eat natural yoghurt. “With honey to sweeten it” but this was bad advice. The antibiotics in the honey cancel out the biotics in the yogurt.
There are parts in the world where honey bees are having a really hard time Their hives collapse. The remedy is to plant some small flowers in your expansive lawn, because however much we like to pretend to be Scottish Lords with grand lands, a large lawn is the equivalent of a lifeless desert to a bee. If you ever come across a bee on the ground, offer a small teaspoon of sugar water. It is really amazing to see them drink and then fly away, energy replenished.