Good morning Yogis,

I hope that we are back on air,  there was a hiccup, not with my writing, but with Mailchimps sending practices.  So, over the next couple of weeks, I am going to comb through the contacts we send the newsletters to, and if you never respond, if you haven’t clicked on it and read it (yes computers record this), I will take you off the list.  If I am left with just a few dedicated readers, well, it is what it is.  Buckle up guys.  It is a time of decision and weeding in this particular garden.

BEES:  Studying bees is like studying ourselves.  My palate never gets sick of the taste of honey, and because I love honey I have always admired the insects who magically make it.  I also am in awe of their community has often been the model for human society.  You can find references in Virgil, in Homer, in Plate Shakespeare, Marx and Tolstoy and of course our special friend Pliny the Elder.  His book, completed in AD77 …

Bees have a government. They pursue individual schemes but have collective leaders.  What is especially astonishing, they have manners more advanced than those of other animals, whether wild or tame.  Nature is great in  that from a tiny, ghost like creature she has made something incomparable.  What sinews or muscles can we compare with the enormously efficiency shown by bees?  What men in heavens name, can we set alongside these insects which are superior to men when it comes to reasoning? FOR THEY RECOGNISE ONLY WHAT IS IN THE COMMON INTEREST.

The inscriptions on many old beehives reads “NON NOBIS” meaning We work but not for ourselves”.  When in old drawings we see the old fashioned SKEP hive, it stands for some view of the goodness of work.  Sometimes this skep encourages us to reflect on the golden age of the past when work was simpler and slower.  However, in the bees world, there are no sickies, no holidays.  You are born, you work you die, no time off even to go to school..  No sooner had man admired the life of the bee and their tirelessness than he felt that he (or his wife) should emulate them in some way.

In Victorian times (as noted by Mrs. Beeton) the beehive was a symbol of industry.  It shows in one illustration that the world could be ordered.  A world in which different people did different tasks and no one envied the position of their neighbour.  A place for everyone and everyone in their place.  Like good supermarkets, industries, and families, a  good hive needs a balance of foragers and receivers.

At this time of covid there is much we can learn and receive from bees.  Honey has long been known as a medicine and strengthener of the bronchi. Muhhamed Ali the boxer took a mixture of vitamins and honey before his fights… and said that he “…danced like a butterfly, stung like a bee”.

Is there a beehive in your garden? Is honey part of your diet? Try my honey cough drops you will find the recipe on www.wildnweedy.blogspot.com.

Let me know you are there.  Don’t forget we will be zooming Teacher Training, The Tarot Training and Anatomy/Physiology lectures.  

NAMASTE.  JAHNE