I'm Ariella
I came to beekeeping through some serendipity, some heartbreak, and some soul searching. I am a bee tender, a bee enthusiast, and have a fascination with the cultural and historical practices, myths, and beliefs around bees and beekeeping. Sometimes I travel too; I find honeybees wherever I go.
I have been tending hives since 2011. I primarily use Top Bar Hives, but have experience with Langstroth & Warré (the latter pictured left). I work closely with beekeepers and people who work with the hive on a symbolic/metaphorical level.
Writing down my dreams, cuddles with my daughter, visits with the bees, and conversations with crows.
daily rituals
Picking strawberries in summer, messy baking with a 3 year old, reading high fantasy fiction WAY to late into the night, hunting down traditional folk music shows, and playing piano.
YOU CAN FIND ME:
heart talk, womb talk, river language, bee whispers, and the power of the human and non-human community of belonging.
I'M Here For:
The inherent eros in natures, the body as an intuitive force, bone memory, ancestral remembrance, ceremony, magic, and the power of laughter.
I BELIEVE IN:
It's true. I didn't even like honey as a kid. If you had asked me at 12 what I was going to be when I grew up it would have been 1) A wolf expert and 2) A musician.
I managed one of those things.
I went to university for a degree in music, and came out with a BA in Anthropology with a focus on spirituality informed by relationship to the Earth across time and culture. You see, I couldn't stay in one place. I had the extreme privledge of being raised by parents who met while teaching english abroad, and therefore, were more than willing to send me overseas for school. I spent a semester studying archeology in Ireland, and another studying culture and social change in Brazil.
When all was said and done, I settled for a music minor, and after a quick stint as a European tour guide on river cruises, I wrote and recorded an album at 29, and stepped into a decade-long career as a performing artist, opening on tour for Joanna Newsom in 2010, and joining a folk rock group, The Sam Chase and the Untraditional.
In the midst of my music career I had a hospitalized miscarriage. During the weeks that followed, when I felt my self drift toward the abyss in my grief and dissociation, the bees came to me. It was through grief, I found the power of bees and beekeeping. Where no one else could anchor me, the bees brought me back to my body, my sense of self, and gave me purpose. I have been devoted to them ever since.
My raison d'être is to help people fall in love with the world. I'm well aware of the grief and overwhelm we all feel when face with the state of the world, climate change, and ecological collapse. I believe one of the most powerful ways we can collectively heal is to fall in love even more with the natural world and our place in.
I wasn't always a bee woman
Beekeeping
Books & People
My favorite bee centric and natural beekeeping books from beekeepers I love, respect, and often know! Plus some of my favorite people in the field.
Bee centric connections
Beekeeping Gear
My list and tools
Beekeeping supplies can be overwhelming, especially when looking online. Here's what I like to use and recommend.
Resources
My Favorite Things
Here's my curated page of favorite books, stuff, people, blogs, resources and more. Yes, that's me and my daughter in Paris. I was crazy enough to travel to Europe ALONE with a 2 year old!
Bees, Dreams, Sacred Feminine, Lifestyle, Travel, and more
For the last 14 years, I have been a devoted student of the bee, animism, womb wisdom, and history and folklore around bees and the Melissae (bee prietesses). I have a keen interest in the relationship between the human world and the animate earth, whether that be through exploring bees and beekeeping practices, dreamwork, women's spiritual traditions, or good ol' witch wisdom.
The bees are my guides, but what drives me is the magic that happens when I see people connect to their own intuition, and experience the ineffable nature of being a human animal on our spinning Earth.
listening:
pumpkin ricotta pasta + nettle pesto
Cooking:
Loving:
Dandelion tea with honey
DRINKING:
Missing Threads
Reading:
Currently
My approach to beekeeping falls under the labels of natural and bee-centric beekeeping. I am primarily interested in the relationship between beekeeper and bees, what we can learn from the hive as a colony and what we can offer to the bees, both in a single hive and as a species. I support people in the basics of hive maintenance, learning how to care for bees, and developing a relationship to the honey bee. My goal is to empower students to work with their honey bee colonies with a gentle, more natural approach, and to use the human-nature relationship to delve deeper into their own soul. While my style focuses on a more feminine approach than is currently practiced in the commercial beekeeping world, I happily work with students of any gender. And of course, most of the time, I tend my hives dressed in skirts.
What's my approach to beekeeping?
What's my approach to dreamwork?
As life would have it, my work with bees lead me down an unexpected road. I have a lifetime of dream studies under my belt, but when bees came into my world, I learned of a whole new way to dream and share dreams. Through practices of animistic dreamwork, dream incubation, intentional dreaming, and dream mirroring, I have developed a body of work centered around the idea that we do not dream alone.
My dreaming courses focus on no only methods of dreaming, but also methods for sharing and working with our dreams personally and collectively. I you would like to experience my work, consider an Oracular Dreamwork Session, or one of my small cohort courses, Dreaming with Bees or Betwixt and Between.
