Feeling called to keep bees? Begin your sacred beekeeping journey with these 10 grounded, beginner-friendly steps rooted in ecological care, animism, and natural hive wisdom.
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Welcome to Ariella's Blog
My work is varied and brings many threads of interest together. Here you will find musings, essays, and thoughts on dreamwork, bees, nature, the feminine, and occasionally travel.
The Honey Archives
We humans love labels. We like neat little categories and stacks. One of the definitions beekeepers like to make is between professional beekeepers and hobbyist or backyard beekeepers. This is often used in ways to dismiss backyard beekeepers as uneducated, annoying, or quite possible the problem (re: why bees are dying). The thing is, people have been living with bees for far longer than commercial operations have been keeping bees. It’s not a hobby.
Every good story has a rite of passage. A dark night of the soul. Uncharted waters. The descent into the Underworld. The fall. The path that disappears into the woods. Persephone knows all about it. So does Eve. Isis. Princess Leia. Atreyu. Durga. Frodo. Rapunzel. And Aphrodite, but she’ll never tell. ⠀
If you’ve stumbled into a good one, there’s often a guide. A trickster. An old woman. A star. A raven. A ragged dog. A swarm of bees.
Last night I dreamt I was in the arms of an Ash tree. Above me in the high, bare branches was a king snake. Below me, was another king snake. I remember thinking, as long as there are king snakes around, I won’t be in danger of rattlesnakes.
To understand this thinking, you must know I have a lifelong phobia of rattlesnakes after a traumatic childhood experience which invariably connected rattlesnakes with childhood abuse. I have spent my adult life repairing my relationship with the serpent.Back to the ash tree. In Norse mythology, the Yggdrasil, or World Tree, is an Ash tree.
Staring out the window, my mind is ricocheting off various topics. The Coronavirus and systemic racism. Varroa mites and treating the symptoms. Climate change and the denial of human abuse to the planet. How you can be a feminist, and still really enjoy when a date foots the bill. How great it can be to foot the bill. The silencing of a women’s voice and the inevitability of two white men vying for power.
just finished teaching a dream retreat based within the Path of Pollen/Lyceum methodologies. As a result, my dreaming has been turned up a notch.
Do you feed your bees?
Bees get their nutrients from flowers. Pollen provides protein, fatty acids and minerals, while nectar provides energy through carbohydrates (sugars) and minerals/vitamins.
How does one live a healthy, abundant life within the impossible economy, without succumbing to the dreaded “victim mentality”? Or worse “scarcity mentality”?!
Where did it begin? This love affair? This obsession? This reverence? Was it in our prehistoric ancestors, with fire in their hands, climbing the highest of heights to gain your nectar? Was it in the way your honey and pollen aided in the development of our ancient brains?
