Making Room For Our Voice

If my mood were a snake today, I’m pretty sure you’d find me curled under a rock, rattling my tail.
No one did anything. It’s just a combination of hormonal tides being governed by lunar sway. Call it the wild bleeding through.
I had to buy my first bee jacket recently. Nothing fit. Not even the extra small. I’m 5’7, so I’m not the littlest woman in the world, but the shopkeeper kindly said, “Oh yeah, they don’t make bee suits for women. Try the child’s size.” Are you kidding me? I went to a corner, internally hissed fire and returned to try on the child’s size. It runs a little large. Made for boy children, you see. I bought it.

There’s a famous beekeeper from my home town who is currently on a campaign to remove and destroy all natural log hives. They are illegal, apparently. People respect him because he’s an organic beekeeper. You want to know what he calls natural beekeepers? “The Taliban of beekeepers.” He said it to my face while trying to justify taking handfuls of bees and drowning them in alcohol to get a mite count. Call me unimpressed.
I have lots of respectful arguments brewing, but today I feel like chewing rocks. 
My point my is, I think it’s time to add one more type of beekeeping to the ever-growing list of styles. Natural, bee-centric, treatment free, scientific, etc.
Allow me to introduce: 💃🏻Feminist Beekeeping.  💃🏻
- It takes into account what the bees as a large organism of predominantly female beings are trying to teacher us.
- It requires us to listen to the wild.
- It involves a series of metaphoric lessons we as humans can learn about how to treat women and the earth (same/same).
- It involves sometimes giving zero fucks.
- It involves not putting up with mansplaining beekeepers.
- It means changing the male-dominant industry.
- It mean respect the Queen.

So send me your best #feministbeekeeping stories, metaphors, lessons. Time to hear what you badass women and men are doing to change the narrative.

With love and some sting.
-beekeepinginskirts
(Not beekeeping in god damn oversized men’s suits).