Bee All: End All

When Anna Breytenbach (Interspecies Communicator) asked a Sunflower buzzing with bees collecting nectar and pollen, ‘how it felt?’ the answer she received was, ‘The bees kiss me with their awareness!’

Many varieties of bees have existed on the earth since the first flowering plants evolved millenia before humans ever walked. They are some of the most social animals that exist but they are dying in numbers that are truly horrifying.

Martha Spivak, giving her Ted Talk in September 2013, shares her concerns:

The bee is not just an insect ‘without feeling or emotion’ as some of my friends have often stated to me. They do not sting for ‘no reason’ and they are not without compassion or intelligence. It is well documented by commercial bee keepers that bees communicate the location of nectar sources on a high level, they groom each other, cool and heat the hive together, and they sacrifice themselves for the good of the hive community.

I have often picked up drowning bees and let them walk on my hands drying themselves until they are fit to fly. I have never been stung by any of them.

Peter Nelson explains our relationship with bees in his video ‘Dance of the Bees.’

Recently, a cold and sudden winter wind blew foraging honey bees into the shade on my patio. The cold quickly disabled them (bees will die very quickly if their body temperature drops below 13.5 C) and they crawled helplessly, getting slower and more crippled by the extreme change. Some had already folded themselves up, trying to conserve what little heat they had but quickly becoming dormant bodies. I gathered dozens in my hands. Their stingers came out, but as soon as they felt the heat in my hands, and my damp breath trying to warm them, they stopped and became relaxed, their abdomens pulsing. I transferred them gently to a clear box, placing them on paper towel and put them beside a fan heater. After a few seconds, the strongest came to life, and immediately crawled over to those that had not. They put their mouth parts into the pollen sacks of the invalids and took much of the pollen, but they didn’t steal it. Instead they gave it back to the invalid by mouth and stimulated them with their antennae. There was much scurrying as all the bees revived each other and took part in this strange ritual… a caring rescue of saving their sisters and themselves. A short time later, after they were warmed and buzzing… I released them back into the sunshine so they could return to the hive.

We should learn that what we do to bees, we do to ourselves. The pesticides and herbicides are slowly killing them (something that will affect our health too). Commercial bee keepers take as much as 90% of the honey and pollen from hives, replacing it with high fructose corn syrup (a cheap and poor nutritional alternative) for the bees to use to feed themselves and developing larvae. The result is weakened bees that have no defenses against Varroa mites and bee viruses.

Without bees, a whole link in the interdepedent food chain disappears and we will have lost a very special animal. But worse, we will lose vast crops essential to feeding ourselves. It is time to be kind to the bees! Our future depends on it!

Finally, Michael Sutton sums up some interesting facts about Honey Bee Life in this amazing short video: