The humble honey bee. This singing whir of golden hue embodies unselfishness and unconditional love. Small and unassuming, this insect offers us numerous opportunities to learn from the collective intelligence of its society. By examining the honey bee’s example, we find clues to how we might approach the work of bringing forth a new and sustainable society, and thus a new world.

Let’s look at the hive’s economy. Like humans, honey bees utilize natural resources to help fuel the economic engine of their society. Nectar, pollen, propolis, and water are “harvested” and “mined” from the earth to provide the raw materials for food production, housing construction, health care and maintaining a hospitable atmosphere within the honey bee city-state so all its citizens can live comfortably. In acquiring these resources, the bees do little harm to the natural world. Unless they are threatened and are forced to defend themselves, they do not hurt so much as a leaf during their foraging trips. In fact, due to their role as pollinators, the honey bees actually leave the environment in better shape than they find it, as they take what they need to survive. The bees’ example proves that it is possible to take what one needs from the world in a manner that helps the environment, or at least reduces damage.

Another profound lesson of honey bee economics comes in the form of the power of their community. All activity within the hive is directed at furthering the interests of the entire colony. With no thought of the “self”, the bee’s constant focus of effort is on the local scene and the good of the whole community. Workers step in and do whatever needs to be done within the hive, working constantly without complaint. They feed each other, build places to live for one another, cool each other when hot, and snuggle to provide warmth when cold. When one job is done, they move along to another, always contributing to the betterment of their collective sisterhood. They work cooperatively as a team, like a single organism, following their inner guidance, and doing what is right without the use of force or threats from a leader.

The bees’ cooperative community stands in stark contrast to western society. We are all encouraged to “go it alone” and provide our own source of income in order to procure a home, transportation, food, clothing, etc. And yet, the idea of the American nation being built on rugged individualism is a myth. Most of the truly momentous advances in the United States came about only when folks rallied together for a common cause, from the signing of the Declaration of Independence to the election of an African American president. One way we can overcome our current difficulties will be to rediscover the power of working together in community, and, like the bees, learn to rely upon each other once again. We can get through these tough times if we will only help each other out. By showing our love and providing for or sharing with each other, we provide for ourselves. When our community is doing well, we tend to do well, and when our community suffers, we don’t do as well.

While conventional wisdom says we should work at a single career our entire working life in order to reach a level of skill and professionalism that will allow us to maximize our earnings, each one of us has many talents. Like the bees, we could build a society that supports us in taking on different roles and jobs as our life path evolves, or the needs of our communities change. These are the kinds of alternatives that we can learn from the humble honey bee – alternatives that have true freedom, health, prosperity, and peace as their core.

There is much we can learn about the enduring power of harmonious community that is manifested in the forty-million-year-old society known as the honey bee hive. Since they survived the last era in which large scale extinctions of species were the norm on earth, and since they are still around today, honey bees can provide us with useful clues to improve our society.

The hardest of times are not necessarily the worst of times if you will keep to love, empathy, and imaginative living. The challenges ahead have little to do with Wall Street, and everything to do with changing the way we live, and the way we relate to each other, the earth, and ultimately, ourselves. For those willing to listen, the wisdom of the honey bee can help to guide our way through these dark times.

As the the Elders of the Oraibi Arizona Hopi Nation remind us, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for”.

After many sunny Saturdays (and a few very chilly ones) in Burlington City Hall Park, the 2008 summer Farmers’ Market has come to an end. The Halloween costumes came out for the last one; there were little lions and tigers and bears galore. We were even fortunate enough to meet a family of bee keepers out trick-or-treating. The dogs we had enjoyed so much every week came back to see us one last time and some owners stocked up on jars of two pound honey for their dogs for the winter.

I had never thought to try to feed dogs honey until one couple approached my sister and me to ask to take a honey sample for their large brown Komondor, a pup that greatly resembles a mop. They told us that one day each week they fast their dog, feeding him only our raw honey to cleanse his body. It was wonderful to share a gift, a food and a medicine, that a pup and his owner could benefit from and enjoy together.

Families who came to the market together could not pass our stand without stopping for their children to sample the honey, rarely parting without a jar of honey and bottle of elderberry or wild cherry bark syrup. The families took pleasure in sharing stories of when Honey Gardens’ products helped their family, all the way from their teething children to their sickly college students. Many concerned parents bought our cold and flu remedies to ship to their college students who had traveled out of Vermont to achieve higher education.

When a longtime customer would pass our stand and hear my sister or I explaining Honey Gardens’ products to new potential customers, they would stop and explain with us, and most would tell how they swear by our products and keep a jar of Apitherapy raw honey in their home at all times, and our cold and flu products in their medicine cabinet. As these magnificent souls gathered to share their thoughts on our products, folks would see a crowd forming around our stand and swarm in to learn of the wonders of elderberry, propolis and raw honey.

There were new college students who had never heard of Honey Gardens’ at the beginning of the Summer Market, and by the end they were regulars, coming every Saturday to purchase more honey or syrup and to share our gift with their friends. The college seniors especially seemed to enjoy our Mead, and loved presenting us with their identification cards to prove that they were finally 21 and able to sample legally.

Most customers knew about raw honey already, and a good portion knew of the wonders that are our syrups and healing salve, however, our Mead was something new to share with people. Not many knew what Mead was and all were excited to hear the story of it and wondered if it was sweet like honey. Once people learned about Mead, they were eager to try it and, more often than not, buy it. Whether they were purchasing it for themselves, as a gift for a loved one, or in its traditional use as a wedding gift, one and all were happy with it.

Sharing our products with the people of Burlington has been wonderful. We have just returned from the first Winter Market in Memorial Auditorium (the next ones will be Dec. 20th, Jan. 17th, Feb. 21st, March 21st,, and April 18th). Natural cold and flu season remedies, all made using raw honey, is the best gift one could give or receive; remember that this holiday season!

Across the land, beekeepers are now bringing their honey to the honey house for extracting. One of the miracles of working on the land and with the bees took place again this year. A lot of honey came in the last few days. We saw it in our own bees: right into last week, the crop was light. The bees had months of rain this season, day after day of precipitation where they stayed in their homes and did not fly to flowers.

Then came the goldenrod and aster flowers, the last major and minor nectar plants of the season in the northeast. Many beekeepers commented about how they had looked at the hives before this, and they were “light”. But after the goldenrod and aster bloomed, the next time they were with their bees, there was a good crop.

This has happened with our bees many times over the last 30 years, which has helped me have more patience and trust in the whole process of the rhythms of the land. At the “eleventh hour” you can’t do much about the strength or health of your bees anyway, and we see how in letting go and accepting, we are often given great abundance.

Sunflowers heads are composite flowers. The head looks like one flower, but like the dandelion, the sunflower is actually composed of numerous small florets. A sunflower head like this is composed of 1,000 to 4,000 florets. Each floret contains both male and female parts of the flower and is open for 2 days to be pollinated. Honey bees collect both pollen and nectar from sunflowers.

Florets open from the outer edge of the flower head inwards, so one can see gradual progression as pollination occurs. It takes 5 – 10 days for this process to be completed.

source: Crop Pollination by Bees by Keith S. Delapland and Daniel F. Meyer. Published by CABI Publishing, 2000.

Lewis Hill, a gentle giant, teacher & friend, a man of the plants, 1924 – 2008

I met Lewis when I was fresh out of agricultural school; I was the state bee inspector and checked in with him each year to see how his bees were going. I was drawn to this giant of a man, who was among the most gentle and kind of people I had ever met. He was evidence that people are put in our paths to dramatically change and improve our lives.

For years as we walked around the gardens where he and Nancy lived, as well as his father and grandfather before him, he pointed out the medicinal plants as elecampagne, the many varieties of lilies, berries, apples, and vegetables that he and Nancy grew. Lewis delighted in introducing me to the elderberries and black currants, and would share the medicinal value of each. After the walks, there was often a cocktail of elderberry and orange juice.

“Todd, why don’t you consider working with elderberry”, he would ask me each year, as we walked among the towering plants. I listened, but was so focused on the bees that I did not digest what he was saying. Lewis gave me plants to take home, always looking for and finding a small one that could be transplanted and moved in any month of the year. After 14 years of his mantra, I started to see elderberry products in health food stores, which came from Europe and were mixed with glucose, fillers, and artificial ingredients. It was easy to see that we could produce something of a higher quality here in Vermont, and make it with raw honey. I went back to Lewis and said that I now understood what he was saying, and asked for more information. He smiled and simply said that he had been waiting for me to hear and listen. Then he took me to his library and he shared files from articles, written over the years, on the elderberry’s medicinal value and propagation.

We then started the Vermont Elderberry Project. For years Lewis would fill his greenhouse with softwood elderberry cuttings. I would pick them up in the summer after they had rooted, and shared them with thousands in our community and beyond. Lewis connected us to another era, where outside the Vermont farmhouse, people would grow elderberry and have bees and chickens.

Elderberry is older than Vermont; it has the anti-viral agent that chemical medicines do not have for getting rid of the virus in the common cold. It supports the immune system and is helpful when one has the flu.

If it were not for Lewis sharing the elderberry, we would not be keeping bees and sharing Apitherapy honey around this land. The elderberry gave our apiary an opportunity to diversify and share the value of honey as a medicine in plant medicine.

While Lewis was a man of great strength, he always showed me great kindness and tenderness. He was not shy about showing his affections, being one of the first in my work to sign each letter “love, Lewis”. As soon as I “got it” about the elderberry, he started taking me to the black currant plants and putting these in my car to take home and think about. I understood it earlier this time, and we are now making black currant honey wine, and looking at a new plant medicine with black currant.

At the honey house of Honey Gardens, we are the caretakers for two elderberry cultivars of Lewis Hill, Berry Hill and Coomer; he always said that they produce larger berries and are more winter hardy. From this plantation, we make hardwood and softwood cuttings, and share these each year. ‘Plant 6 – 20 feet apart, have at least one of each cultivar for greater pollination and fruit yield, and protect your plants from the deer.”

Thank you, Lewis. We see the fruit of your life all around us.