A great video on YouTube that gives the Lifecycle of the Honeybee:
Archive for the ‘Bee Lore’ Category
Lifecycle of the Honeybee
Posted in Bee Law, Bee Lore, Bee Present, Bee-ology, Beekeeping, Beetwixt & Beetween on May 27, 2009| Leave a Comment »
The Space Between….
Posted in Bee Lore, Bee Present, Beekeeping, Beetwixt & Beetween on May 6, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Chinese philosopher Lao-tzu understood the power of
the missing piece when he wrote this verse over 2500 years ago:
Thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub,
It is the centre hole that makes it useful.
Shape clay into a vessel,
It is the space within that makes it useful.
Cut doors and windows for a room,
It is the holes which make it useful.
Therefore profit comes from what is there,
Usefulness from what is not there.
One additional idea that I came up when knocking some frames up:
Create a super with ten frames of wax foundation,
It is the space between that makes it useful!
Another point of view
Posted in Bee Lore, Bee Present, Bee-ology, Beetwixt & Beetween on April 15, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Following my post below, here is another TED talk that sees the world from the point of view of bees and plants.
Makes you think!
The Lords of Wisdom
Posted in Bee Lore, Beetwixt & Beetween on April 13, 2009| Leave a Comment »
Some beautiful stories from Scotland – a true source of Celtic lore. I love the idea that the bees know so much and are in harmony withe the wind and the rain!
“In Ross, I was told by a man of the Gairloch, they speak . . . in a folk-tale I think he said, but possibly colloquially . . . of the bees as “lords of wisdom” or “the little kings of wisdom.” It is a fine phrase, that . . . the lords of wisdom: and not one to forget.
Oftenest, however, the allusions to the bee are, doubtless, to its “knowingness” rather than to its “wisdom”; its skill in tracking the pathless ways, its intuition of the hour and season, of the way of the wind, of the coming of rain, of gathering thunder.”…….
From: The Works of Fiona Macleod, Volume V, The Sunset of Old Tales
More at: http://www.sundown.pair.com/SundownShores/Volume_V/lords_of_wisdom.htm
Tanging a Swarm of Bees
Posted in Bee Lore, Bee Present, Beekeeping, Beetwixt & Beetween on April 9, 2009| 12 Comments »
I met an interesting lady on the aeroplane today who told me that her mother kept bees on the Island of Jersey.
When the bees started to swarm, her mother used to tell all her children (she had eight!) to run into the garden with pots and pans and bash them as hard as they could and make as much noise as they could, so that the bees would settle and not fly away. Her mother would then gather the bees up and put them back in the hive. She said it really worked.
I said I was not sure if the bees would naturally go back into their old hive if they have swarmed….to which she said that maybe her mother put them in a new hive.
There is a technical word for this banging of pots and pans – which is called “Tanging” – a descrption of which is in Simon Buxton’s book – The Shamanic Way of the Bee.
I also found this older reference:
Above is a plate from a Dutch book showing tanging.
“In this late 17th-century engraving from a book printed in Amsterdam, a swarm can be seen coming out of one of the straw hives or ‘skeps’ in the middle of the picture. A beekeeper stands to the right and hits what looks like a metal pan or drum in a procedure known as ‘tanging’. Tanging would alert the neighbourhood that bees are swarming and its rhythmic sound would help coax the bees into the overturned hive in the foreground. This empty hive would also have been lined with honey in order to entice the bees to take up residence within it”
“Tanging was also a way for a beekeeper to alert other beekeepers that a claim was being made on a found swarm. Acquiring new bees by laying claim to a swarm was important, as it was routine at this time for beekeepers to asphyxiate their bees with fumes from burning sulphur in order to access the honeycomb safely.”
I am interested to know if any readers have heard of this ritual and any other reasons that beekeepers might do it.
Plate and text in quotation marks from: http://www.nls.uk/moir/tanging.html
Ask the Wild Bee What the Druids Knew
Posted in Bee Lore, Beetwixt & Beetween on April 9, 2009| 5 Comments »
There is an old English expression:
“Ask the wild bee what the Druids knew”
Intriguing. It gives a hint of mystery and pagan ritual – as well as a harking back, perhaps, to a time in early English history when we were much closer to the bees and they to us.
Would very much like to know if anyone else has an interesting interpretation of this!
Giving and Receiving
Posted in Bee Law, Bee Lore, Bee Present, Bee-ology, Beetwixt & Beetween on March 29, 2009| Leave a Comment »
For to the bee a flower is a fountain of life
And to the flower a bee is a messenger of love
And to both, bee and flower,
the giving and the receiving is a need and an ecstasy.
~ Kahlil Gibran
Archeologists find 3,000-year-old beehives in middle of ancient city’s ruins in N. Israel
Posted in Bee Lore, Beekeeping, Beetwixt & Beetween on January 16, 2009| 2 Comments »
Archeologists digging in northern Israel have discovered evidence of a 3,000-year-old beekeeping industry, including remnants of ancient honeycombs, beeswax and what they believe are the oldest intact beehives ever found.
An archeologist examining the remnants of 3,000-year-old beehives found at Rehov. (AP)
The findings in the ruins of the city of Rehov include 30 intact hives dating to around 900 B.C.E., archaeologist Amihai Mazar of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem told The Associated Press. He sad it offers unique evidence that an advanced honey industry existed in the Holy Land at the time of the Bible.
Beekeeping was widely practiced in the ancient world, where honey used for medicinal and religious purposes as well as for food, and beeswax was used to make molds for metal and to create surfaces to write on. While portrayals of bees and beekeeping are known in ancient artwork, nothing similar to the Rehov hives has ever been found before, Mazar said.
The beehives, made of straw and unbaked clay, have a hole at one end of allw the bees in and out and a lid the other end to allow beekeepers access to the honeycombs inside. They were found in orderly rows, three high, in a room that could have accommodated around 100 hives, Mazar said.
The Bible repeatedly refers to Israel as a land of milk and honey, but that’s believed to refer to honey made from dates and figs – there is no mention of honeybee cultivation. But the new find shows that the Holy Land was home to a highly developed beekeeping industry nearly 3,000 years ago.
“You can tell that this was an organized industry, part of an organized economy, in an ultra-organized city,” Mazar said.
At the time the beehives were in use, Mazar believes Rehov had around 2,000 residents, a mix of Israelites, Canaanites and others.
Ezra Marcus, an expert on the ancient Mediterranean world at Haifa University, said the finding was a unique glimpse into ancient beekeeping. Marcus was not involved in the Rehov excavation.
“We have seen depictions of beekeeping in texts and ancient art from the Near East, but this is the first time we’ve been able to actually feel and see the industry,” Marcus said.
The finding is especially unique, Marcus said, because of its location in the middle of a thriving city – a strange place for thousands of bees.
“This might have been because the city’s ruler wanted the industry under his control,” Marcus said, or because the beekeeping industry was linked to residents’ religious practices, as might be indicated by an altar decorated with fertility figurines that archaeologists found alongside the hives”.
More at: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/900809.html and other news articles at the time.
Source from Associated Press September 2007.
To have your Head Full of Bees
Posted in Bee Lore, Beetwixt & Beetween on December 13, 2008| Leave a Comment »
Meaning:
“Full of devices, crotchets, fancies, inventions, and dreamy theories. The connection between bees and the soul was once generally maintained: hence Mahomet admits bees to Paradise. Porphyry says of fountains, “they are adapted to the nymphs, or those souls which the ancients called bees.” The moon was called a bee by the priestesses of Ceres, and the word lunatic or moon-struck still means one with “bees in his head.”
More at: http://www.bartleby.com/81/1590.html
From: The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable pub. 1898 by E. Cobham Brewer (1810–1897)
To Have a Bee in Your Bonnet
Posted in Bee Lore, Beetwixt & Beetween on December 13, 2008| Leave a Comment »
To be cranky; to have an idiosyncrasy; also, to carry a jewel or ornament in your cap.
Thought to originate from the following poem:
“For pity, sir, find out that bee
That bore my love away –
‘I’ll seek him in your bonnet brave…..”
Herrick: The Mad Maid’s Song.
From: http://www.bartleby.com/81/1590.html
Extracted from: The Dictionary of Phrase and Fable pub. 1898 by E. Cobham Brewer (1810–1897)
Bee Lore 