If you are like me a year ago, you probably aren't aware of the colossal modern breeding and husbandry industries, across all the animal kingdom, covering multiple motivations; be it feed animals, production animals, pet animals or even entertainment "actors" or law enforcement "agents".
It's just plain crazy how we not only corrupted our own children, but even didn't think twice about corrupting and using other mother's children, such as the animal kingdom.
The different industries and circles that animate those breeding grounds are gravitating around a tournament of efficiency squared with production QUANTity.
That's basically the formula across all boards.
That's how you can see people keeping 120 snakes in a room, all in shoebox-sized drawers for years, or you can find people in Africa or Asia poaching and running animal farms for leather, or any other type of animal product, up to food, as most of the animals that are eaten by humans today are seldom hunted, but force-impregnated, bred and raised in lab-arranged farms.
On our sanctuary journey when informing ourselves about snake keeping, it was abashing to see how 'modern' sanitized and sterile populations of a wild species get bred and put on the market as feeders for bigger animal pets; so we have a huge rodent population that is just being inseminated, bred and fed just for the purpose of killing them all in gas chambers, freezing them and selling them to reptile owners that can "obviously" not feed their reptiles wild rodents that are running wild in the neighbourhood because they are 'too wild' and the high risk of those having been poisoned by nature-separatists in the first place.
And that is the big dead-end we are running in today full blast;
We have corrupted the entire planetary ecosystem itself, by creating chemical and artificial solutions to natural circuits.
Instead of reinforcing natural and organic courses and currents, we just up and 'invented' or created a category from scratch without caring about the balance of it on the bigger scale.
Through this huge imbalance, the poison is everywhere now.
It starts in the soil, it's in the air, it's growing into plant tissue and it's sabotaging the primordial source of bee development; pollen and nectar.
What I realized about modern beekeeping industry and honey production industry is
that there are important facts that should be common knowledge but have been distorted and exploited to the benefits of commerce of honey and other bee "products".
- Honey is not a product, it's the fuel for the health of a bee colony
- Propolis is the exo-immune system, if it leaks or is missing parts, the entire inner safety of the womb (hive) is jeopardized. It is also their natural 'pesticide'
- Pollen is very important for the optimum health level for the brood, as it is their primary protein source that needs to be ingested by nursing bees before feeding it to their larvae
- most kept honeybees are fed sugar and other honey-replacements instead of their own honey (because that's going on the market)
And the last and most terrifying one:
5: Every honey sold under EU or national modern regulations comes from bees that are treated against various types of parasites and diseases. Thus, commercial honey may contain pesticides or antibiotics that are either prohibited or exceed limits.
Now comes the heart of the issue.
Number 4 leads to the root of the problem of number 5, just as
when you weaken a population, you create a safe haven for its parasite.
The thing I did not know anything about is the Varroa Mite Situation.
Long story short, in the 50s the globalisation has sort of restructured the entire field of agriculture and has messed up a lot of ecosystemical balances around the planet with its products like Monsanto, Bayer etc
A couple of years later, a parasite has started to dominate, and apparently taken over the entire bee population, namely the Varroa mite.
The consequences have been so brutal for entire bee-colonies across the entire world that today any beekeeper will try to tell you it's impossible to keep a beehive without regular medication treatments.
Today, the answer to that problem has led to every official beekeeper HAVING to treat his colony against that world famous mite, to even be allowed to keep bees and also for selling honey.
NOW; talk about a serious situation.
The most sacred exalted medicine of the earth has become chemically altered because of consequences to the negligence of intention.
And on top of that it's being kept in the dark, amongst so-called experts, and the 5 above mentioned facts are not even in the awareness of most humans.
That has become a sort of moral dilemma. Especially when you are not in the least interested in exploiting or pumping up your ego with entouring yourself with sacred animals, but rather see the situation of human's colonization and decide to devote your life to creating safe spaces for the brave wild spirits that still roam the earth.
In that light, the subject was at the core of our awareness when raising the intention of ushering colonized animals towards the freedom that is embedded in their sacred code.
It's clear for the both of us that we will always relentlessly try everything before even contemplating an inorganic solutions.
It's one of my core values to not take nature for granted and for dumb. Nature is the highest intelligence that has an uncorruptible wisdom. And every living thing has a divine code that underlines the meticulous forms and functions for which it has been created. So my philosophy is that nature can always remedy itself and I'm dedicated to witness her majesty in doing that.
Thus it was clear to us that there would only be a natural 'treatment', if anything.
In the philosophy that only nature can remedy itself, we found the emphasis to be more on prevention than a quick-fix regimen. Knowing that these treatments are insanely unsustainable as they have to expose the entire bee population to an insecticide multiple times in a year, which is definitely a no-go.
The concern we had predominantly was feeding. Since the bees are moving in, they are not as well prepared as when they take off for a swarm by themselves where they stock up on their own on everything they need to build a new hive.
However, becoming very aware of the facts mentioned in the opening of this post, this year I have learnt the literal meaning of not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. We have to start somewhere with what is available and build the sacred pavement toward liberation.
In that sense, coming here they won't have any resources to build up from and that is an instance where a head-start in feeding is hard to compromise.
Most beekeepers feed a water and sugar solution, or other types of honey-substitutes, but we wanted to explore a more meaningful way of offering them an optimal energy punch for their housewarming.
Flying Mycelia
The bee is the analog of the mushroom in its divine task of bridging the earth with the celestial realm for the former and the subterreanian realm for the latter. These psychomps rely important information that leads to extreme efficiency amongst each other dethroning the internet by all means. Both constellations illustrate a megabrain that sublimates its intelligence in a complete different way than what we as humans are used to think.
By grace of that hyperorganic intelligence, important actions are undertaken that provide the entire ecosystem of the most pollination on earth by the bee and the best decomposition and rebirthing of organic matter by the mycelia.
The best part comes when Paul Stamets does a talk about the direct bond between the two; Mycellia has been found to be the best medicine for bees to date.
Although they don't have an individual immune system per se, their organisation is woven together like an organism and so the hive is the immune system. Yet, Paul Stamets has observed individual bees sucking on the mycelia of his mushroom garden, he made the scientific discovery of the healing properties of mushroom for bees. Just like our underestimation of the bees survival, the mushrooms and especially mycelia is kept in the dark and grows in the dark.
An anecdote he found when he was trekkin through the woods, he found a tree scratched by a bear and a year later on the same spot found a huge mushroom growing that attracted the bees for healing juices.
For our bee colonies, we were amazed by the research of Paul Stamets and his discoveries about the strong bond between bees and mushroom, and having soaked in many of his presentations and interviews, we decided to experiment with his findings and prepare a formula with Reishi medicinal mushroom, to activate their detoxification pathways to strengthen their individual and collective immunity.
For those who are curious you can read @ravenking13 's article HERE.
SUGAR
Bees cannot eat honey from other bees
I'm not sure about that in what extent but in this mondiale Varroa situation, every colony has a potential of disease, so in general it is very risky to contamination.
I'm not really fan of the idea of feeding animals sugar, but since we cannot give them honey (especially that every honey is treated ultimately), we have no other choice to start with.
The thing that "works" is sugar.
The compromise we'll have to do is start them on sugar, let them produce the honey from that, leave them the honey for the winter,
The best thing we can do here from now is to give them just the amount that is needed, and let them continue on with honey to eventually be self-sufficient on honey alone.
By then we hopefully have expanded our mushroom growing area so that they can also get their medicine straight from the mycelia.
So we bought bio sugar and created the holy bee tea.
It smells like heaven it's divine!
# HERBS
Sacred decoctions always were brewed along with sacred medicinal plants, so @ravenking13 didn't hesitate to throw in some herbs such as sage, rosemary, lavender and anise oil.
VIBRATION
In all of this we made sure to balance it up with our intentions, the energy we hold when engaging with the preparation, the opening or the filling of the feeder.
Energy is the clearest transmitter afterall.
You can watch a video of us feeding our hive like that here
If you made it this far, I had written this a year ago when we received our (first for me) bee colonies, but had somehow not published it. We had done this procedures only a couple of times in the beginning and let them take over their own sustenance after that throughout the summer and autumn. We had not taken a single drop of honey from the hives and not even fed them extra for over the winter.
I am so happy and amazed to share that both colonies survived the winter strong as could be. During the wintermonths, we were not sure if they would make it to the spring, as they were completely left to their own devices. Some days I even couldn't see a single bee in the 'Temple of Gaia' Hive and thought it was over.
But then.. on the first rays of early early spring, actually february when our land got blessed with glorious sunrays, both hive-entrances were brimming with bees, all excitedly flying in and out loaded with pollen!
They had survived indeed! They made it!
They had not needed any crutch from anyone and truly looked after themselves and their entire hive in full sovereignty!
This proof is mainly what inspired us to take it a level higher and create a true bee-sanctuary, where we are devoting ourselves to use such valuable findings and empower the bee populations with trust, love and honor.
Now, we cannot do it all on our own; with the property that we recently purchased for that goal and all the expenses related to the move, we are practically left with around hundred euros and would be deeply grateful for any donation, so if you could find a couple of minutes to share the link to our Fundraiser, we could implement this philosophy into a proper safe haven for as many bees as possible.
We are also making Art and Leathercrafts for which the sales are all directly going into this venture; feel free to visit our website and you might find a gift for a loved one, or yourself :)
I thank you from the bottom of my heart,
KPHI