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| Zoe and Kaila at the Honeylove Bee Sanctuary |
Watching Teenage Girls Fall in Love with Bees
My daughter has been violently afraid of bees her entire life. I give her big props for confronting her fears- and no one was more surprised than me when she said she would like to go. Driving out to Moorpark- which is farm country, about 30 miles from our house- she was nervous. Putting on her bee suit, she kept asking Ceebs from Honeylove if there was any way for a bee to sting her and making sure there were no gaps in her bees suit. Her perception of bees consisted of one main thing- they sting, and that hurts.
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| Its kind of like wearing space suits... |
After we donned our bee suits (Zoe said she felt like Walter White) we walked up the hill to the hives. She grabbed my arm. The wonderfully warm Kirk and Rob McFarland (of the husband and wife team Rob and Chelsea McFarland, who started Honeylove) were busy working on cleaning out the hives. There were a handful of others, and as Zoe and Kaila walked up, they saw no one running or screaming from the bees, no one being stung, everyone calm and interested, and the fact that Kirk was holding up trays of honeycomb crawling with hundreds of bees barehanded immediately changed her perception about the intention of bees- they are NOT out to get us.
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| Kirk is pointing out the different variations of bees in the hive |
Watching my 17 year old child discover the bees was the first time in many years I saw her childlike innocence. She was having a new experience, and soaking it up like a sponge. Before too long, she was handling honeycombs crawling with bees (with gloves on), helping scrape the old beeswax off frames from dead trays of honeycomb, putting her face as close as she could into the hive boxes to see the bees busy with the broods and storage cells, and the die was cast. She was a lily. (If you don't know that quote, then you watch the clip below from the classic movie You Can't take It With You by Frank Capra). She and her friend Kaila fell in love with the bees.
Its not hard to do, fall in love with the bees- you either get it or you don't. To be able to see their devotion to the task at hand, and to the hive and the queen is a humbling thing, and a reminder that this is a quality that is often missing in human affairs. It is the thing that is missing the presence of which would make a BIG difference. And THAT is exactly what Shake the Hive Collective will continue to ask the teenage participants- when we are growing food, when we work with bees, with chickens, with wolves (at Wolf Connection in Acton)- with any charitable endeavor- What is missing in life that you could bring, that is needed, that you can learn from the bees, the wolves, the act of growing things? It is empowering to interact with the graceful deliberation of the natural world, and to learn to live in accord with it. It is the thing that is missing that will make a difference to disenfranchised teens being raised by single moms.
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| Zoe scraping the old beeswax off the frames |
Then my daughter did what I hoped she would- she posted this on Facebook-
"Today I volunteered my morning to helping the bees. Not only did I get over one of my biggest fears, but I got to observe them up close & personal. They are truly miraculous little beings, all they care about is their colony and their Queen (she lives up to 7 years while the average bee lives up to 4 weeks!). They do not care to harm us, which is something I learned first hand today. There was a man holding the honey combs with NO gloves on and he was fine! STOP killing bees, they're here to protect and serve, without them we wouldn't exist. If they go endangered we lose 80% of the organic crops we consume due to their inability to properly pollinate. Make peace with the bees! If I did it, you can too!"
She had a bunch of kids respond to this post who want to go to the next mentoring day at the Honeylove Bee Sanctuary, and that is exactly how Shake the Hive Collective aims to educate teens; by having the teens bring the information to their peer groups, get them interested, involved, educated. STH Collective will have workshops for the participants, and for their friends to attend, and for- and this is very important- their mothers. Then those kids will post on social media about their experiences, and so on. We need to reach this demographic, but they aren't going to listen to old people. They have the power to reach each other through social media; one kid can impact thousands. This is the pond where the ripple is endless.
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| My kid Zoe, holding a honeycomb crawling with her new friends |
And what does it do for the self esteem of the kids who are having these experiences, like working with the bees, and posting about it? In that world, where teenage girls are devastated when their new sexy profile picture doesn't get more likes than someone they consider a rival, where it is highly competitive, often cruel, diminishes any real sense of value and chips away at a falsely derived self esteem- it allows for a new sense of self to emerge, a new identity. Other kids respond differently, they respect these activities and the teens who are actively doing them. These teens are getting respect instead of objectification. Teens respond to the way people perceive them as if they are that- so they carefully monitor what people think of them, and it ends up a terrible mess. I have seen teenage girls police their own image on social media, and study the profiles of other girls, critiquing and taking notes, approving or not. I've listened as they've done it, and there is no value in that world. It is all surface, and without an intervention, this is what they will take into the world. The world doesn't need more superficiality, especially when these kids have the capacity for so much more. These are the future stewards of the planet, and future parents of future stewards. To connect them to their own compassion, and to empower them to respond to the world from that place, is the dream of Shake the Hive. Its what I have been doing for most of 2013- empowering myself, recognizing my urge towards compassion and acting on it. Not allowing myself to talk myself out of it, staying on track, and trusting myself to do this work. I have to do it, if I am going to encourage others to- and not just the teens- but the Moms, who are usually in survival mode constantly, frantic with worry about their kids and in a constant state of feeling like they can't do it all, that in some way they are failing their children no matter how hard they try. I AM that mom, I understand this better than anyone. Shake the Hive wants to support those Moms along with their kids, like a beehive filled with female bees who all support the hive, who are devoted to the well being of the hive above all else, STH Collective will have a safe space for their compassionate instincts to unfold and grow strong. Join us at our facebook page- please like us, then hover over the liked button and click "show in notifications" so you will see our posts all the time!
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| Ashley Dane, Founder of Shake the hive and proud mom of Zoe! |
Occupy yourself!
xoxo,
Ashley Dane
Shake the Hive
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