Last week for our anniversary we went to Mount Vernon. Since last year we did the same thing, it’s now a family tradition. We had bought annual passes (that expired the next day), and if you calculate the cost, you already save money if you go twice in one year. So we used ours 4 times, which isn’t great, but we plan to buy annual passes again for this year and use them more often. Each time we go we do something different, and there is always more to see the next time.
It was a rainy day, one of many in the past month, so we did all the inside tours, like watching movies, seeing the new museum and displays. After having a nice lunch in their period restaurant, we moseyed over to the gift shop. I’m like a bee to flowers when I see books, and a book table with a sale sign is even harder to resist.
I picked up A Keeper of Bees: Notes on Hive and Home by Allison Wallace. (As I’m about to wrap up the book and ship it off to my sister, I thought I’d mention it now.) It’s not a how-to book on beekeeping, but entwines her story with her beekeeping in her life, and then provides very interesting tidbits on bees. I didn’t enjoy some of her personal views, and her writing style wasn’t always enjoyable, but overall, I found this an interesting book to read if you are fascinated by beekeeping and just bees in particular.
I know the blogdom is a buzz on bees, like Lissa at “Here in the Bonny Glen” and Jenn at “As Cozy as Spring” to name a few (I haven’t been blog reading much lately). When I started to read about the current popularity of bees and beekeeping, I kept thinking how is it that everyone has the same feeling as I do? This has been a longtime fascination! I know in our little HOA suburban neighborhood beekeeping is not going to happen, but I have always had the dream. Two years ago someone on Freecycle was offering unused bee hives and other supplies and I was seriously (way too seriously) contemplating taking them. But I couldn’t figure a way to convince dh, so I passed up that opportunity.
When I was writing my history thesis for my undergrad, this is one article that really inspired me, and it has always given me an insight into why I love and am attracted to wanting to do these things:
From Woman and Post-War Reconstruction by Janet Kalven (emphasis mine):
We must have an education for motherhood to develop this great womanly type. We need an education that will give young women a vision of the family as the vital cell of the social organism, and that will inspire them with the great ambition of being queens in the home. “A career is what every girl prepares for and hopes not to have,” a discerning young woman remarked. Women need an education that will prepare them for their real career as wives and mothers rather than for temporary business or professional work.
An intimate experience of life on the land is an essential part of education for motherhood, even for girls who will live in the cities. Woman’s nature demands close contact with the beauties of the creation and with growing plants and animals for her fullest physical and spiritual development. She needs the simple, rhythmic life on the land, with its fresh foods and outdoor work, to build abundant health and vitality. She needs contact with young plants and animals to help develop her motherly qualities. Women have always been great agriculturists, mothers of the earth. The mystery of the seed is very close to her, for she bears the seed of new life in her womb and nurtures it with her blood. A rich experience of the cycle of birth and death in plants and animals is in harmony with the deepest tendencies of her nature and develops her womanly talents.
Woman’s education should be practical, and here again the land offers invaluable opportunities for a fascinating variety of activities. The modern girl has lost most of the traditional feminine skills and must be introduced to all the arts of the homemaker from bread baking to bee-keeping. She will need all these skills if she is to be a successful pioneer, but she needs them still more for the mental balance and psychological assurance they give her. Woman learns best through concrete experience, and the practical work of sewing, cooking, canning, and weaving releases her intellectual energies and develops sound judgment. Her greatest intellectual gifts are in the practical realm, and it is only when these are well developed that her study of the liberal arts and the classics will bear fruit. Along with the practical training, permeating it and integrating it, there must be a vivid realization of the dignity of manual labor. Women must learn to see its great value as a visible expression of love for the family, and must come to understand the sacramentality of the work of their hands.
Finally, woman’s education should develop courageous, uncompromising Christians, women of deep convictions and unswerving loyalty to the ideals of full Christian life. Pioneering is never easy, and the women who will cut through the confusion, the materialism, and the economic disorders of our times to discover a new way of life for themselves and their families must be deeply rooted in a dynamic faith. They must understand and live the joy of the cross, always ready to give up any comforts and to face any obstacles to fulfill their mission….
But the small, diversified farm corresponds completely to her desire for variety and personalized relationships in work. She enjoys the homestead with its few cows to furnish butter, milk and cheese for her family; its few pigs for meat; its few sheep for lamb and wool; its small flock of chickens for really fresh eggs; a few bee hives for honey; perhaps a flock of ducks to add a note of color and humor to the farm yard. She wants to plant an orchard, a vineyard, a berry patch, an herb and flower garden, as well as a plot of vegetables. She is by nature of Jill of all trades, as Chesterton puts it, and finds relaxation in turning from her household tasks to weed the garden or milk the cow. She wants to know the animals individually, to give them names, even to make pets of them. On the family homestead, the birth of every calf is an event anxiously awaited by the entire family. Everyone knows the peculiarities of each animal, and this knowledge itself adds interest to the work. The homestead is on a human scale, giving rich possibilities for satisfying activity for every member of the family. If women think that agriculture means commercial farming with its crushing burden of specialized, impersonal work, they will take no interest in it and want no share in it. But if they see that the rural life movement means the small, diversified, family-centered farm, they will turn toward it enthusiastically and join the ranks of those who are moving forward to the land.
My sister in Nebraska recently told me SHE was interested in beekeeping, and took a county extension course in the spring. I admit I was a bit green with envy at her opportunity. She’s not doing it this year, but hoping to get approval to do hives next year. Her class was wonderful, with great experts in the field, who all admitted that the new problems bees face have forced the industry to almost start from scratch. All those beekeeping books explaining all the problems of bees, if they are not written in the past few years are very out-of-date and non-applicable.
I admit to picking up beekeeping books at library sales, like The Art and Adventure of Beekeeping by Ormond and Harry Aebi (1975) and Beekeeping by John Eckert and Frank Shaw (1960, updating Everett Phillips 1915 book on Beekeeping) and being inspired by the book Have More Plan by Ed and Carolyn Robinson, which has a chapter Our Little Sugar Factory on beekeeping.
Next on our reading list is The Bee People by Margaret Warner Morley, which is also downloadable here as a .pdf or Google Books.
And since I seem to have a one-track mind, I thought I’d mention the connection of St. Benedict, whose feast is July 11, with bees (Blessing of Bees was on his feast day). This 4Real thread has lots of ideas and links to other threads. I particularly love the connection with the Easter Vigil (see Alice Gunther’s Easter Vigil Notebook):
Study of Bees, Wax and Candles: This point is related to above. One phrase that is omitted in our current translation is the praise of the bees:
In the grace of this night, then, O Father, receive for an evening sacrifice this burning light, which holy Church renders unto Thee at the hand of her ministers in the solemn offering of this candle of wax, wrought by bees. Now we know the glory of this column which God’s bright flame kindles. Though divided into parts, yet it suffers no loss from the light which it imparts. For it is fed from the melted wax which the mother bee wrought for the substance of this precious lamp.
The Church has a great affinity for bees and wax. I’ve given a few links to see the discussion regarding this.
Where are the Bees? by Carol Zaleski (scroll down for article)
In a 1915 article, entitled “The Paschal Candle”, Joseph May makes an interesting note about the symbolism of the wax:
The pure wax,” says a standard liturgical writer, “symbolizes Our Lord’s humanity, which was stainless and sinless; and the light, His divinity, which always shone forth and illumined His every action.” Early in the sixth century, Ennodius, Bishop of Pavia, gave three reasons why a wax candle should be used for religious purposes. First, because the rush wick, having come out of pure water, was an emblem of purity; secondly, because the wax, being produced by virgin bees, typified chastity (both bees and fish were regarded as sexless); and, thirdly, because the flame suggested the love that descended from heaven. Durandus likens the wax to the body of Christ, the wick to His soul, the flame to His divine nature, and the actual burning of the candle to His lingering passion and death.
The Wax Candle in the Liturgy by Fr. John Bolen, history of the liturgical use of candles.
Address on Bees by Pope Pius XII.
Blessing of Bees on the Feast of St. Benedict
Blessing of Candles on Candlemas
I’ll admit, the buzz is everywhere! Our Nature Study Club did a day dedicated to bees, adding the touch of the Walney Nature Center having a few hives on the property. Even in Washington DC there are beekeepers galore! Join the buzz….
