Honey, blackberries and peaches, strawberries and grapes, cucumbers, radishes, lettuce, kale, and eggplant, almond butters and milk. Gratitude. Even for those mindful sips of our coffee, before or after a practice, another crop like many that has travelled the global foodways of mass production to our groceries, local restaurants and coffee shops. Gratitude, with each sip, or bite for the work of Apis Mellifura, the European Honey Bee doing the essential work of pollination of these crops in the world of global agricultural systems spreading the male gametes of flowers’ pollen here and there, to the pistils of other flowering plants – fertilization. Honey bees, banded in yellow and black, the quintessential icon of “bee” created by our media, movies and stories, reinforced by our own experiences of sightings, soundings and stings (yes, they do die in the act of stinging as they work to protect their community), busily humming away as they gather the nectar, and spread the pollen of flowers creating honey for community of the hive.
Adaptable beings who have even learned to communicate clearly ‘where lies the nectar’ through moving of body through sharing a “waggle dance” showing the other female worker bees of the hive the direction and distance to flowers rich in nectar and pollen so that they may manifest the work of their community, their species in the world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7ijI-g4jHg – the Waggle Dance.
Gratitude for the honey siphoned from the hives of the honeybee, and the many crops they pollinate brought to our tables on Turtle Island (N.Am).
