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Love them or hate them, bees are super important and during the month of June we will be learning all about bees from the folk law to the magical properties of honey and everything in between.
Bees have featured in folk law all over the world there is so much information from different cultures that i will just choose some of my favourite ones. other wise we will BEE here all day *face palm*.
Ancient Egyptian pharaohs used the honeybee as the royal symbol, during the period between 3000 b.c.e. and 350 b.c.e.
The Greeks believed that a baby whose lips were touched by a bee would become a great poet or speaker.
If a bee flies into your house, it means that someone is coming to visit. If you kill the bee, the visitor will bring you bad news.
Several deities are associated with bees and honey - Aphrodite, Vishnu, Pan, Cybele, and Ra, just to name a few.
If a bee lands on your hand, it means money is coming your way.
Bees are, in some cultures, associated with purity. This is because the worker bees that produce honey never mate.
Ever hear the phrase "busy as a bee"? Bees in a hive work repetitively a the same task all day long. A bee who goes out foraging may fly as many as ten miles a day, gathering pollen and nectar to bring back to the hive, over and over again. According to the National Honey Board, a bee may visit more than two million flowers to gather enough nectar to make just one pound of honey. Thus, bees are associated with hard work and diligence.
In Celtic mythology, the bee is a messenger between our world and the spirit realm. Bees are also associated with wisdom. Bees and honey also appear in the Norse eddas, often connected with Yggdrasil, the World Tree.
Ceri Norman, from the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, says that in folk magic, bees are often associated with health or wealth. In addition, their stings are being used by holistic practitioners to treat pain from both arthritis and rheumatism.
I've visited the The Witchcraft Museum in Boscastle a few times and on my first visit i brought a bag of bees for someone. The bag of bee charms, promises health, happiness and good fortune that features three ceramic bumblebees in a blue pouch–this is a vast improvement on the old folk charm it is based on, found in Dawlish, that sadly featured three dead bumblebees in the bag. Bees have long been associated with witches and witchcraft: one Lincolnshire witch was said to have a bumblebee as her familiar animal, another witch from Scotland allegedly poisoned a child in the form of a bee, and in Nova Scotia a male witch was accused of killing a cow by sending a white bumblebee to land on it." you can but them here.......Bees in a Bag - Museum of Witchcraft and Magic
How interesting is that!
As well as long, rich and varied folk law history of course bees are very important to the survival of the planet, they are master pollinators so help the growth of plants and crops, without these we could not feed our livestock or ourselves. They also produce honey which is a natural sweetener, has antibiotic properties and can be used in rituals and spell work. They also produce beeswax and royal jelly both of which are important ingredients in cosmetics, medicines and food.
So if you see a bee on the floor while you are out and about gently pick it up and place it on a flower, it may just be tired and need a little shot of nectar. If there are no flowers, something sugary will help or even just popping the bee out of harms way. Its important to look after our little pollinators.
Next weeks blog will be all about the magical uses of honey and bee products, so don't forget to pop by and here are some interesting blog posts i have found for further reading
now Buzz off and do some work!
Blessed Bee ~ Becci
