Bee Yard Etiquette

Rev. Meg Barnhouse

June 17, 2012

In Sue Monk Kidd’s The Secret Life of Bees, the beekeeper tells her apprentice “the world is really one big bee yard, and the same rules work fine in both places: Don’t be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don’t be an idiot; wear long sleeves and long pants. Don’t swat. Don’t even think about swatting.” Here’s how we’re going to keep making honey over the summer…

In an article in Paste magazine by Kay Gibbons, one of my favorite Southern writers, she said this: Being a white Southern writer “is a hazardous inheritance that too often reassures us that the world is listening with intent and need for our messages, when it should be our reminder that we’re generally hollering entertainment from the bottom of a well, and getting it right requires sending up water, some force of living that people can use to treat one another better.” I’m going to try to send up some water today that people can use to treat one another better. (Feb/March 2006, Paste : Signs of life in music, film and culture p. 74) My text is from another Southern writer, Sue Monk Kidd, from her book “The Secret Life of Bees.”

It’s 1964 in the South. A sixteen year old white girl named Lily runs away from her abusive father accompanied by Rosaleen, a black woman who helped Lily’s father raise her from the age of four after Lily’s mother was shot — maybe by Lily, maybe by the father. One of the only things Lily has of her mother’s is a piece of paper with a picture of a black Madonna on it. The words “Tiburon, South Carolina” are printed on the paper, so Lily and Rosaleen head for Tiburon. There they find out that the picture is a label from a jar of honey made by a beekeeper named August, who lives in a pink house with her sisters, May and June. The sisters take in the runaways.

Lily is talking:

“I hadn’t been out to the hives before, so to start off [August] gave me a lesson in what she called ‘bee yard etiquette.’ She reminded me that the world was really one big bee yard, and the same rules worked fine in both places: Don’t be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don’t be an idiot; wear long sleeves and long pants. Don’t swat. Don’t even think about swatting. If you feel angry, whistle. Anger agitates, while whistling melts a bee’s temper. Act like you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t. Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved.” [p. 92]

I think of the church as a hive sometimes. We have all kinds of work to do to make the honey of spiritual growth, intellectual exploration and right relationship. Compassion, love, challenge, clarity. Those things are so sweet, and they take so much effort. In a hive of bees, everyone has a job. Wax making, honey production, the gathering of nectar which pollinates our crops and flowers, the queen who lays all the eggs. There are even nurse bees who feed the babies.

There is a beekeeping project in inner city Chicago. One visitor wrote this: “I stood just a few feet from the hives as the young men jiggled the bees from the supers and extracted the honey. The air around me sizzled. I stood as still as I could, willing myself not to flinch….

Terror and awe were one as I stood in the eye of the swarm, perfectly still. The term “ecstasy” makes some uneasy because of hallucinogenic and sexual connotations. But its root word exstasis means to stand out of yourself. When the air sizzled, it was easy to forget myself, to slip out of my own worries and to realize that I was a small, vulnerable part of something much larger than myself.

It was relief, if only for a few moments. It was like remembering to inhale deeply after a series of shallow breaths. After being so focused on the bees, I could see everything else more clearly. Is this part of the gift the bees give to their keepers Ñ an opportunity to come out of themselves, to turn away from what they’ve done and to remember what they could be? To be, if nothing else, ecstatic.

As I watched the beekeepers work, they would periodically break off small bits of honeycomb that grew along the rims of the supers. After checking for bees, they’d suck they honey from the comb. ‘We do this for energy,’ Micheal Thompson said, ‘But we also do it to remember why we are here.’ I’d read in The Secret Life of Bees that I should continually send love toward the bees and exorcise their own fears. I tried to do these things, but still, I got stung. …

…When I was sitting on the concrete jotting down notes, a bee landed on my knee and dug in.

‘It hurts,’ I said, cringing, as a beekeeper gently brushed the dying bee off of my leg. ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘We try to avoid it.’ ” Jenny Schroedel “Eye of the Swarm “Boundless “Webzine

No one can be in community for long without doing the work, tasting the sweetness, and feeling the sting. I used to be scared of bees. I almost jumped out of a moving car when I was a child because of a bee on the window. I still remember a black buzzing splotch on the window, feeling the terror rise, grabbing the door handle in a panic, just wanting to get away from that buzzing threat. How a sting could have been worse than hitting the pavement at 60 mph, I don’t know. That’s not how panic thinks.

The dread of being stung and outrage at having been stung can make us flail around in community when flailing around is the worst choice we could make. August the beekeeper said “: Don’t be afraid, as no life-loving bee wants to sting you. Still, don’t be an idiot; wear long sleeves and long pants. Don’t swat. Don’t even think about swatting. If you feel angry, whistle. Anger agitates, while whistling melts a bee’s temper. Act like you know what you’re doing, even if you don’t. Above all, send the bees love. Every little thing wants to be loved.”

Don’t be afraid. Most people don’t want to sting you. Some do sting, because they weren’t thinking, or because they were moving too fast, or because they were in pain, or scared. Still, don’t be an idiot. Know that people will sometimes sting, so protect yourself reasonably. If someone is always getting on your last nerve, perhaps it’s because you are wearing your last nerve a little too close to the surface. Wear long sleeves and long pants. Wear a hat. Don’t swat.

Here’s what I take “don’t swat” to mean. If you are in a situation where things are getting scary, try to stand still. Imagine that everyone involved thinks they are doing the right thing, that they have good intentions, or that they soon will. Don’t strike out at one another.

On a web site called “What everyone needs to know about bee stings,” I read: “Bee stings are a normal part of life in the country and a normal part of working with bees. Many people enjoy bees and consider the occasional sting to be the price we pay for the pleasure of their company, for having them pollinate our food crops and for providing us with honey.” This is true about community too. In one that is a good fit for us, the occasional sting is the price we pay for the pleasure of one another’s company.

“Removing the stinger as quickly as possible reduces the amount of the venom injected and reduces the effects.” Yes. When we hold onto the stinger, when we re play the incident in our mind, it gives it more time to inject venom into your system. I can’t think of one healthy reason to let that happen. “Stay calm. Most of the ill effects from normal stinging incidents come from panic in the person being stung and bystanders. Panic and anxiety multiplies the pain, and can result in serious secondary accidents. Panic by the person stung or those around him/her can produce a systemic reaction in itself.” Yes again. Most ill effects of someone saying something hurtful to us or leaving us out of something or ignoring us come from the thoughts we have about what happened. If we can stay calm and interpret what happened in its best possible light, less harm will be done to everyone involved.

This church has been through a lot of change in the past three years. There was pain and sorrow, anger, nobility, difficult conversations, change, joy, renewal…. You all are an amazing group of people, not only surviving but now thriving and moving into the future with hope and peace. That takes intention and hard work, and it demands a lot from everyone. I know you are proud of this congregation. I hope you will keep your heads as you move into the next chapter of your story. It is becoming a good story to tell already, and I imagine it will continue to be. Your job is to stay hospitable to all of the people who want to come be part of what this group is all about. If you feel angry, whistle. And send out love, because every little thing wants to be loved.

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