The dancing bee is a forager with great knowledge. She begins moving in the darkness of the hives, in straight lines, in circles. Her sisters reach out to her, sensing her moves with their antenna; she shows them which route to follow to reach the source, the sweet nectar. 

Her dance is choreographed by the celestial directions of the moving sun and by elders who once taught her these movements so she can take this ritual ahead and pass it onto the next generation.

The hive bees are meant to dance, even the ones that are raised in harsh conditions. It’s a behaviour encoded in their genes. However, if they lack the opportunity to learn socially, they would misinterpret the direction, and what they found would be truly lost.

What is the purpose of a story if not to share some sort of knowledge? What makes a culture? Is it the stories, the rituals, or the moments in which we reach out and hold each other’s world within our own?

Around a hundred million years before the first human was awakened to reality, the bees were already collecting the nectar with their sisters. A culture of its own guided by mother’s pheromones. 

Our culture is born from these mothers, whose guidance and rhythms make the food multiply. We have taken the honey bees to the part of the world where they couldn’t fly, and yet the wild bees too have their stories written within our inner landscapes. From the first drop of our mother’s milk, they have been nourishing our mind, body and spirit.

The male solitary bees sleep on flowers waiting for a mate to visit; the female, once fertilised, takes her cues by observing others and selecting nesting sites on the ground, leaves, or holes. She fills it with pollen for larves to feed on. Once the work is done, she closes the nest, and in the next spring, along with the flowers, her offspring emerge to continue the same cycle.

We too are born cycles, a sequence of events shaping our fragile bodies and the complex systems that make us, us. In our way of knowing the world, we will hold on to the knowledge that is innate to us and pass it onto the next generation.

However, many species of solitary bees emerge to follow the scent of a few particular flowers and due to disappearing biodiversity, their rhythms are interrupted. Where to sleep and fly now is a difficult question for them.

Honeybees are kept for their honey and bumblebees for pollinating the crop systems. But the solitary bees are left to deal with the warming world; perhaps for once they are not in solitude but alone.

To bring a native plant to our window is an act of rewilding our spirit. A promise of hope, food, even a home for them and for us—a doorway to enter the great family of beings. 

I too was raised with a sister and in my home, females often buzz together. We had our dances; we still do and I can’t remember what all I learnt from her, apart from imitating her beautiful handwriting. As the spring arrives, I have promised myself, to widen my circle of sisterhood, to invite the bees to my window. 

If I imagine a world where climate change didn’t exist, human culture would still be entwined with the culture of nature. 

Even in the warming world, we could still watch the flowers bloom and hold a space for the bees in our inner world; perhaps these stories would be shared in the hives or emerge from one generation to another. could this be our gift? to observe two cultures growing in delight?

Words by Priyanka Singh Parihar,

Founder and Editor-in-Chief