Hive product: Serenity

[doodlemaier]

These are the last of the warm days and Autumn is upon us in the mid-atlantic. I noticed yesterday in the public gardens where I walk frequently, collaring my bees, there were quite a few foragers in the hardy flowers (joe pye, some flavor of Eupatorium best I can tell) that had been mostly ignored by honey bees throughout the Summer's tenure. Without observing much blooming on the highways and empty lots, it's hard for me to determine whether there's currently a flow accompanied by a shift in the dispersion of nectar and pollen bearing plants or whether we're in a dearth that's driving the foraging bees farther afield. Evidence of a small flow the last few mornings and evenings has been the increase of activity at the entrances of both colonies in the Easter Apiary and it's been pretty consistent as the days become shorter and the nights get chilly. I was showing the hives to a guest the other evening while the bees were very active. I mentioned how I loved watching them come and go from the hives; how their fluid traces in the air and the way they concentrated and dispersed from the entrance causing the brain to switch from the left hemisphere-driven, alpha waves of normal, everyday consciousness to a right hemisphere, beta wave, trance-like state of mind. My guest laughed and admitted that watching the bees felt to him like taking Dilaudid. I can and often do spend hours perched in front of the hives watching what I've come to refer to a "BTV". The gentle motion of the bees coming and going seems to massage the optic nerve in a similar fashion to the way the flickering light from the television lulls us into a relaxing and highly receptive mental state. A fireplace, a fish tank, or falling snow has the same effect and, like a busy beehive (and most unlike the television), these experiences offer no suggestions!

"The more time we spend choosing to run the deep inner peace circuitry of our right hemispheres the more peace we will project into the world and the more peaceful our planet will be."
Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, Neuroanatomist