Virtuous Brood
In the end it’s all about the birds and the bees
By Brook Le Van

“It is not the science about nature that allows us to lift the veil of secrets inherent in nature; rather it will be the gradual perfection of our own ability to love, which permits us by and by to lift it.” —Walter Johannes Stein, educator, author, historian and physician

Myth busters may tell you that it was not Einstein after all who said, “If the bee disappears from the surface of the earth, humanity would have no more than four years to live.” Whether this is a bogus Albert-ism or not, the loss of bees has serious consequences. The bees certainly have an important role in and of themselves but they are only part of the picture. The great multiplier we fail to consider is that if bees are having trouble staying alive, so are the thousands of other insect species that perform the critical task of pollinating many of the crops we eat.

Bees are amazing teachers, their lessons many. Working with bees this past year has provided honey, yes. More importantly, though, the bees have helped me understand the power of harmonious collective action, the grace required to work together towards a common goal and the benefits of being adaptable to the flows of energies and resources in our surrounding ecosystem.

Day by day we are discovering more details about all the extraordinarily complex interconnections that permeate and make possible all of life on our planet. For example, this past year I’ve learned that bees have a unique immune system. The genome of the bee has been mapped, and what we have learned is that a bee is part of a super-organism. In order to understand the immune system of a bee we have to look at the whole hive.

Having developed an external behavioral immune system, bees have evolved over time to prioritize their vitality resources to, for instance, amp up their sense of smell to 40 times that of humans.  When it comes to protecting the hive from parasites such as the mite, they can smell the intruders, find, kill and remove them. Individually, all the bees possess this trait or a hypersensitive sense of smell; collectively, they work to build hive immunity.

These are the kinds of extraordinarily complex interconnections that permeate and make possible all of life on our planet. We are gaining knowledge and awareness of specifics but we are slower to change our thinking and embrace the power of the human “hive.” We are not changing our lifestyles in any significant way that will stop the degradation occurring in our ecosystems—a way of life that challenges our very survival.

We are in this situation because we have fallen out of love with nature. When we go to nature in reverence, when we pay attention to the great interdependent diversity that makes life tick, we come away alerted to a depth of knowing far beyond our waking eyes.  Love and respect for life then brings us home and tells us how we need to act in relationships with the soil, all life forms, and within our human communities.

The renewal we need in all systems, human and natural, will not begin with a major shift in government policy or in any major organizational shift. The shift will come about, just like it has in the local food movement and in the return to organic agriculture, through individuals acting on their own land, in their own communities and in their own backyards. It will be through collaboration and interdependence.

Love requires intimacy. In sustainable agriculture we speak of an “eyes to acres” relationship with the land. We can really only care for what we can see and touch, what we are intimate with.  Finding balance in our systems demonstrates our love of a place, of nature, and of those we truly care about.

In the end it really is about the birds and the bees. Bees are a vital life force, a hope we need to understand as we move ahead in search of solutions to our current dilemma. It will be our care and attention to the bees, and other life forms, and our love of our home places, that will prove to be our saving grace.