VIDEO – BEE WISDOM BOOK by Sandira Belia
The original French book of Sandira Belia – La Déva des abeilles – is finally out in English!
Published by Northern Bee Books, it is available on most online bookshops.
You can order it directly here with free delivery worldwide.
This book is not only addressed to beekeepers, far from it. It is accessible to the wider audience and may be read at different levels of depth.
The passages sharing personal experiences are easy to read and bring the reader into my universe, drawing in lovers of the novel, biography, and living stories. The most technical passages will please environmentalists and naturalists, and the ‘Voice of the Bee’ sections will resonate with seekers of truth, interested in the awakening of consciousness and emerging sciences such as quantum mechanics. The paintings and illustrations are eye-catching for those sensitive to the visual arts.
Over the course of the book, the reader becomes immersed in the intimacy of the hive in a completely unaccustomed manner, one which goes far beyond the widely-repeated technical or environmental approaches of the apicultural literature. The Bee Deva understands the working of our planet from an energetic perspective which cannot be explained only through the intellect.
VIDEO – SOFT APIPUNCTURE – How to sting without Removing the Bee’s Stinger
Bee venom is a powerful medicine that can be used as an anti-inflammatory.
Most techniques using bee venom implies the death of the bee, when she loses her stinger.
In this video, I show you a simple way to avoid the death of the bee when using her venom.
VIDEO – BACK IN TREES – Creating tree cavities for honey bees
The first part of the video describes our experiment to make a hollow olive tree suitable for bees to live in.
The holes of the tree are filled with several layers of cob.
The recipe of the cob mixtures is explained in the video “The Cob Cortiço“.
The second part of the video shows our mistakes and eventual success in bringing a swarm inside the tree cavity…
VIDEO – Creating a Cork and Cob hive
One of our bee friendly hives: we have called it the ‘CobCortiço’. Made of cork, cob and wood, this hive with thick, breathable walls should strongly support the swarm to build up a strong and powerful core.
VIDEO – Let them Bee
A swarm flows out of the Sun Hive.
She settles in a “welcoming hive”: an old square box set with bars and smelling bees… very attractive for swarms.
Two weeks later, we transfer it into her new home: a Top Bar Hive.
VIDEO – Walking the swarm
A beautiful swarm ‘walked’ into her new home, a Top Bar Hive, located one kilometer away from where the swarm landed.
The cluster has been split into two parts and re-united
VIDEO – Out of the box
Many bee colonies living in managed hives are dying this year in our area.
Interestingly, we recently discovered several powerful colonies living in trees. A calling to support the rewilding of the bees…
VIDEO – Propolis salvage
Sandira used propolis to seal a groove in the back of her Top Bar Hive (between the body and the symbiotic floor).
VIDEO – Hive tool forging
During our BeeShip in Alentejo (Portugal) in autumn 2020, we forged our own hive tools.
We observed that the bees often react aggressively to the energy of conventional hive tools, made out of steel. Copper-based tools, forged with love, are much more bee-friendly. This video shows how we made them, under supervision of Gabriella, our ‘forge mistress’.
Gabriella offers regular workshops to forge your own singing bowls, all over Europe. It is a real initiatory journey and highly recommended.
VIDEO – Bee Bed
From October 25-27th 2019, our BeeShip team joined a gathering of Iberian bee lovers in La Donaira, Andalucia, Spain, where Jonathan Powell (from the Natural Beekeeping Trust) has been guiding a honey bee rewilding project since 2017.
Jonathan introduced us to “La Cama de Abejas”, the bee bed. This wooden bed gives one person the possibility to be in in close contact with the two bee colonies living under the bed, feeling their vibrations and hearing their sound. A ‘lid’ closes over the person to create darkness and a protected space.
The BeeShip team offered this experience to the whole group.
Annelieke’s experience: “Once darkness surrounded me and I connected to the bees, I felt like I was floating in a womb. My whole being was attuning to the soft vibrations of the bees. I became part of the hive. All sounds happening close by – a soft touch of the wooden structure, a caring step in the dry grass – reached me with an overwhelming loudness. Flashes came to me about how bees experience sound. I could have stayed there for hours…”
VIDEO – Mantis lunch at the hive
A praying mantis enjoys a bee delicacy at the entrance of the Sun Hive.