What the Bee taught me

By Lian Brook-Tyler

From as early as I can remember, I’ve done what I can to help our non-human friends, even the smallest… from moving worms from the pavement to physically fighting with the boys in the playground to decide the fate of the crane flies (known then as daddy long legs) they enjoyed pulling the legs and wings off.

As I’ve grown older, I’ve continued in the same way, whilst realising it makes no sense to most people. I remember how perplexed our cleaner was when I refused to kill the ants who had decided to re-route via our kitchen, or the ex-boyfriend who I begged not to kill the mosquitoes in our safari dwelling in Kenya.

Mostly though I do it quietly and without anyone objecting or even knowing.

When I was in the woods recently with my shamanic circle, there was a sudden, heavy downpour, afterwards we spent hours attempting to clear the site of the sweat lodge from water before we could use it, during a trip to the loo, I saw a bumble bee on the ground, completely drenched in water and unable to fly.

I placed the bee on top of a water butt, and dabbed it with tissue - it was incredible how much rain its fluffy body had absorbed. And in between going back and forth to help with the sweat, I kept returning to check on the bee, giving it another dab and blowing to help the drying process along. After about a half an hour, it was finally able to fly away.

A couple of days later, we were sitting in circle talking about the previous night’s medicine ceremony, and a bee was mentioned, I shared how I had kept being shown the connection between the Mushroom and Bee spirit, and then told the story of helping the bee to dry before the sweat.

My teacher, Jez Hughes, said “What a beautiful offering!”

I can’t even tell you how much it meant that he could see that, and what it allowed me to see.

We can all make offerings to the land, to Spirit, to the Beauty, in our own unique ways, in the ways that come as naturally to us as breathing, in ways that would kill us not to honour.

Others may not understand what we do, they might not agree with it, they might dismiss it.

And often it’s hard for us to see ourselves that the ways we make offerings matter.

But the Bee taught me that they do, they really, really do.


Art: Ruth Evans from Mary Reynolds’ excellent book We are the ARK

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