LESSONS IN POLLINATION

In honor of National Honeybee Day (August 17), here are a few observations I’ve gathered from beekeeping.

• On Intentionality. Bees don’t need a lot of care – in fact, you can mess things up by bothering them too much, or by rushing around. Each encounter needs to have a simple plan, light enough to be adaptable but clear enough to have a purpose.
• On Patience. It’s impossible to be a beekeeper (or a parent, or a human) and to think it’s all up to you. Want to harvest honey in the rain? Want the queen to lay more eggs? Want to check on your bees mid-blizzard? It’s not up to you. You have to wait until the time is right.
• On Serendipity. The great thing about intentionality is that it allows for maximum serendipity. My little niece got to see the queen bee the very first time she saw a hive, because our light-and-easy plan allowed for a whole lotta luck. Leave a little room for luck.
• On Wonder. Sometimes I think I’ve had a productive week – read a hundred earnings reports, led a dozen meetings, made some important decisions – and then I see that during that same week, the bees have raised 500 new babies, or filled a whole super with honey. Wow. Just wow.
• On Gratitude. One of my favorite practices is to take an object – a book, a cup, a flower – and spiral outward into all the people and things that had to connect for that object to come into being. With a spoonful of honey, this practice is especially beautiful. A teaspoon of honey is the equivalent of the life’s work of a dozen bees, flying almost a thousand miles and visiting over 30,000 flowers.

Stop. Read that last part again. Close your eyes. Picture it.

Dear friends, let’s take a spoonful of honey today and consider all those bees, all those flights, all those flowers.

Let’s let our gratitude spill over into love.