A little while back, I was part of the terrific Voices of Nature series hosted by gifted teacher and leader Toby Herzlich. One of my biomimicry friends (thank you, S!) asked a question that I’ve carried with me these past weeks – what is it that the bees are teaching me in this moment?

There’s not much to do with bees in the wintertime – in fact, the best thing to do is to leave them alone. They are snuggled up in the hive for winter, living off of honey stores until the first blooms of spring finally arrive.

And that’s the thing. A worker bee lives about six weeks in the summer, as much as six months in winter – but in either season, life is short. She works to bring in nectar, to develop it into honey, to tend the young, to build up the structure of the hive, to defend it from invaders… and almost none of this effort will benefit her directly, or even her own generation of hive mates. Today’s honey nourishes tomorrow’s bees.

And yet she persists in her work.

Dear ones, we too are living in the structures built by our forebears, and we too are being fed by creations of the past.

Whether teaching or parenting or investing or praying, we may not see the ultimate fruits of our labor. But the question for us is the same as for the hive:

What are we creating today that will help tomorrow to flourish?