Waggle Dancing
Life's a bit hectic. I'm a multi-tasker: midwife, nanny, maidservant, cleaner, packer, builder, bouncer, undertaker, and one hell of an interpretive dancer. But I spend most of my time going on errands with the other girls. I often travel as much as six miles at a time to load up with water, resin, pollen or nectar.
So now you'll have guessed. I'm a bee. A girl bee – brown and busy, fluffy and flighty. Your poster girl for busyness, for teamwork, and maybe now for the apocalypse.
We've been colonising and humming along for about 150 million years. The alchemists of sweetness, we gather the essences of herbs and the souls of flowers to nurture our infants. And as we forage and hum, peep and probe, carousing amongst the perfumed rainbow hordes, our fleeting footfall scatters the love dust that ensures their infinite procreation. And it has been thus almost forever.
Until you came along. And, like the bears, you soon dared our fury to raid our precious hoards. You would run grimacing to your man hives to flaunt your sticky wounds and trade up the heavenly sweetness. Before long, you had observed our ways and persuaded us to permit ourselves to be husbanded. For some time we seemed to work well together, but lately you became greedy and mean and manipulative and fundamentally disrespectful.
I shall live for only six weeks, during which I shall produce one twelfth of a teaspoon of honey.
Sixty thousand of us can make enough nectar for a pound jar, after flying 55,000 miles and visiting two million flowers. Not forgetting all the incidental fruity business of course, that ensures so much food for you and your grubs. It is for this that you transport us, discombobulate us, poison us.
A shame you don't seem to understand the urgency of our waggle dance ….
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The Hindus poured honey over their deities, it being one of the five elixirs of immortality.
The pharaohs were tucked up ready for the afterlife with a lavish picnic that always included honey ( Interestingly, still edible when so rudely opened 5000 years later ).
They say a monkey took honey to Buddha in the wilderness.
John the Baptist is reputed to have lived in the wilderness on locusts and wild honey. We do not know if he had a favoured way of serving them up.
I know exactly how I like mine: Boil peeled and sliced carrots for fifteen minutes. In a pan, melt together equal amounts of butter, honey and brown sugar, adding the juice of half a lemon. Drop in the carrots, stir, and serve up with black pepper, chopped parsley and a modest stack of garlic bread.
More time? Top & tail & peel a couple of fistfuls of carrots and parsnips; halve and quarter lengthways. Whisk together olive oil, wholegrain mustard and lashings of honey; coat the veg, and roast for thirty minutes in a hot oven.
But by far the best way is the simplest, although it does require a degree of re-location - to the source of probably the best honey in the world. First, settle down outside a small Greek island cafe. When the waiter arrives, smile, and try casually ”Giaourti kai meli kai karydia. Parakalo”. Now turn your face to the sun, breathe deep on warm air heady with the rich aroma of wild herbs, and think idly upon the gods of old, those avid consumers of ambrosia. After approximately ten Greek minutes, allow your reverie to gently embrace the dish that has been placed before you .. thick, creamy Greek yoghurt, drizzled with local honey, and a scattering of crushed walnuts. Whisper hoarsely to the smiling waiter “Efcharisto”. Now slowly, indolently, take up your spoon and gently channel the spirit of Zeus.
There was always a pause, a sigh, often a pained look between my parents whenever the matter of the treacle lion arose at the table.
“ What's the matter with the lion?”
“ He's asleep. Come along now - eat up your pancake, and we can go to the forest.”
“ What are all those flies doing?”
“ They're bees. Now hurry up or we'll miss the bus.”
“ But what are they doing to the lion?”
“They're just saying hello. Come on, time to change your shoes.”
My reading ability was steadily burgeoning around this time, and tabletop food packaging was obsessively studied.
“O..uooutt ..oo..ofthe....ssst..str..ogg..c.cam...fff..froth..sw..” (sigh) nose wrinkles, deep inbreath .. “What does that mean? What's treacle made of? What's the matter with him? Why is he on the treacle? ”
After a while, the tin no longer featured at table, Lyle’s Golden Syrup thereafter decanted to a clear glass jar. But my dad used the empty tins in the shed for nuts and screws and bits of string, so the enigmatic scenario continued to taunt me when I shadowed him on his endless manly engineering missions.
Even when I was later directed to the biblical reference in the Book of Samuel, I remained – though now silently – perplexed.
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Dear Auntie Gwen always smelt of horses, old leather and ancient dogs, but I looked forward to our visits for two reasons. Firstly, she lived near the sea, and secondly, at the end of a long and cabbagey garden she had a couple of beehives. I always nagged to go there, and was occasionally allowed to tag along behind the eccentric booted and gauntleted figure in an old veiled straw hat, to watch the proceedings from a safe distance. Once, swathed in old net curtains, I crept close enough to bask in the buzzy thrill and the indescribable musky mustiness of it all. I always went home clutching my very own sticky jar of bee magic, wrapped in muslin.
Ever after, bees have inspired love, respect and considerable soppiness in me. Having rescued and revived so many from the miscellaneous plights and predicaments to which they are prone, I like to think a small jar of special ambrosia has been reserved for me in heaven, along with a celebrity encounter with the Treacle Lion.
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“Unique among all God's creatures, only the honeybee improves the environment and preys not on any other species.” Royden Brown