Bees…..Good for Mental Health! Really!!!!!

Bees…..Good for Mental Health! Really!!!!!

It’s funny you know. It seems that things are moving along beautifully, things are falling into place, overcoming obstacles and Bam! Mental health issues come on to disrupt everything you’re trying to achieve.

This seems to be my lot in life lately. Enjoying the excitement of getting to restart my bees, connecting with all of my customers wanting honey. It all seemed to be going so smoothly;  too smoothly. Aaaahhhhhh mental health – it sucks! It rears its ugly head screaming for attention demanding you give to it now or else your world will fall to pieces. So, you attend to it.

You have to be careful though. You give it the wrong attention you enable and if you give it the right attention you can experience push back. Anxiety, Stress, Fear, Elation, Anger, Insecurity, all waiting in the wings to pounce like Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The chaos alone makes one weary and wanting to give up.

That’s what I marvel about the honeybees. Collectively they are working mindfully in concert to move forward in spite of every disaster that can possibly occur barring acute collapse of the entire hive. They work as a unit supporting each other to manage all the details to make a hive thrive. Mindful attention to each other’s needs is a constant action the bees perform. They seem to have a true understanding that the mental health of the hive is equally as important as the tasks performed each day.  They celebrate. They produce. They protect! They dance! They rebuild over and over.

When you look at the honeycomb where bees have built, one behavior they practice is they tear down the damage completely and replace it with brand new honeycomb. They do not modify the damage or make a patch. The bees completely remove the damaged comb and rebuild a pristine structure ready to raise healthy young and produce honey. They don’t spend their lives singling out the weaknesses in the nest. They nurture and protect giving all they have until the bee expires. Honeybees are not quitters.

We are easily moved by medical illness and take swift action to attend to the suffering but we neglect those struggling with mental health. 

I have no excuse for my own failure to attend to mental health issues as they arise. I see so many heartfelt attempts to get our society on track only to be saddened by the trail of damage we have left behind over the years among our fellow man. I can do better, WE can do better collectively. We don’t need a professional telling us what we need all the time. If we are mindful of each other exercising empathy and compassion I can only imagine where we could really be as a society. In the meantime I have my own head to clear and my own house to “clean” so I am in no  position to judge. I do however have the power to love and to seek ways to rebuild just like my busy little friends in the hive. Self care is in order otherwise I will be rendered useless to anyone. Self care, empathy and determination to make new for healthy living.

Mental health is hateful. It does not like anybody and it takes no prisoners, it only seeks to destroy completely. Let’s deploy the mindset of the honeybee and rebuild. Let’s help each other completing, not competing all the time. We need each other or our hive collapses.