In this episode, our host Gaby Azorsky speaks with Ariella Daly. This is part one of a two part series! 

Ariella is a beekeeper and teacher. She is a voice in the wave of bee people devoted to the preservation of the bee and pollinators in their own sovereignty. Here because she believes in the wild, divine power of nature as both teacher and healer.  For the last 14 years, she has been a devoted student of the bee, bee animism, womb wisdom, and history and folklore around bees and bee priestesses of Ancient Greece. Ariella’s approach to beekeeping falls under the labels of natural and bee-centric beekeeping. She is primarily interested in the relationship between beekeeper and bees, what we can learn from the hive as a colony and what we can offer to the bees, both in a single hive and as a species. 

From Ariella’s instagram: 

Hymenoptera. The veil winged. She who carries souls between the worlds. Descended from stars. Born of bull. Born of lion. Melissae: the bee nymph and Mistress to Python.

The bond between bee and woman goes as far back as recorded history. She, of the in between places.

When the Melissae nymphs recused infant Zeus from his all-consuming father, they hid him away in a cave and raised him on sweet ambrosia: honey and milk.

When bees came to earth they arrived in a long comet of starts. Seven of them remain to this day in the heavens. The seven Bees. The seven sisters. The Pleiades. When the tiny cluster of stars rise in the spring, honey bees cover the earth and bounty returns to the land.

They say the first brewer was a woman and she brewed mead from her bees who told her the secrets of their intoxicating elixir.

The great Greek prophetess was of the bee. Most revered oracles of the west, their era spanning centuries. The priestesses of Delphi were called Melissae, meaning bee, and the Pythia offering prophecy, was called the Delphic Bee.

The bee offers the hum of life. The sound of creation. She, lover to flower and sunlight. Beloved companion of darkness. She who dances through the dim golden halls of her honeycomb cathedral.

In our conversation today, we talk about magick, animism, imagination, ancient cultures and mythology, natural beekeeping, the hive, how they sound and feel and look, how we listen and relate, swarms, sovereignty, the bees and the flowers, eros, the beloved, the rhythms of beekeeping, and dreams. 

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Connect ~

With our guest Ariella | Website and IG @beekeepinginskirts

With her free lecture and other lectures, Messengers of Love 

With our host Gaby Azorsky | Website and IG @gaby.azorsky

With Spiral Deeper | Website and IG @spiral.deeper

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Music by Gaby’s incredible partner, Connor Hayes.

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