Honeybees!
Don’t you adore the new Trollbeads Honey Bee Spacers?! I am so enjoying them, and am using them on everything from Fantasy Necklaces and bangles to chain bracelets and even the new Ring of Change. Just one Bee at the bottom of a fantasy necklace beautifully balances a bead on its wings, for a complete design in a snap. A pair of bees frame a bead for a simple but dramatic bangle. It’s an instant design maker with fabulous flair.
Full disclosure demands that I admit that I’ve always had a soft spot for Bees. I’ve always identified them as being a special totem animal to me… Industrious, useful, working for the good of their family and community, and in harmony with nature… these are creatures that are inspiring and well worth emulating. Historically virtually every culture has revered bees as being a very magical and special part of nature. The Kalahari believed that the bee played a key role in the creation of the first human. The bowstring of the Hindu god Kamadeva is said to be made of bees.
Bees figured prominently in the myths of the ancient Greeks, with several gods being affiliated with the tiny creatures. Apollo, the sun god, is said to have acquired his powers from the Thriae, a trinity of bee goddesses that were far more ancient than the familiar pantheon of Greek gods. Among the later, classical Greek gods Aristaeus was the god of beekeepers. In ancient Egyptian mythology the tears of the god Ra are said to have become bees. These are only a few examples of the importance of bees in ancient and indigenous cultures… they have been revered from the beginning of humanity.
Today we read almost daily of the plight of the bee. With our increasingly industrialized farming techniques, bees have become a commodity and a cog in the farming machine. Their hives are transported from one side of the continent to the other, rushed from one crop pollination to another. The plants they hover over are sprayed with complex fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides, that impact not only on their immediate health, but modify their DNA to change the way generations of future bees function. Bees are under physical and biological stresses that we are just beginning to understand – and they need our support in order to survive. Imagine our world without bees… Consider the profound impact on our farms, our gardens, our wild places.
These remarkable little creatures have been quietly working in the background for millennia, making our world a better place. Perhaps it is time that we saw them with some of the reverence that was paid to them by ancient peoples.
Clockwise from clasp: “Large Flower Lock”, “Copper Spacer”, “Unique Glass”, “Translucent Flower”, “Unique Glass”, “Cherry Blossom”, “Unique Glass”, “Black Gold”, “Tigers Eye”, “Unique Glass”, “Honey Bee Spacer”, “Diamond Bead, Black”, “Honey Bee Spacer”, “Unique Glass”, “Unique Amber”, “Unique Glass”, “Unique Glass”, “Blossom Bead”, “Golden Quartz”, “Unique Glass”, “Unique Glass”, “Copper Spacer”.
C.
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