8/15/09 The Melissae Ensemble in full costume gather before "An Evening in Honor of the Sacred Honey Bee", altar for the honey bees

West Marin Citizen article 08/13/09

AN EVENING IN HONOR OF THE SACRED HONEYBEE

Please join us this Saturday in Pt. Reyes Station at the Dance Palace Community Center, 7 pm

Dancing, celebration of the honey bee, Bulgarian bee rituals and music! Learn about CCD (Colony Collapse Disorder) and ways you can help the honey bees.

Film trailer: "Vanishing of the Honey Bee" , short talk by Marguerite Rigoglioso PhD on the bee priestess in the ancient Mediterranean world, Bulgarian singing and live music by the Melissae Ensemble , gaida (Bulgarian bagpipes) and tupan (Bulgarian drum) , hammered dulcimer, violin, by Karina Guggenheim, Jana Mariposa, Kate Price and others. Circle and spiral dancing for all. Blessing of the skeps.
Honey vanilla ice cream provided, courtesy of Haagen-Dazs Ice Cream! (www.helpthehoneybees.com)
produced by Nectar of the Moon Productions, Barbara "bee" Framm, Director

White House Has First Honey Harvest

Charlie Brandts, a White House carpenter as well as beekeeper, is shown here collecting the first batch of honey from the beehives on the South Lawn of the White House. The White House chefs have said they are looking forward to using produce from the White House garden and the honey made by the official White House bees. We know absolutely nothing about beekeeping, other than what we gleaned from the indie film, Ulee's Gold, but we think the fact that Charlie isn't wearing gloves means he is very experienced at beekeeping (novices always have to wear gloves). In any event, we wouldn't get near a beehive without a full hazmat suit.

(Photo: Lawrence Jackson, White House)

Tags: white-house-garden | white-house-bees | organic-honey | bees

Posted on July 9, 2009

Marguerite Rigoglioso, speaking on "The relationship between bees and ancient Mediterranean priestesses" for Evening in Honor of the Sacred Honey Bee

Photo by Joe Burull
Marguerite Rigoglioso [pronounced
REGAL-yo-zo], Ph.D., is a member of the faculties of Dominican University of California, the California Institute of Integral Studies, and the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, where she teaches courses on women and religion. Her pioneering research on female deities and women’s religious leadership in the ancient Mediterranean world and beyond has appeared in various anthologies and journals, including Feminist Theology, The Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, Societies of Peace, She Is Everywhere, Trivia, and the Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, where her paper on the cult of Demeter and Persephone in Sicily received an honorable mention for the New Scholar Award. She is also the editor of Where to Publish Articles on Women’s Studies, Feminist Religious Studies, and Feminist/Womanist Topics.
http://cultofdivinebirth.homestead.com/

Fairmont Hotel in Washington D.C. checks in 105,000 honey bees

Cross-pollination of culinary benefits and environmentalism is sweet as honey.

By Stephanie Rogers

Fri, May 22 2009 at 1:29 PM EST

Read more: ANIMALS, BUSINESS

Photo: Todd Huffman/Flickr

The Fairmont Hotel in Washington, D.C., is abuzz with 105,000 new guests: Italian honeybees that have settled into their new home in hives atop the hotel’s roof. The bees will enhance the hotel’s culinary program by providing honey and pollinating the fresh herbs and edible flowers in the Fairmont’s interior courtyard garden.

Executive Sous Chef Ian Bens and Executive Pastry Chef Aron Weber, who share the responsibility of chief beekeeper, expect to retrieve 300 pounds of honey within in the first year. The honey collected from the Fairmont hives will be used in soups, salad dressings, pastries, ice cream and other offerings at Juniper, the hotel’s restaurant.

Aside from beewitching guests with sweet treats, the Fairmont Hotel’s choice to put hives on the rooftop helps support bee populations, which have suffered in recent years from colony collapse disorder and other problems.

"Many pollinating bees have disappeared due to habitat loss and pollution. Creating these new hives helps keep the bee population healthy and helps to ensure that plants are pollinated, which is also essential for insects, birds and animals to survive. Eventually, The Fairmont hopes to use the honeycomb to create candles, soaps and even lip balm”, states Executive Sous Chef and Bee Keeper Ian Bens.

Here’s hoping the bees enjoy a relaxing yet productive stay at the Fairmont, and that this unbeelievably cool trend spreads to other hotels across the nation.

AN EVENING IN HONOR OF THE SACRED HONEYBEE

If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area please join for this very special, unique, and wonderful night of surprises--from traditional Bulgarian bee rituals, a fascinating talk by Marguerite Rigoglioso PhD on "The Bee and its Relationship to the Goddess and the Graeco-Roman Priestesshoods", a trailer of the new film "Return of the Honeybee", to Bulgarian circle dance with live music provided by artists and musicians Karina Guggenheim, Jana Mariposa, and the Melissae Ensemble of singers. Here follows a little about our musical presenters.

Jana (Jana Mariposa) and Karina (Karen Guggenheim) met in a Balkan dance line 35 years ago. There was an instant, yet unspoken, recognition between them of the transformative power of this ancient music and dance. Thus began their inquiry into the cultures from which this music came.The intricacies and complexities of the rhythms and dance steps captured their creative spirits and led them deeper still into their studies of the Balkan cultures. Bulgarian culture soon became their primary focus. Through a series of dreams, the two Sin Twisters understood that they were being called upon to play two of the most ancient ritual instruments known historically. Gaida (bagpipe), which Karina plays and tupan (2-headed drum), which Jana plays were traditionally played only by men.
In order to grasp the multi-dimensional aspects of this music and culture, they found it essential to travel to Bulgaria and live among the people and upon the land from which this music emanated. In 1983, Karina bought a one-way ticket to Bulgaria and lived there for 18 months. She graduated from the choreography school in Plovdiv and also studied with the local gaida masters. Jana came over for several months and studied alongside her.
Since that time, Jana and Karina have conducted workshops in California, the northwest, the mid-west, and at various west coast camps including Balkan Music and Dance Camp, Lark in the Morning Camp, Sweet's Mill Art Institute, and at the conference centers of IONS and the Ecological Farming Conference and New College of California in Santa Rosa.
In 2003, Jana bought a one-way ticket to Greece and lived on Naxos Island for 13 months, where she gratefully participated in ongoing cultural festivals and rituals, performed with her friend Souzana at local events, and studied dance at the Dora Stratou Theater in Athens. She returned to Greece in 2007 for a 6-week stay, which included participation in the Pagan Apokries/Carnival rituals in Northern Macedonia.
In 2005, The Institute of Archeomythology invited Jana and Karina to be the guest musicians for a 2-week tour of village rituals in Bulgaria. The tour included visits to Goddess worshiping archaeological sites and museum exhibitions featuring artifacts from these sacred sites.

The Bulgarians were deeply honored by Jana and Karina’s devotion to their culture and by their passion for keeping the old ways alive . It was certainly a mutual honoring.
The ancient wisdom encoded in the rituals, festivals, music, and dance is very relevant to our current times and challenges. The communal joy that is generated from these activities is necessary for the health of the community, and is conspicuously absent from much of western culture. Encoded in traditional dance is a sense of belonging that is an essential human need and desire.
Through their re-creation of traditional rituals throughout the calendar year, Jana and Karina aspire to reawaken a connection to and reverence for nature, natural cycles, and the World Family.

Posted by "Bee" Urania at 11:15 PM 0 comments