The Beauty of Beekeeping

The Beauty of Beekeeping

Photograph by Catherine de Medici Jaffee

Catherine de Medici Jaffee has spent the past three years living in eastern Turkey, where she works to bridge regional traditions with the growing demand for ethically produced honey. Joined by videographer Claire Bangser and funded by National Geographic, Jaffee started the world’s first honey-tasting, trekking, and artisanal honey products company. Led and inspired by village-based rural women, the effort supports local communities and revives struggling bee populations.

“With beekeeping, everything happens in seasons and cycles. Fall is the time for honey and harvests and either moving the bees to lower ground or indoors from the harsh impending winter. The summer days are long. We wake up with the bees and sleep with them all night to protect them from bears and thieves. The fall is the time to restrengthen the hives, restore the lost queens and the weak swarms, and prepare for the revitalizing rest that is winter. Every natural close on the Anatolian steppes is actually just the preparation for a new beginning to come.

“One day, I saw an enormous swarm of bees exit the hive, as they generally do in early summer. This swarm was huge. They landed on the side of one of the village homes, and our program beekeeping ladies (Birsen Baki, pictured above) all emerged with pots and pans and spoons and followed them around the home, clacking and rattling their plates. The bees circled the house three times and then reentered the hive as if nothing had ever happened. It was a dance of bees and women unlike anything I had ever seen. Once the bees settled back into their hive, the women responded to my shocked expression: ‘See, we told you the pots and pans would work.’

“What I have learned from many long hours working with beekeepers is that we should be trying to build better businesses and change the way that our human societies operate. We measure the health of a society by how many people own cars and how many new malls have been built. We build, we grow, and we destroy. Bees aren’t that way. The world is more beautiful—plants are pollenized, local ecosystems thrive—because a bee was there. If we could just shape the way we build businesses, the way we travel, and the way we interact with each other to be a fraction as poignant, we will all have a much stronger chance at survival.”