World Bee Day

Happy World Bee Day!! In May 2010 a swarm of honey bees decided to build their new home in the compost bin of our California home. This felt quite auspicious because:

1. In August of 2009 I had joined a local group of beekeepers with the intention to have a hive.
2. The day the bees arrived was a Friday, like today, which is attributed to Venus/Aphrodite.

Backwards Beekeepers

The gift of this swarm of winged alchemists, my code word for the honey bees, felt so very auspicious, as if I had been given a nod by the divine that the path I was intending to journey was correct. Since I had found my bee guru, Kirk Anderson in August, with the intention to eventually start a hive, the arrival of this little group of very sweet, friendly honey bees was a joyful surprise.

I contacted John Lyons, one of the expert bee mentors in the bee club, who came to help us transfer the bees from the compost bin to a temporary nuc box. Read and see pictures of that event following this link or follow the jump below titled Bee Happy. Regrettably that swarm choose to depart, but left me a bit of beautiful white beeswax.

Meanwhile one of the fellow members of the group said I could have her "bird house" bees if I came to get them. Thus, those bees were relocated and took over thee periwinkle bee hive box we had set up for the original swarm. Meanwhile, Greg, Eve and I quickly began learning the art of beekeeping.

Venus / Aphrodite

The book The Secret Teachings of All Ages by Manly P. Hall states "The bee is sacred to the goddess Venus and, according to mystics, it is one of several life forms of life which came to earth from the planet Venus millions of years ago."1 The Greek Goddess of beauty Aphrodite is also associated with the planet Venus which governs Friday.

Sometimes May flowers bring us more than just floral bouquets!

Honey Bee inspired Illuminated Perfumes:

To Bee

Birth date: Summer Solstice 2011

Fragrance family: Earthy amber

Notes: Dark honey & mead

"Emblematic of the warm musky scent of a bee hive"

Mellifera

Birth date: October 2014

Fragrance family: Herbaceous

Notes: Resin, herb, golden wild flowers

"Sun drenched meadows buzzing with bees"

Here is a list of posts exploring the honey bee related topics, mostly at the journal

Bee Here Now: September 2009

Bee Happy: August 2009

Bee Here Now: May 2010 (via Artist as Brand)

Birdhouse Rock: June 2010

Hive Report: July 8, 2010

The Hive Report: August 2010

BeeVille: August 2010

Jingle Bee: December 2010

Bee Fever: February 2011

Red Barn Bee Rescue: March 2011

Soliloquy: June 2011

Hive Report: January 2012

Backwards: March 2012

Love, Peace & Bees: April 2012

The Hive Report: August 2012

Honey Bee: August 2012

Bee references in Shakespeare: October 2013

Introducing Mellifera: October 2014

Spring Honey Harvest: March 2015

Word Rant Wednesday: November 2015

Busy as a Bee: February 2016

Honey comb, perfume and related ramblings

The color of honey comb can vary greatly depending on how much its been used by the honey bees. When the our little alchemist, along with her sisters, begin to build comb, it is almost pure white, as you can see from this piece which was only a few days old when we moved our first hive from the compost bin to a box.

Most often, at least when I have saved feral hives, the is an overabundance of dark brown, almost black comb. Early on in our bee saving missions were advised to keep this dark comb so that the bees have something already in place to start using immediately. However, over the years we have noticed that new and established colonies don't like old comb. I'm not sure why this is. I would guess that one hive might not like the "scent" of another tribes comb as being part of the challenge. Perhaps over time the comb has less vitality or nutrients, or an energetic blueprint which they no longer are interested in. These are all guesses.

Another challenge to the old, dark strange comb is that when melted down and used for perfume and other bee products it becomes a sticky black mess with relatively no usable beeswax, its also extreme fire hazard. I am still searching for creative ways to use this old comb.

Speaking of creativity, I can always tell when an individual is inspired by one of my elder creations, not only because my intuitive antennae starts twitching but also by e-mails I start getting. For example, a few months ago I was being bombarded with e-mail asking for To Bee. I thought perhaps it was that the fragrance had been recently featured on a blog, but after research throughout the web universe I found nothing. When I asked the people contacting me how they had heard about the perfume they either did not answer, or mention that they read about it online but would not share the link. Thus my Virgo aspects kicked in and I started wondering about those cats who copy because they aren't very tapped into their creativity. Sure enough, I was right. When this transpires I take a deep breath, pity the individual and move on to the notebook I have where I download my ideas onto paper on a daily basis from the Universe, instead of checking out what others are doing and secretly ordering samples to be copied...or attempting to copy.

As artist lifer, whose livelihood is based on my very unique self expression. It sucks when others recreate or re-use something I worked hard on with no respect for the original content, copyright, or trademark. It takes time, energy, blood, sweat, laughter and tears to produce this mini empire including original content as imagery, written texts, packaging, the actual products, etc. It's heart breaking when other grab images, words and ideas with absolutely no respect...even worse are the ones who are unconscious of what they are doing. Sure, we are all one big collective, and in that big consciousness soup ideas are available to everyone, but that's not what I'm referring to.

Meanwhile To Bee in her other formats will be back shortly. The fragrance was created in 2011 to bring attention to the challenges that this little insect is having due to GMO's, insecticides and an overall lack of consciousness from humans on the planet. Here's the link to a post here at the journal with the To Bee lookbook and a few comments I pulled from the Fragrantica site:

"A real, raw honey smell combined with some sort of spicy, animalistic notes. Not a edible honey, but closer to smelling an actual hive. LOVE. It has the low longevity and silage of natural perfumes, unfortunately, but it seems to perform relatively similar to other real botanical scents I own."

~ LauraB613, August 24, 2013

"I was expecting more honey notes, but I pick up a lot of woodsy, spicy ones too. 

The smell reminds me of the Sonoran desert after it rains. Rich + full bodied. 

This is a complex, well-balanced + grounding creation."  

~  priyalugus, January 13, 2016

"To Bee is olifactory joy. You think just honey and beeswax? No, this is more complex and spicy...a raw natural scent that makes you want to sniff, sniff, sniff.....to figure out all the ingredients. 

If you love edgy, raw nature scents, you'll love To Bee." 

~ Bab, October 8, 2012

Images and written context is not yours to steel, ask first. Opening photograph is by Rebecca Fishman during a photo shoot at our woodland cottage. Other photos and all content is ©Roxana Villa

Busy as a Bee

Last weekend was packed with three different bee related happenings along with lots of writing for aromatherapy journals and projects. Read my latest contribution to Fragrantica here. Most people rest on the weekends, not me, I must be part feral bee! Yes, I said feral, because they work much harder than the European honey bee.

Friday in the late afternoon we headed into downtown LA for the book signing of Save the Bees with Chelsea, Rob and little Will MacFarland at The Last Bookstore. Always a treat to wonder around the galleries above the bookstore, like LB Lovejoys eclectic workshop where the image above was taken.

While at the signing we met up with George Langworthy, the director of The Vanishing of the Bees, and his beautiful girlfriend Alexandra so we headed over to Bottega Louie for dinner. We brought home a box of delicious macarons.

On Saturday we were planning to head up to Topanga to save a swarm of bees located in a sprinkler box under a Sumac bush but decided to wait a few days since we had a storm heading in.

Then on Sunday morning, in the midst of torrential rains, I drove into Culver City for the first HoneyLove Meet up of 2016 featuring a lecture by Rob McFarland titled Wild Bee Sex.

This afternoon Greg and I went back up to the site in Topanga to move the bees in the sprinkler box, but, they had already left, no bees only honey comb with a bit of pollen.

Little Round Bee Lockets finally get perfume!

It took awhile for me to get this together and I am still working out some of the details, but, for the most part they are ready. Introducing the little round bee lockets with perfumed felts!

In the early nineties when I was first introduced to aromatherapy I wore a filigree locket necklace that had a piece of felt inside saturated with essential oil. For years I've been thinking this would be a great way to add scent to the little round lockets but didn't have time to set down and do it.

Well, here they are. If you order one please let me know what you think. I'll soon be offering the little felts individually so that they can be purchased separately.

Spring Honey Harvest

The scent of honey emanating from our two hives has been pretty overwhelming for the last several months. Almost every time we go outside the fragrance of a sweet, slightly salty aroma wafts our way. This enchanting tang is most prevalent in the afternoon when the pacific ocean breezes start to move northward through the canyon. Speaking of canyons, aren't these pictures of two fused combs amazing!

Generally early Spring is a good time to harvest honey because the nectar flow has started and the bees will be able to restock whatever we take easily. The challenge this year was that the top boxes weren't just honey but a mix of brood (baby bees) and honey. In "normal" situations the bees keep their brood nests down below and use the upper boxes for honey. Thus, instead of taking the entire top box off we only took a few frames so as not to disturb their slumbering babes too much. Here's a photo of some crazy comb that was built across two frames. The image I am showing you has empty cells with capped honey cells, but deep within and on the other side it is all capped. I photographed this side because it was much more interesting visually with all the undulating levels. The perfectly capped comb is pretty boring, thus no photos of those.

This seasons crop is dark with rich notes of caramel. I am not entirely clear what imparted that imprint since what has been blooming in our woodland for the last six months has a more camphorous character. The rich, molasses type note might be from our California native everlasting, Pseudognaphalium californicum, although it hasn't bloomed in the woodland since last Spring.

Each frame of completely capped cells contains about 1 gallon of honey. A honey bee gathers nectar from two million flowers for one pound of honey! Although I haven't actually measured the amount of wax from one of those frames will likely be in the ballpark of 5% of the yield. It's pretty amazing to think that such a small amount of beeswax is used to hold so much honey! We are told that the average worker bee makes 1/12th of a tspn of honey in her lifetime. Eight to ten pounds of honey will yield approximately one pound of wax.

Pretty staggering numbers, imagine if humans were that focused!

Gem-toned bee lockets are back!

The little round lockets are back in emerald green, teal and purple. I'm working on a little scent insert for them but haven't quite perfected it yet. Also back in stock are the Purple bee and Chiaroscuro perfume lockets.

In the meantime Greg and I are finishing up the Vespertina Lookbook to coincide with the release of the Eau de Parfum, more on that in the morrow.

Introducing Mellifera

Mellifera, meaning Honey (melli) Bearing or Maker (fera) is the second part of the name for our little honey bee. The entire name is Apis mellifera, apis being the genus.

I began the fragrance Mellifera in the summer of 2013 for the HoneyLove Wax Symposium held in Culver City. The fragrance is based on everything that makes up the realm of the honey bee including herself and tribe members, the hive (as in To Bee), the landscape where she forages and other interesting bits about her.

The orchestration was initially composed by listing everything relating to the honey bee in terms of scent and then pairing essences to those words. For example:

Queen bee: Lemongrass

Forage bee: Based on research regarding the hone bees "nasanov" (scent) gland secretions that have components related to Melissa officianalis and Eucalyptus citriodora Melissa, Eucalyptus citriodora and Geranium.

Honey: Ylang ylang and Mimosa

Propolis: Resin and spice

Hive: All of the above plus musk and wood

Landscape: Herbs, flowers and tree sap.

After that I took birds eye view of these ingredients and began to weave them together with other notes to support them, keeping in mind perfume structure. The final composition of twenty two ingredients, all botanical except for the beeswax absolute. The orchestration includes woods, resins, leaves, flowers, herbs, rinds and roots. One of the featured ingredients is helichrysum both from Croatia and Ojai California.

I found this interesting bit on the wordnik blog: "In Latreille's system, the fourth family of aculeate Hymenoptera; the Anthophila; the honeybees." and this bit from Wikipedia: "The first Apis bees appear in the fossil record at the Eocene–Oligocene boundary (23–56 Mya), in European deposits. The origin of these prehistoric honey bees does not necessarily indicate Europe as the place of origin of the genus, only that it occurred there then. A few fossil deposits are known from South Asia, the suspected region of honey bee origin, and fewer still have been thoroughly studied."

I have many healers and intuitives come by my new workspace in Agoura, one of them mentioned to me that honey bees originate from Mars, as do all colony based creatures.

When this little forager was named they believe that she was a male and thus many songs and poems refer to her as such, for example:

“The pedigree of honey does not concern the bee; A clover, any time, to him is aristocracy.”
~ Emily Dickinson, The Complete Poems

The main image for Mellifera is the crown, with the color harmony being antique gold and iconography related to the Goddess since the honey bee is mostly female. Greg took a some beautiful photos of my fellow "Summer essence sister" Sophie specifically for Mellifera, including this one which was previously shared.

Mellifera is one of the items offered in the upcoming Fan Funding Event, and thus for a time being will only be available through that venue. It will be available for sniffing at the upcoming celebration of the new space on November 15th.

Here is what Sarah said about it when I put a little sample in with a locket she ordered:

"I applied some Mellifera mid-morning, and it's still lingering (4+ hours later). Initially it smelled of sweet vanilla + pepper, with beehive (i.e., beeswax + sun-drenched pine wood) notes. A bit like a sweeter + lighter Impromptu. Now, a few hours after application, it smells like a sweeter, lighter Aumbre, which is FANTASTIC, and may account for its longevity on my skin (Aumbre lasts forever for me)."

The scent is most similar to the fragrances in the line that have earthy, resinous, herbal notes like Impromptu, Aumbre, Terrestre, Chaparral, etc. Some noses might perceive it as "medicinal" due to some of the spicy camphor notes.

Then there is what happens to the scent when it comes into contact with each persons chemistry expressing itself on our skin. Everyone experiences scent so vastly different, depending on the olfactory terrain that they are accustomed to. If you have smelled Mellifera please include your experience in the comments or e-mail them to me so that I can share with the rest of the tribe....or should I refer to us as a hive?

Related posts here at the Journal:
HoneyLove Yellow Tie Event: August 2014
Life is a Flower
HoneyLove Wax Symposium

Bee Guardians

Yesterday morning, in downtown Los Angeles, the City Council approved a study to be done to approve urban beekeeping. This monumental event was in most part done by the efforts of Rob and Chelsea MacFarland of Honey Love. This comes on the heels of seventeen councils within the city of LA voting in favor of urban beekeeping.

The bees found Rob one afternoon working and his garden and clearly choose to swarm there knowing they had found their hero. Three years later, after becoming part of the Backwards Beekeepers and creating Honey Love, Rob and Chelsea have managed to get the somewhat uptight and conventional members of the LA City Council to approve a measure to study the affects of urban beekeeping by the Planning Department.

Our first hive arrived here in May of 2010. Since then it's been a continual, magnificent learning curve as we become educated on how to support these tiny beings.

The anthroposophic movement seems to be the furtherest ahead in holistic beekeeping work out in the world right now. Here's a video of the Sun Hive (“Weissenseifener Haengekorb”) designed by the German sculptor Guenther Mancke. How I would love to attend that workshop and replace our Langstrom hives with a handmade, rye straw.

Bee references in Shakespeare

1) "O, how shall summer's honey breath hold out..." (Sonnet 64)

2) "We bring it to the hive and, like the bees,
"Are murdered for our pains." (Henry IV)

3) "The sweetest honey is loathsome in its own deliciousness." (Romeo and Juliet)

4)"...For honesty coupled to beauty is to have honey a sauce to sugar.." (As You Like It)

5) "Sweet honey and sweet notes together fail." (Troilus and Cressida)

6) "The sweetest honey is loathsome in its own deliciousness." (Romeo and Juliet)

7) "Obedience: for so work the honey-bees..." (Henry V)

8) "'Tis seldom when the bee doth leave her comb. In the dead carrion." (Henry VI)

9) "Thus we may gather honey from the weed,
"And make a moral of the devil himself." (Henry V)

10) "Enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber." (Julius Caesar)

11) "For you have stol'n their buzzing, Antony,
"And very wisely threat before you sting." (Julius Caesar)

12) "When he did frown, O, had she then gave over,
Such nectar from his lips she had not suck´d." (Venus and Adonis)

13) "Where the bee sucks, there suck I..." ("The Tempest")

14) "We bring it to the hive and, like the bees,
"Are murdered for our pains." (Henry IV)

15) "The commons, like an angry hive of bees
"That want their leader, scatter up and down
"And care not who they sting in his revenge." (Henry VI)

16) "Full merrily the humble-bee doth sing,
"Till he hath lost his honey and his sting." (Troilus and Cressida)

Images ©RoxanaVilla

HoneyLove Wax Symposium

This Saturday is the annual HoneyLove Wax Symposium, I'll be leading a class for the event titled "Scent and the Honey Bee" at the Culver City Headquarters here in LA.

Where: Honey Love: 5950 W. Jefferson Blvd. #8, Los Angeles, California 90016 MAP
What: Learn how to make natural, solid beeswax perfume based on scents related to the Honey Bee.
When: Saturday, August 10, 2013, 12:30pm until 2:00pm

Here is a link to the Facebook Page for those of you on that social media platform.

Then at 7:40 join us for a special screening of More Than Honey in Beverly Hills, afterwards the films director Markus Imhoof and fellow Backward Beekeeper Susan Rudnicki will be part of a Q and A discussion.

Bee Smart, Bee Happy, Bee Free and Live in Mindfulness.

Amethyst and sage

The amethyst cases came and went and will come again, here she is looking mighty fine with Vera.

Being as busy as a bee can be

There's been an interesting discussion on my bee group about 19th century beekeeping, including Victorian and steampunk styles of bee suits, bee hives and tools. Here are some fun items from the thread, enjoy.

Pictured above are bee skeps, which were one of the first types of bee hives used by humans at the end of the 17th century. Here's a link on how to make your own.

While perusing the photos here are some sound tracks.

Arthur Askey The Bee Song

Liberace - Bumble Boogie 

and my favorite Monty Python - Eric the Half-a-Bee (1972)

 The steampunk smoker, above.

Things Remembered

As a special request large oval lockets were created with an illumination of GreenWitch and Gregs Bee Quan Yin. Only two of each were made to test the waters to see if there is interest in these pieces. One of each of these is currently for sale, or was when I wrote this. More are available upon special request.

Large oval emerald green bee lockets (pictured above) have been created and listed in the E-shop they are scheduled to arrive this week.

If you desire a specific illuminated image that Greg or I have created placed in a large oval locket please let me know and we can have it made for you. I'm thinking the original Vespertina image or the white honey comb picture might look real fine. New lockets and perfume cases will be debuting soon. The first batch is a very limited edition with more arriving after the holidays.

Since both Greg and I ship items out of the studio, we can combine shipping by giving us a heads up.

Honey Bee!

The sun is in Leo and just now via a tweet I heard this "Happy Leo new moon! A good time for creativity, play, doing things that you love & being in your heart. What auspicious new as we celebrate the honey bee today!!"

Hope you locals will all be coming out to to Honey Bee Awareness Day in LA from 1:30 to 4:00 with festivities continuing at 423 West Gallery (7-10pm).

Ginger mentioned she would be going to her farmers market today and asking the honey sellers about bees. I enccourage you to do the same, if you feel courageous ask them these three questions to find our how pure their honey is:

~ Do you use feral beees?

More likely they will think you are out of your mind, since most beekeepers have been led down a path unconsciousness, convinced that they need to use the domisticated bee. The challenge with the domisticated bee is she has been bred larger (Bigger is better mentality). This breeding has created a honey bee that has a weakened immune system and thus doesn't survive very well. Meanwhile the tiny little feral bee, pictured above, manages quite well. Another example of how Mother Nature knows best.

~ Do you allow the bees to build their own foundation?

Another likely no answer. Most beekeepers, do not do this because it is easier to extract honey from chemically treated plastic foundation.

~ Do you use any chemical in the hive, like mite control?

Another likely no answer, if they are using the domisticated honey bee than they need to use mite control.

A very Happy and Aware day to you all, my scent of the day (SOTD) is To bee of course.

Honey Bee photo was taken by me on Thursday while celebrating my 50th birthday at the Getty. More on that soon. Image ©RoxanaVilla, feel free to pin.