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

The Schism

Humans are at an interesting crossword as we choose to either take the highroad or plunder down into a murky darkness of hate. According to some ancient texts there is the potential for more lower chakra stupidity before we finally migrate to the higher realms of consciousness.

In the meantime, there are sectors of people who are equating the use of beeswax with that of civet paste. I was not aware of this rather odd point of view, thus, I am here to clarify a few things...

• Big agro beekeepers, like John Miller showcased in More Than Honey, are very different than those of us who save feral hives and act as their guardians using holistic and mindful methods.

• Civet is a nocturnal animal related to the cat that secretes a pale yellow, viscous substance used in perfumery. Originally introduced to Europe by Marco Polo from China it died off in use when synthetic materials replaced the original palette of perfumers. Regrettably, civet has made a comeback as "natural" perfumers use it within their palette which contains animal ingredients. The fragrant substance is secreted from the animals anal glands and then scraped while the cat is teased and stressed in a tiny cage.  Quite horrific and certainly not in keeping with what we associate "green" and "natural" perfume with. According the Chandler Burr "Civet is like adding whole cream to soups or sauces." Indeed, in France and in the 14th century Venice, civet was an immensely popular ingredient in fine fragrance due to its alchemical magic at incremental amounts as well as adding tremendous longevity to a perfume.

So, what do you think, is using beeswax in perfume the same as using civet paste? It's possible that the confusion might be because those who are part of the "vegan" tribe prefer to obtain from"bee related" products but are okay with petroleum products, go figure. I'm still trying to understand that one.

At the end of the day, or our lives, each of us will be held accountable for what we've done here on planet earth or maybe not. What I do know is that if I hadn't saved the three colonies of feral bees that share there honey and beeswax with me, they would have been exterminated using toxic chemicals. 

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!

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.