Here’s a fun little story I found on social media which I thought we could all gain some insight from:
My dad has bees.
Today I went to his house and he showed me all of the honey he had retrieved from the hives. He took the lid off of a big bucket full of honey and on top of the honey there were 3 little bees, struggling. They were covered in sticky honey and drowning. I asked him if we could help them and he said he was sure they wouldn’t survive. Casualties of honey collection…
I asked him again if we could at least get them out and kill them quickly, after all he was the one who taught me to put a suffering animal (or bug) out of its misery. He finally conceded and scooped the bees out of the bucket. He put them in a large empty yogurt container and put the plastic container outside.
Because he had disrupted the hive with the earlier honey collection, there were bees flying all over outside.My dad called me out a little while later to show me what was happening. These three little bees were surrounded by all of their sisters (all of the bees are females) and they were cleaning the sticky nearly dead bees, helping them to get all of the honey off of their bodies. We came back a short time later and there was only one little bee left in the container. She was still being tended to by her sisters.
When it was time for me to leave we checked one last time and all three of the bees had been cleaned off enough to fly away and the container was empty. Those three little bees lived because they were surrounded by family and friends who would not give up on them, family and friends who refused to let them drown in their own stickiness and resolved to help until the last little bee could be set free.
We could all learn a thing or two from these bees.
There was no reference for this quote, so if you know who it is by, please let me know so I can update
I thought about how it really takes a community to save the most vulnerable and those who are struggling, to set everyone free. If only we lived in this type of community. I feel like we are getting further and further away from this in our world right now.
My point of this post is just to remind us all that when others are struggling doing what you can to help, rather than leave them to dwell in their own “sticky” situation, is powerful. Not only does it help to release and set the “struggling one” free, but gives you such an uplifted feeling because you have supported another human beeing.
My final message – Bee supportive, Bee loving and Bee kind.
