Abuzz at Isha Institute

This weekend, the whole iii campus is buzzing with the activity of Bhava Spandana. However, even on a regular day, parts of the campus are always buzzing, with the activity of some of the non-human residents of iii – our hives of honey bees. Volunteers at the ashram have been taking care of our bee hives for over a year. Below are pictures as they recently opened the hives to check on the bees and extract the honey and beeswax.

Zach, a resident, has been helping to care for the bees:

 

Zach, how many bees do you think we have?

I don’t know exactly….several hundred at least. We have had these two hives for a year. When we opened the hives this time, we saw that one hive was about to swarm, meaning the bees would gather all the honey and leave, so to prevent that we moved some of the bees to a smaller new hive. We’ll have to wait and see whether it takes off.

How did you get the honey out? Do the bees try to sting you?

The bees are very docile. As long as you are careful with the hives, not to accidentally hurt them, then they are fine. It also helped that we had a volunteer to help who brought all the proper equipment – gloves and masks, so we didn’t have to worry. Shane has been very helpful, as well as Bill, a Nashville volunteer. We have been learning a lot from them about how to take care of the bees.


How much honey do the bees make?

This time we harvested about two gallons of honey. That’s quite a lot of honey, but we use a lot of honey at the ashram because it is so good for us. Sadhguru says that it’s one of the most positively pranic foods because it is so similar to human blood. It will be good if we can eventually produce all the honey that we need right here on campus. We can harvest the honey throughout the summer, but now we’ll leave them for the winter.

It’s already getting cold here. What happens to the bees in the winter?

The bees will huddle up together in the hives and eat the honey reserves.

For a delicious recipe using honey, check out this banana-nut porridge recipe featured on Fox 2 News in Detroit.

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