Global Swarming Honeybees: Honeybees Sweeten the Lives of Ex-Offenders

4.15.2008

Honeybees Sweeten the Lives of Ex-Offenders

Thanks to bee-boy Thew for sending a link to a marvelous Chicago Tribune video about Sweet Beginnings, an economic development program that uses beekeeping as a path to a better life for ex-offenders and others who face barriers to attaining employment that pays a living wage.

I've been meaning to write about Sweet Beginnings for some time, since services that enable ex-offenders to rebuild their lives is a particular interest of mine. In the video, Gerald Whitehead, one of the men who has transformed into a beekeeper through his involvement with Sweet Beginnings, has this to say:

"I'm reconstructing my whole life, just like the bees that have to reconstruct their hive, the honeycomb, to prepare for the next stage—that's what I'm doing with my life."

Read the accompanying Trib article, The Felons and the Bees.

And meet some more of the people whose lives have been changed by honeybees and Sweet Beginnings.

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Quotes of Note

"The cynicism that you have is not your real soul."—Yoko Ono
"The country that elected George Bush — sort of — because he seemed like he’d be more fun to have a beer with than Al Gore or John Kerry is really getting its comeuppance."—Gail Collins
"How do you inherit the earth? By being awake."—Joni Mitchell
Causing the right amount of trouble is an art form.”—Judith Coche
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."—Philip K. Dick
"A meddling beekeeper is said to be the bees' worst enemy, and this may be true."—Ormond Aebi, The Art and Adventure of Beekeeping
"For too long we have been locked in an old fashioned, reductionist approach, dealing with bees as if they were mere machines created solely for our benefit, instead of highly evolved, wild creatures, with which we are privileged to work."—Phil Chandler, The Barefoot Beekeeper
"Neither among the bees nor any other animals that have a ray of our intellect, do things happen with the precision our books record. Too many circumstances remain unknown to us."—Maurice Maeterlinck
"In these times, acceleration spoils everything."—Heinz-Klaus Metzger, Musicologist
"Whatever lofty things you might accomplish today, you will do them only because you first ate something that grew out of dirt."—Barbara Kingsolver
"Healthy, happy bees don't need any additives."—Dee A. Lusby
"When the bird and the book disagree, always believe the bird."—Audubon
"There is a certain valid moment for every cloud."—Paul Strand

"For the bee, honey is the ultimate reality. It represents the fulfillment of her life mission, the triumph over her enemies, the continuity of the hive, the justification for working herself to death. Honey is to bees what money in the bank is to people—a measure of prosperity and well-being. But there is nothing abstract or symbolic about honey, as there is about money, which has no intrinsic value. There is more real wealth in a pound of honey, or a load of manure for that matter, than all the currency in the world. We often destroy the world's real wealth to create an illusion of wealth, confusing symbol and substance."—Wm. Longgood, The Queen Must Die