What Happens to the Bees?

I read some advice about feeding sugary drinks to bees found on the ground to provide assistance, what with declining bee populations etc. Seems like advising householders to flick teaspoons of water at a raging fire! At the end of the summer many bees naturally die out as the colonies prepare for winter. The greater problems of dying bee colonies lie elsewhere and cannot be fixed by giving individual bees an energy drink.
Uniform landscapes of monoculture strip the land of diverse and balanced ecosystems whilst the chemical battles waged against any remaining insects tip the balance
even further. There isn't a great deal of commercial agriculture in Finland and the area around Mairela is mostly forest and lakes resulting in a purer environment where the insect ecosystems remain mostly unaffected by Man's actions.
My garden is a mass of dragonflies, butterflies, bees, hoverflies and other insect life. I sometimes wonder if all the missing bees and hoverflies aren't just living here with me! Everything has something it eats and something it is eaten by.....including me being a food source for mosquitoes!
There are natural variations in population each year presumably from the prevailing weather conditions. I don't seek to analyse the reasons why each creature evolves and appears as it does because I cannot know all there is contributing towards it instead I notice how natural energy works and live in harmony with it. Acceptance ofh natural cycles leaves me no reason to fight against anything.

I took up bee keeping, starting with two colonies in traditional langstroth hives stacked on each other and filled with frames containing honeycomb. I then discovered that bee keeping is another form of intensive farming with little regard to the natural welfare of the animals involved. The hives and the maintenance procedures are all set out to maximise honey production rather than maintaining naturally healthy and happy bees. I decided rather than constantly inspecting the bees and treating them with various chemicals and destroying certain cells I'd allow the bees to follow their natural instincts and patterns. I was horrified to find how a queen excluder is used to prevent the bees from swarming....sure they take some of the honey with them and I'm left with fewer bees and therefore less honey but if animals are physically prevented from following natural instinctive behaviour stress will set in and we all know how damaging stress can be. I study and work with the natural energy of life therefore it is easier for me to see how one pot of honey from happy healthy bees is far more life enhancing than twenty pots from stressed and exploited bees.

Similarly, a bunch of Fair Trade bananas contains more life enhancing energy as opposed to bananas produced with slave wages. The farmer tending his own land knowing he can care for his family and educate his children to give them choices in life creates produce with energy of peace and safety. The worker paid a minimum wage with no hope for change in the future, constantly worried about anything happening to him or his family because he cannot provide for them creates produce with energy of stress, worry, tension and fear. We are what we eat and I know which one I would rather be.
The man in the street can change the world, not by feeding the odd insect with a cup of sugar water but by noticing where real food comes from, noticing how the natural world works, recognising the power of creational energy as opposed to the false and empty power of force.
When I pick fresh raspberries from the forest I am literally ingesting the very building blocks of life. When I brush off the odd bug I give thanks and remind myself how grateful and blessed I am to be living in a place where I do occasionally find insects on my food!
Those who seek to turn the natural realm into a war zone by engaging in battle with other creatures will only succeed in destroying the entire organism we know as Planet Earth either by chemical warfare or sterility!

Another aspect of bee keeping which horrified me was the practice of harvesting all the honey and then feeding the bees on sugar water for the winter! I don't even use processed sugar in my own diet and the thought of taking away all that wonderful honey with its amazing medicinal and life enhancing properties and giving the bees processed sugar is astonishing!
How is it folk can do this and still be wondering why bee populations are failing! I don't need to analyse exactly what chemicals are present in natural hives to know how to keep bees, I just let bees do what bees do because surely they know best.
It's the same thing in my healing practice, I can't know what is appropriate for everyone and so the work I do is allowing natural energy to flow through so folk begin to see for themselves. It's called empowerment. .
My skill comes in stepping back to allow the natural flow to occur and being still and quiet enough to recognise where I am being guided.
To understand failing bee populations we need to step back and take in the bigger picture rather than systematically analysing what is right in front of us. When we only
analyse within our current level of understanding we become stuck at that level. greater knowledge and understanding come from allowing a bigger picture to emerge. I like that folk are turning to their gardens to grow their own produce and support insects because just by standing and observing the natural world you notice how pure creational energy is silent, efficient and cheap!
I have a project at Mairela Retreat creating gardens based on Holistic principles, acknowledging the connection between all things including presence and thoughts.
Everything in the garden has been grown with the intention to create wholeness wherein myself and the plant are two pieces of a puzzle which together will form a bigger picture.
This is how all things work and I'm intentionally choosing to step into the awesome power of that natural wave. I'd love for all folk to actively choose where they are going rather than being swept up in the tide of the seemingly easy route without even noticing the easy route has a very high price tag. Even if we don't feel we have the
power to change something we can at least notice what we are doing and be honest about it.