At Wellspring 2016 an interesting thing was born: The Cult of Melissa.

I was sitting at the Magical Druid shop, just taking up space and enjoying the sun when I blurt out to MJD, "You know what we need?  Pollinator Shrine Kits!"  And conversation about what could go into such a thing commenced.  What did we come up with?
A clay pot on which is painted/inscribed a prayer for the pollinators
a peat patty
a seed packet containing, perhaps, white clover? hairy vetch? milkweed?  some type of easily grown pernenial nectar/pollen source
A plaque/statue of a Pollinator Sigil

And what would be the point of all of this?  To encourage spiritual engagement with the pollinators in return for their many gifts to us.  By offering a simple step, I hope the steps that follow and lead toward increased connection with the land spirits and the desire to act to protect and nurture these nurturing spirits will be easier.

I often hear Druids say, "how do I begin to connect with the nature Spirits?" This would be a good way!  Set up the Pollinator shrine in a corner of your yard, on your balcony, on a window sill.  Every 21 days (gestation period of a worker bee from egg to adult) stand/sit before the shrine, focus on the sigil, and say the prayer.

This idea percolated in my brain over the course of the evening.

The next day I was sitting in the Magical Druid's tent again, just taking up space and not doing much of anything when I suddenly blurted out, "We should have an Order devoted to pollinator work.  Hey Kathleen, would you be the Clergy Advisor?"  She good naturedly agreed and off I went planning and scheming.  Then a hilarious thought struck me, I should ask Rev. Melissa Hill to be the Clergy Advisor and call the Order the Cult of Melissa!  Because.....lol's!

She loved the idea as much as I did.  

The upside is that she currently works with a bee-goddess.  While she appreciated the humor of the name, she also is deeply involved in this work.  

And so, the Cult of Melissa was born.

In the end we will have to choose a different name when we officially apply with ADF.  I ran it by the Arch Druid and he confirmed that something with the word "Cult" in it was unlikely to get much traction in ADF and would almost certainly not be approved.  But beginnings are important.  So I have recorded the story of the true name here.

Friday, June 3, 2016: The Bee Teacher arrived early early this morning.  We carried a super full nuc down to the bee yard.  Then we wrapped a strap around Fig Hive.  Next came the hive carrier---it looks like a strapless camp chair. Aftr turning it over about 8 times trying to figure out which way was up, we successfully loaded the hive and carried it up to the Bee Teacher's car.

She'll bring the hive body and the five (basically) empty frames back this afternoon and we'll install the nuc.

Lesson I learned today: having enough frames at the moment does you no good when you need to add boxes.  

To Do: order a bunch of frames so I'm prepared for hive growth.

Much later in the day...................

The Bee Teacher came back this afternoon with the hive body, bottom board, frames, and covers.  I had the smoker ready to go (I think I finally have the hang of lighting it!.  We got into our bee costumes and headed down.

The nuc really was packed!  There was honey dripping from the frames, literally.  We found the queen and safely installed her frame.  It was so full, the Bee Teacher suggested putting and empty frame in between two frames filled with capped brood--one of which the queen was running around on.  Everything went with out a hitch, except that I forgot to take down the powdered sugar to dust onto the bees to knock of varroa mites.  

Fig Hive is back on track!

Wednesday, June 1, 2016: 2:40pm the Bee Teacher, D and DJ arrive for a follow-up look into Fig Hive.
We smoke the bees and begin pulling out frames.  These girls have really been putting away the honey!  There's lots of freshly capped honey and lots of cells in which you can see the nectar pooling.  What we do not see are eggs or the queen.

The Bee Teacher is fairly certain she sees multiple eggs in a few cells and strongly suspects the workers have begun to lay.  It would appear the queen did not return from her mating flight (abut 25% of queens do not).  Sigh.

​We make plans to meet on Friday so the Bee Teacher can take our queenless hive and drop off a replacement nuc.

We opened up Pomegranate Hive also.  It is full, FULL of bees.  There's brood! There's capped honey!  There's capped drone cells!  there's a queen marching around!

Time for a second box says the Bee Teacher.

Oh crap says the co-op,we haven't wired any more frames.  

D got to work that night and got another box of frames ready to go.  We put the second box on Pomegranate hive on Thursday, june 2, 2016.

Friday, May 20: 11:30am the Bee teacher arrives to look at the second hive, known as Fig Hive as it is closest to the fig bush.  She helps me get the smoker situated (oh, that's how you do it!) and we head for the hives.

We open up Fig Hive and sure enough, there are oodles of queen cells. She pinches one open and out walks a mature virgin queen.  The Bee Teacher quickly catches her and marks her with a white dot. Hooray, a queen!  She'll have to undertake a mating flight, but then we'll be in business.  Let's take out those other queen cells.

She pinches the next one open and out walks a mature virgin queen.  Um......I run and grab some tupperware while the Bee teacher marks her.  She pinches open the next queen cell and out walks....you guessed it, another mature virgin queen.  By the end of the day we would have a struggle for the throne the likes of which medieval europe only dreamed of.  I'm going to need to fetch more tupperware.

At the end of it all, the Bee Teacher walked out of my yard with 8 virgin queens.

me in my bee costume before installing the nuc into Fig Hive.

Saturday May 14, 2016: Meet the Bee Teacher to pick up the nucs we ordered.  My daughter declined to come with me.  The thought of being strapped into her carseat in a car full of bees was just too much for her.  I arrive and the Bee Teacher has one deep and one medium nuc for me.  A medium?  Did I order a medium? No, I don't think so?  Oh damn, it was for someone else in the class.  Thankfully the Bee Teacher has another deep nuc at home and we can schedule a pickup the next day.

Our Co-op has elected to install on Sunday, May 15, 2016.  "I hope they don't swarm, that nuc if full" says the Bee teacher.  Then she laughs, "I'm joking, you should be fine"

​I set the nuc next to the hive box into which we will install on the morrow.  Then I don what we refer to as my "Bee Costume" and remove the screen from the entrance, letting the bees fly out and get acquainted with their new digs.

Sunday, May 15, 2016: 8am I pick up the second nuc from the Bee Teacher.  I bring it home and set it next to the other hive box and release the bees.
4pm: the co-op arrives for the installation.  We all don our bee costumes, fire up the smoker (that's a whole separate saga), and start cracking open boxes.  The first install is without incident.  We easily find the queen (conveniently marked by the Bee Teacher) and all the frames go in smoothly.  We put a feeder on top and close it up.  This will now be known as Pomegranate Hive as it is near the Pom bush.

We begin to install the second nuc.  Where's the queen?  Did you see her?  We remove and check each frame again.  Are you guys seeing all these queen cells?  Um, are they going to swarm?  Where the heck is the queen?  We put on the feeder, close it up, and go call the Bee Teacher.  She says she wants to come see what's going on.

"I found a pretty good deal on a truckload of beekeeping equipment.  Would you be willing to help me look after some hives?" Asked a friend of mine.  I pictured a few saturdays a year going out to the hives and coming back with buckets of honey.

Yeah, so that is totally not what happened.

I found a beekeeping class taught in the area and recommended to my friend that we take it.  Since he was going to have all these hives, i volunteered the yards of a few friends.  They thought if there were going to be bees in their yards, they should probably take the class too just in case there was something they needed to do and my friend J and I couldn't get to them quickly enough.

Six of us sign up for the class which meets weekly for three months.  By the end of the second class, J has decided that setting up away hives is not in the cards for him this year. The rest of us still kind of like the idea of hives in our yards.  Life goes on.
Spring is approaching and it is time to get serious and figure out what we're going to do.  The truckload of beekeeping equipment is not quite the pot of gold we expected.  Much of it is damaged, all of it is in need of powerwashing and fresh paint.  Are there frames? sort of.  

We decide that forming a co-op is the way to go.  J pitches in equipment.  I pitch in yard space and buy one nuc.  Another couple buys a second nuc. And my friend D buys frames and has the powerwashing equipment and paint.  I help wash and paint.  The couple and D handle assembling the frames, putting in and wiring the wax foundation.  We're ready!