Article: “A Pot of Gold @ the End of the Rainbow”

Perhaps you’ve heard the old Aye-reish (Irish) saying, a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow!

   Well– that saying had to do with honey.  In the wild, at the end of spring (spring is symbolized by the rainbow), bees abandon their hives because there’s no longer room for them to live inside their “full pots of gold” (honey-filled hives).

Long ago, before people smoked out the hive with a burning branch in order to “rob the hive” as they call it, people actually waited for the bees to abandon their hives, thuscollecting their “full pot of gold (full hive of honey) at the end of the rainbow (at the end of spring)”.

When bees abandon their hives, it is called swarming.  When the bees are swarming,they are very non-aggressive because they don’t have any honey they’re protecting.  They’re basically hiveless for a little while until they build their next one.

Bee hunters use this to their advantage.  Sometimes bees will collect on the ends of branches, & the bee hunters will grab the end of the branch that the bees are on & begin shaking all the bees into a five gallon bucket.

Once the wild bees have been captured, the queen bee is most often killed, & a more commercially-beneficial queen bee is introduced.  All the bees then change their allegiance to this new queen, & the hive is sold to a bee keeper who truly loves their bees, but at the same time was not informed that these bees were stolen from the wild.

There is another way to harvest honey without robbing the hive, keeping them in boxes,  or stealing them from the wild.

Plant a Honey Locust Tree in your yard in order to attract the bees to a tree which theylove to nest in.

The Honey Locust Tree is a perfect shrine designed for the bee that is found in nature & if you examine the tree you will find that it completely symbolizes different aspects that bees have.

   The trunk of the Honey Locust Tree is covered with large thorns that look much like the stingers of a bee.  The flowers are yellow like the bee.  The bottom branch often grows high enough off the ground that it cannot be reached without the help of one or two other people (or some well-stacked rocks).  The trunk simply can’t be climbed because itsguarded by the big stingers which ascend all the way up to the bottom branch.  Basically– once a person reaches the bottom branch– its an easy climb.  Therefore, since you can’t climb up the tree without help from one or two other people, the tree– much like the bee– represents teamwork.  

Bees will often hive in Honey Locust Trees.  Therefore, by planting a Honey Locust Tree in your yard, you can attract bees to naturally hive in them while simultaneously helping to rewild the bee populations!

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