our guest for episode 7 is melissa vanek! melissa has been called a bee witch, dream witch, and green witch, and while she accepts all of these labels, she is less interested in what she is called than with simply being in, listening to and co-creating with the natural world and those who live within its boundaries. after spending many years teaching young humans about the natural world, she has taken the time and space to settle in to her landscape on east mountain in the mount tom ridge line, nestled into a nook of the connecticut river. her land made itself known as dragonfly hill, though originally pocumtuc land. melissa spends her time on dragonfly hill with her animal, plant, invisible and landscape friends and believes it was through her learnings from the bees that she became more open to all of the beings and communications happening all around. you can find her online at aylatree.com and @whispersfromthebee on facebook and instagram.

each season we read a new book about witchcraft practices around the world with the #snortandcacklebookclub, with a book review by ash and the occasional guest helping us close out the season. this season's #snortandcacklebookclub read is brujas: the magic and power of witches of color by lorraine monteagut.

take the fibre witch quiz at ashalberg.com/quiz. follow us on instagram @snortandcackle and be sure to subscribe via your favourite podcasting app so you don't miss an episode!

seasons 1-3 of snort & cackle are generously supported by the manitoba arts council. you can support future episodes of snort & cackle by sponsoring a full episode or transcript.

transcript

snort & cackle - season 3, episode 7 - melissa vanek

ash alberg: [Upbeat music plays.] Hello, and welcome to the Snort and Cackle podcast. I'm your host, Ash Alberg. I'm a queer fibre witch and hedgewitch. And each week I interview a fellow boss witch to discuss how everyday magic helps them make their life and the wider world, a better place.

Expect serious discussions about intersections of privilege and oppression, big C versus small C capitalism, rituals, sustainability, astrology, ancestral work, and a whole lot of snorts and cackles. Each season, we read a new book about witchcraft practices around the world with the #SnortAndCackleBookClub with a book review by me and the occasional guest helping us close out the season. Our book this season is Brujas: The Magic and Power of Witches of Color by Lorraine Monteagut.

Whether you're an aspiring boss witch looking to start your knitwear design business, a plant witch looking to play more with your local naturally dyed color palette or a knit witch wondering just what the hell is a natural yarn and how do you use it in your favorite patterns, we've got the solution for you.

Take the free fiber witch quiz at ashalberg.com/quiz and find out which self-paced online program will help you take your dreams into reality. Visit ashalberg.com/quiz [upbeat music fades out] and then join fellow fiber witches in the Creative Coven Community at ashalberg.com/creative-coven-community for 24/7 access to Ash’s favorite resources, monthly zoom knit nights, and more. [End of intro.]

Hello, everyone. I am here today with Melissa Vanek, and Melissa has been called a bee witch, dream witch and green witch, and while she accepts all of these labels, she is less interested in what she is called than with simply being in, listening to and co-creating with the natural world and those who live within its boundaries. After spending many years teaching young humans about the natural world, she has taken the time and space to settle into her landscape on East Mountain, in the Mount Tom Ridgeline, nestled into a nook of the Connecticut river.

Her land made itself known as Dragonfly Hill, though originally Pocomtuc land. Melissa spends her time on Dragonfly Hill with her animal, plant, invisible and

landscape friends, and believes it was through her learnings from the bees that she became more open to all of the beings and communications happening all around.

Hi, Melissa!
melissa vanek: Hello!
ash alberg: How are you?
melissa vanek: I'm doing well.
ash alberg: Good.
melissa vanek: Thanks for having me.

ash alberg: Thank you for this. I'm excited, especially because bees are just delightful and oh, of course, Willow’s deciding that this is the moment to come over and say hi.

And I have a friend who like, has also like some magical relationships with bees and I'm just, I'm excited to chat more about it with you because ... oh god Willow, you're so loud. Because yeah, I think it's gonna be a fun conversation. So ... I'm so sorry. Let me just deal with ... Willow!

She like licks the bottom of her bowl in like a non-subtle way and it's just all the metal clanging around. So tell us a bit about you and what you do in the world.

melissa vanek: That's the question, right? I feel like so much has shifted right before 2020, and then of course, 2020 happens and I think everything kind of reshifts. But I basically, in the moment right now, I am spending my time on the land and trying to figure out next steps by listening ‘cause I think that actually the land and all the beings there are, they're there to help and00 working together with them, it's okay, how do we create something next step for everybody that's beneficial for everybody?

ash alberg: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And it's I was going to say, it's funny. It's not funny. But the pandemic has coincided with ... the climate crisis was already well en route. I remember having in like grade nine, [Willow’s collar clanks] having a science teacher who like at one point just got very doom and

gloom on all of us, which was, necessary and also that was years ago and literally nothing has changed so I'm like, oh, I wonder how he's doing.

But the bees are a very direct indicator of how we are doing and also are very immediately attached to our food supply and everybody's food supply, like all the beings. And so they're, they're very directly attached to climate crisis and I feel like the pandemic also, perhaps because of the way that it interrupted basically every supply chain, humans are ... humans in more resourced countries are becoming more aware of what folks in other countries have been saying fucking forever which is that we are not in balance and we need to be more in balance and also like you can't just keep extracting and expect everything to be hunky dory.

And like I had just a very visceral reminder of it, a couple of ... the first summer of the pandemic where I was like, I'm going to grow a victory garden, even though I am not good at growing fruits and vegetables. Like I actually, I hardcore suck at it.

Medicinal plants I'm good with, but that's also because my medicinal plants are mostly weeds and they don't require my help really. They just are like, you just seed us here and we'll just do our thing. And so I had this tomato plant that my dad had started and it was this beautifully healthy plant and like huge green leaves. It was so good.

I put it on my back deck and it continued to grow big, healthy green leaves and never grew a single tomato. And it was because in that location, as opposed to the front of my house, which has a lot more flowers around it, it's also more accessible to the other things. I have better light in my back yard, but it's also the back lane. And so my cedars are real happy, but because I had not realized, oh, I need to make sure that there are other pollinating resources here, the bees just never bothered showing up and because there was no food for them, which is reasonable.

And then as a result I had this incredibly healthy tomato plant that did not grow a single tomato. And it was like, oh shit. I need to make sure that I am assisting that the tomatoes ... well, yes. But assisting the bees and the other pollinators so that then the food actually gets pollinated and can grow. And it was just this really like hyper-focused example of what is happening on a broader scale where we are not prioritizing the pollinators and as a result, we're like, oh, wait, nothing's growing. No shit, nothing's growing.

melissa vanek: Yeah. I think exactly what you're describing is I feel like what bees like in a way is their main job right now. And that is helping us wake up to who we are. Like the bees, like a lot of people are like, save the bees. And it's actually no, the bees would be completely fine if left alone, it's really us that needs saving.

We need to remember and reconnect that we're a part of all of this too. Like it's, it doesn't happen over there to them or to those plants or to that world, it's this is us. We're all part of this. And so what happens on the earth, what we do to the earth we're doing to ourselves.

And so the bees are basically, to me, that invitation to show us where our relationship with nature can heal. And they're just so heart-opening intensely, where the love that they have for everything ... they just ooze love. And so if you start, when you start working with them, you just can't help, but be impacted by that.

And that's what opened up all of my other relationships, with the natural world. It was always there, but the deepening that happens once bees are like really showing you what love's about. It's wow. And to put themselves in a position to be like, if you, your food is your medicine, your food is going to be gone if you don't do these things.

It's not about, them saying, “Hey, save us the bees. We're showing you what this is, what's going to happen to all of you.” So again, that love that relationship that they have is just immense. [Chuckles.]

ash alberg: So how did you get started with bees?

melissa vanek: That's a funny question. My ... I came through a dream. I actually came through a dream. Although my mom would argue that it came at birth because the name Melissa actually means honeybee. And I was supposed to be, I was supposed to be a Melanie or maybe a Priscilla and, but they, I was supposed to be a Melanie and my mom said she literally couldn't sign the birth certificate.

And so she just, she's, things are whispering and Melissa and you had to be Melissa. So she's like, she had to then tell my dad later.

ash alberg: [Cackles.] By the way, we changed the name.

melissa vanek: Yeah, exactly. But I came through a dream, intense, like one more subconsciously about 12 years ago. I work with my dreams quite a bit and I jot things down in my dream book, which is right next to my bed.

And at one point I must've leaned over in the middle of the night and wrote down the words “bee box” and May 26 and didn't think anything of it. I guess I woke my husband up, which I never do, but I woke him up to tell him that, which I don't remember any of this. And I'm a light sleeper so like even the fact that I didn't remember it was weird.

So then that year I ended up actually purchasing a local bees, which I actually wouldn't, I wouldn't purchase bees the way I did then. Not that local is bad, I just mean the way I did it, my journey with bees has completely changed. But regardless I did at the time and I installed them into my hive and I was sitting there watching them and it's so exciting.

And my husband comes up next to me and he's, “So you did it, you got bees by May 26th,” and I'm like, it was May 24th or something. And I'm like, yeah, I did. I had no idea what he was talking about. And he's like, “Your dream.” And I'm like, what dream? He's, “Go check your dream book.”

So I go up there and I flipped through and I'm like, oh my god! [Laughs.] ash alberg: That's too funny. Oh my god.

melissa vanek: So yeah, that's what started it actually, was that dream somehow. Like it impacted me. And then they're like, here, come get us by the

26th.

ash alberg: I wonder what would've happened if you went on the 27th, like what ... there's like those things of ah, okay. I'm glad I did it, but like also, why was it important?

melissa vanek: Yeah. Yeah. And then you think of the numbers. I'm not, I love numerology, but I don't really know much about it, but then I'm like, maybe I should look up those numbers and figure it out.

ash alberg: What does this mean? Oh man. Okay. And so you've had bees since then.

melissa vanek: Yep. I've had bees since then, a big journey with them in terms of had some of the main issues in the beginning where a couple of winters that they wouldn't make it through. And I would just bawl. I was, I'm like, there's thousands of bees in this hive and they're dead.

Like I felt so horrible. I'm like, how did I'm responsible for this and I killed them. So I was like, I'm never having bees again, never. And I just put my hive on my porch, and I was going to clean it out cause they had died and I was gonna clean it all out. And I was like I put away all my bee stuff, all the bee groups, everything.

And then this wild group of bees moved in. They’re on my, it was on my porch. Like they were like literally, there was a hive on my porch next to my front door and I'm like what am I supposed to do now? And that's when my relationship with them fully opened up because I actually heard their message of, “Now listen to us.”

ash alberg: Right. Yeah.

melissa vanek: Do things our way. And don't ... put your books away, put everything away. It's all wrong anyway. So just listen to us. And I was like, hey, absolutely. And that's yeah, that's how it really began at that point.

ash alberg: That's so cool. It's fascinating. I've seen ... I personally have not raised any bees yet. There is like a really strong bee agriculture here, which I'm really grateful for, being able to access local honey all the time. Real fun.

Has been through my entire childhood. Like I remember being a small kid and going and being able to get like different flavored natural, like the, the honeys had the flavor from different crops, basically food sources, and learning just how extreme that can be when I tried barley honey one time and was like, oh shit, that was not what I was expecting.

And then literally, like I went and I bought like a large jar of it and then was like, fuck, now what do I do? [Melissa laughs.] It might still be in my parents' house actually. I think my dad might try and making it into some breads and that was still like, ooh, we're pushing it.

But yeah, like the seeing bees like wild bees and when they are just given ... I've seen folks who, not in person, but like photos and videos of folks who just create different structures for wild bees to then do whatever they need to and

the, I think, we're so used to seeing beehives, normal ones, that are beautiful and, but like just these basic boxes and so the honeycomb in them is like very structured and it's very like very organized.

And when you let wild bees do whatever the fuck they want it is, it's whole other level of like sculptural art that is happening.

melissa vanek: Absolutely. And the relationship, because there's a lot of ... I, I'm not even gonna use the word beekeepers anymore. Like the people who are actually in that trend of where the, our relationship with bees is going and moving forward, there's actually this like shift of what do we even call ourselves?

Are we bee guardians? Are we bee advocates? And we basically just keep ... everybody does their own thing. But the idea of rewilding is basically it. Rewilding the bees while we rewild ourselves. And so putting the bees into these structures, what you, like what you mentioned the normal beehive there, they're called Langstroth hive, and actually he was a beekeeper in Deerfield, Massachusetts, just north of me.

ash alberg: Oh, no way.

melissa vanek: And he developed them because he loved bees. I think actually, if he was around and he saw how we use the Langstroth hive and how it doesn't have the insulation that the bees need, it doesn't have places for them to use their propolis to make their immune system safe.

‘Cause they're a super organism. They are the cells of their body. And so when beekeepers are lifting up these frames within the beehive, the Langstroth beehive for example, it's part ... it's like taking up, like here's your womb, like here's your liver, and moving them around.

ash alberg: That is fucking wild. I never even thought of it, but that, yeah, that absolutely ... it's a very extractive process. It's fascinating because I don't have bees. I do intend on eventually having bees when I have more land. I currently live on like a postage stamp of land, basically.

So like the combo of having bees on any part of my land, which is the size of a postage stamp with also my dog just feel like a recipe for disaster. So when I

have more land, I do plan on having these or, guiding, hopefully helping some wild bees to come and hang out.

But just like even thinking of how do you do that? ‘Cause I live further north. Like our winters are fucking extreme. So to do that in a way where if you're not doing it at like a full on agricultural process and you are actually just trying to support the bees that are already in the environment to have a home that they can be safely through the years, how do you do that?

I never would have even thought of just that the bee boxes that we think of as being, this is what we use, are not actually designed to support the bees and to be supporting them long-term. That's wild. Not wild, the opposite of wild.

melissa vanek: Yeah. They're for the beekeeper. They’re for the beekeeper, that's all it is. Even how they breed the bees, they breed the traits that are good for beekeepers. Like more honey, but not aggressive, but it's actually the aggressive bees that are defending their territory that are allowed, when the queen bee goes up to the sun to go on her, what's called her mating flight, the drones, the males chase after her.

The fastest, most fittest, the ones with different types of genes, they'll mate with her, she'll mate with 3-10 drones and get all of the sperm that she needs for her life. And so she has all these different traits that are great for the survival of a hive but that's what the beekeepers are taking away from the hive is ...

ash alberg: Right.
melissa vanek: ... like these are the bees we want, this is what they're going to

look like. Can they survive all these other things? No. We'll just get new bees.

ash alberg: That's fucking wild. It is, I, my brain is just like, it's, this is my bad, but I like, that applied to other living things and even to plants, I'm like, yeah, for sure. That's, it's also why my, like my medicinal plants are ... my nettles are like, we are happy. We will do our own shit, but it's because I leave them to their own devices to do what they need.

And it's, the, there is like the natural, like selection of if you're meant to survive, you're gonna survive. And it's because you've got the genetic traits to support you in living in ... what is in my, I live in a really harsh climate. We go plus 35 in the summer, minus 40 in the winter. And it's very harsh.

And so for something to be able to survive that even with help does still require a certain level of resiliency. And to not be figuring out, okay, how do we support these beings in developing and maintaining that resiliency? And instead we just think, okay, if you don't make it and you die off, it's okay. We'll just do it again. We'll just grow something new. And/or we'll bring in new bees and like how extractive that is and how capitalist in mentality that is.

melissa vanek: And how short-term cause eventually ...
ash alberg: Absolutely! If that's all of the bees that we have then everybody is

fucked.
That is, wow. My whole brain. [Laughs.]

melissa vanek: Yeah, exactly. And the more, once you start learning about it, the more it opens you up to what's happening, the more your heart breaks ‘cause again it's showing us where we need to heal our relationship with earth again, with the mother. The bees will like, that like direct line to that mother earth, right?

And so they're like the heart. I always think of them like the heart chakra of the earth and ... or they're at least protectors of that, they’re heart fabric, maybe. Which you would probably like.

But yeah, they ... I think you really touched on it, right? There is that idea of what I think of as control. We have to let go of control. We can't think that we can control the environment. We can't think that we can control the bees, even our front yards.

Like I, I don't even call my yard a yard. My yard is a yarden because I just let it grow. And like you said, like the medicinals, they pop up everywhere once you stop mowing, and you might have to take some things here and there out just to ...

[Both talking at the same time.]

ash alberg: If your comfrey has decided to just completely take over, you do need to give it another space potentially.

melissa vanek: Right. So it's, again, it's working with, it's entering into relationship with and not controlling. And I think bees show us every instance

of where we try to control and are just kinda, “Hey, this is another opportunity for you.” [Ash laughs.]

ash alberg: Yeah.

melissa vanek: Look at this one! There's a big one right here.

ash alberg: That's so fascinating. Oh man. Sorry. My brain has just been like brr brr brr brr, ‘cause it is, I it's, I've been learning these lessons by deepening my relationships with plants over the time. And certainly also with, my dog just makes a point of teaching me lessons all the time, whether I want them or not.

But my plants are, depending on the plant, they are more subtle sometimes. And then also, like not. My nettles are a great example of ... they are such solid boundary buddies and I've actually planted them by my front gate very intentionally. But like even cultivating new seedlings of the nettles, like when I was getting ready to then be repotting them to help them grow, and if I wasn't paying attention, they would sting me.

And it was like, and I was always like, oh shit, sorry, my bad. I was never mad at the nettles. I was always proud of them for being like, very direct with their boundaries of “Hey, fuck you, you were not paying attention to me and you could have hurt me and so I'm going to hurt you instead.”

I'm like, yep. Got it. Noted. Thank you. Got it. And yeah, I love that about nettles because they are just so very blatant with their boundaries, whereas yarrow is a little bit more subtle. Still really good for boundaries, but not quite as aggressive about it and I like having the combo of them.

But yeah, there is that thing of regardless of what space we are living on, one of the things that I do love about bees is that you can keep them in urban environments. I am choosing not to just for mine and my dog's safety because my dog is not, my dog also is actually terrified of not of bees specifically, but we have really aggressive hornets and wasps around here.

And every year they seem to be getting more aggressive. And she's been stung a couple of times. And so literally, she'll see a fly. It doesn't even need to be a bumble. And like the bumbles I'm like, you're okay. Like they’re, if you don't fuck with them, they won't fuck with you. You're good. But whereas the hornets will like very aggressively, just be like, zzt. Like they go after her.

And so whenever she sees basically, any sort of flying raisin, as I refer to them, then she freaks out and tries to either hide behind you or tries to go inside. And so if I had a whole hive of those buddies trying to do their thing, I'd be terrorizing my dog and that's not fair. But there are some urban beekeepers that are also, they're like, try ... there's a part of it is educational.

All of this of course was pre-COVID, but they've, they're installing beehives on top of different buildings around the city to also then be like giving the bees safe spaces in an urban landscape so that they have home bases if they're not able to be building hives elsewhere within what is quite a large swath of land at this point.

But yeah, like thinking about what do they actually need beyond just okay, you've got the hive and so now you've got to, yes, it's out there during the summer, but then in the winter you have to figure out how are you wintering them? And not just that okay, we let that hive die and we'll just bring a new bees next year.

melissa vanek: Mhmm. Yeah, the evolution for again, those kinds of bee advocates, bee guardians that are out there, we're way past, like the, those hives. Like working with hives that are made, woven from like biodynamic rye, they're called sun hives. So that's one type of way like you can actually change the actual hive that they're in so that it supports them.

So even if you're still keeping them, you're keeping them at least in something that will support them. So these bio, the sun hives are literally woven with grass. So they're like two inches thick and it's woven grass. So it's like a good like insulator, especially in areas like where we are, where you are. They need that installation.

And because it's rough on the inside, it encourages them to propolyze and put those resins on the inside, which is not only good for their ... to stuff the cracks and make sure it's a nice and tight, but it's also their immunity. It literally keeps disease away.

Whereas the old Langstroth hives are totally smooth, so there's no reason to propolyze. In fact, it's harder to propolyze, so things like that, or even log hives are really that next step of evolution, because when you really think about that again, you're thinking about like the insulation that a tree can give the bees.

And then when you're talking about a being, a living being, this tree, which has lived its whole life in this landscape, which bees are really good about knowing the whole landscape, right? They know everything. They know when the flowers are in bloom, they know who's doing what, where the water is. They just, big mountains, the winds, they know it all.

But they'll find those perfect bee trees or it's in my mind, I always think of it as this tree being that like has lived its life. It's usually later in life, it’s experienced, it’s got all the good resins inside. It's, it's weathered, it's, it's got ... it's lived life, and it's just all of that magic and experience in it.

And then to have these bees move into the middle of it, into its hollow, into its heart, now you've got this amazing relationship of this living tree, these living bees, and the ... if you ever walk by these wild trees, these wild bee trees, it's like, you can't help but just feel like, wow, like the, again, that feeling of just like you get pringle, prickles all over you.

And it's just, it's a sense of ecstatic love. It's a sense of what we should be living like and what we can be living if we choose to live in harmony with, not control over.

ash alberg: Yes. Yeah. That makes so much sense.

Okay, so how did ... because the bees feel like they're like one very significant portion of your magic. What, like how did bees become part of, or did ... ‘cause you were saying like dream, dreams have always been really strong for you.

Like where's, what does your magic journey in your life feel like? What's the Coles notes of it?

melissa vanek: Yeah. So my, I started working with magic in high school. And I think I started with The Celestine Prophecy, reading that and just getting entered, like the idea of energy, like it was just like, oh, it's so exciting to me. [Laughs, Ash snorts.] And like you have to start somewhere.

ash alberg: Yeah, totally.

melissa vanek: And not just the idea of energy moving and I could, I could feel that, so it's like, all right.

And I stayed in that kind of learning about things and taking a bunch of different teachings in all these different places, very eccentric. But I feel like the bees took me from looking elsewhere and all these different journeys, and they were like, phoomp, they brought me right back to me and my heart.

And it's no, like we all have our own unique journeys, our own unique gifts and ways of looking at the world. And so they brought me back to me, I feel like. And so I started just, I started really small in terms of magic with them and working with rituals with them, just for their health.

I started oh, I'm doing this for you, and of course they're like probably laughing in their own way. Yeah, actually this is for you, but we’ll take it. You can pretend it’s for us.

ash alberg: [Giggles.] Yeah, you can pretend.

melissa vanek: And working with the little rituals and before I'd get a beehive in the land, I put my libations out on the land and I talk to the land and so they got me to open up to all of the magic beings that are all around and it's oh, actually that tree is like actually wanting to help with this. And oh, okay.

So the bees brought everything together in the way that they bring the landscape together. They know like miles, they have this radius from every beehive. Let's say five mile radius about, and they know it and then you've got other beehives. And so you think about all these connecting circles.

I always think if there's this beautiful web of love and they connect it all, and that's how you feel when you're working with them, you start to really learn your own landscape. And then you start to do rituals with that, and it's oh, I'm just going to walk the land with my drum, and oh, and then you start learning that actually bee priestesses in the ancient, they used these drums and they, that's how they worked with the energies and it represents the moon and the sun and the movement of the stars and birth.

And you realize wow, like these bees have been revered for millennia. And yet, it's only been the past hundred years that we've been like, we're going to put you in this box and this is what you're going to do.

ash alberg: Yeah.

melissa vanek: And look at where it took us.
ash alberg: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That is totally fascinating. Okay. Explain

more about the bee priestesses to me, please.

melissa vanek: Yeah, so back to that name Melissa again, if you go back ... let's say at least go back to kind of Greek times. We'll start there in a way, move backward, but because most of us at least know some Greek goddess names and things. And so when you think about names like Artemis or Diana or even go back a little further to Anatolia, like Cybele, or Rhea, Demeter, like these dames, or these goddesses, they're earth goddesses, right?

So they're responsible for not only the earth itself, but think about the fertility. And when you think about fertility, then you've got bees. You've got the land of milk and honey, right? So you ... bees have been a part of the idea of the goddess, the embodiment of the goddess for a long time. Back when goddesses, women, were revered for their life and death, they could give life and death.

And these bees, these bee priestesses, who actually would serve the goddesses, they were named ... or in some cases, Deborah, because Deborah’s the Hebrew name for it; Melissa’s the Latin and Greek name for these priestesses. And if you think about priestesses of a goddess, it totally makes sense that this goddess is going to be like the earth in a way herself, but then the ones that serve her, they're the bees.

ash alberg: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're like the worker bees that are ... yeah, yeah, yeah.

melissa vanek: Yeah. So that's just, where those bee priestesses came from. If you go back over time and it goes waaay back, you can look at some of the old, huge, the Venus goddesses, the Venus of Willendorf, like the huge breasts and think about her floating on the ocean. And she has what looks like this beehive on her head and, so it's yeah.

Milk and honey. The land of milk and honey. So those bees have always been there, but it's the frame drum, and the frame drum is that big round drum that's wider than it is thick. And they, the priestesses would use those to show the rhythms of the seasons, the rhythms of life.

They would lead the ceremonies with these drums. And it's like this resurgence of frame drum is coming back into being at the same time that this resurgence of

the love of bees is coming back into the mainstream. It's really interesting to watch them hand in hand to see how much is rising at the same time.

And it makes sense if you look around and the earth is, like we're hurting because the earth is hurting. And so all of these old tools are coming back and these old ways of being are coming back. So those priestesses are, those bee priestesses were the ones that actually led the ceremonies and were representations of the goddess.

ash alberg: So do bees exist around ... They must exist around the whole world, but just different species?

melissa vanek: Yes. Yes. And in fact, like one of, one of the, one of my evolutions in terms of working with bees is working with all of the bees, not just the apis mellifera, the honeybees, around. I find that there's a nice balance here and on my land with some honeybees and some of the, like the Mason bees, the orchard bees, the bumblebees, the carpenter bees, there's literally thousands.

There's I think over 2000, I don't know the exact number, but over 2000 types of bees in North America.

ash alberg: Wow! Wow!
melissa vanek: And we don't know, we don't know that. ash alberg: No! [Laughs.]

melissa vanek: I mean most people, it's like, “What? I thought there was like honeybees and bumblebees” and maybe some people know carpenter bees, but there's --

ash alberg: Yeah! I would like ... maybe five.

melissa vanek: And there's thousands! And so working by the best way, literally, to invite bee energy onto your land is to like, like you're doing, having your medicinals around and keeping it organic. That, between that and actually leaving your leaves over the winter so that there's places for ... some bees actually will live under the leaves or live in the dead stems that are dead. That you can, if you can, you wait until the end of, the beginning of ...

ash alberg: Of the spring season to chop ...
melissa vanek: ... the springtime, like when it's 50 degree weather and stuff,

then you cut them because they've moved out by then. ash alberg: Ah, ha. It's so interesting ...
melissa vanek: So there's a block. Yeah.

ash alberg: Like even just in terms of, like I'm a natural dyer and especially, and I specialize in natural dyeing with local plants, which involves a lot of foraging and one of the things that a lot of newbie dyers will do is they'll be like, oh, I want to dye things, dandelions work and they'll just immediately start collecting dandelions as soon as they pop up.

And a big part of my teaching when I'm teaching new dyers is if you are working with foraged plants ... if you're working with your own garden, you will learn those rhythms. But if you are working with foraged plants, you have to build a relationship with those plants before you start extracting them, because you need to understand what the impact of you removing those from the ecosystem is going to have.

And once you've spent enough time recognizing that, then you'll realize oh, wait, if I take the dandelions right at the beginning of them popping up, yeah, they're there, but there's no other food resources. You have to wait. And depending on the season, it may be that by the time the other blooms have appeared, the dandelions have passed the point where you can be using them in your dye pots.

And that just means that's a year where you don't use them in your dye pots, and you just have to be okay with that. Because also the amount of dandelions you need to get a decent dye result on basically anything bigger than a doily or like a tiny mini skein of yarn is huge. Like you're talking like six times the amount of per weight of whatever you are dyeing, which dandelions are not that heavy, it takes a shit ton.

It's like learning to be in relationship with all of the beings. And so that was my like main way of understanding pollinators and being in relation with them. And then it expanded over to like goldenrod for us is, we've got multiple species of goldenrod, but between the late summer blooms and the early fall blooms,

goldenrod is one of the few pollinator food sources that kind of covers that gap in between the two.

And so again, same thing, like you can't go responsibly harvesting that during that gap time, because you're impacting everything. And if the pollinators don't have food, that's, you can potentially be fucking over the whole ecosystem right before the end of growing season and right before hibernation time.

But I, yeah, I guess I just, I hadn't thought yet about how it goes beyond that and how it's even broader than that.

melissa vanek: Yeah. And thank you for doing that. Thank you for teaching those that are starting out with dyeing to do that. And because I think you're like the excitement of doing something can overcome that. And so it's that slowing down and learning to listen that again, in this case it was pollinators for you, that kind of helped you see that.

And that's exactly, again, one of those places where the bees can point and say, are you in healthy relationship here or not? In your case, you are, and that's wonderful and that's, they, it's not, “don't use this, don't use that ever.” It's like, how do we work together so it benefits everyone?

And so you're stepping into that healthy relationship by doing that, which means like what I call you're looking at it with bee eyes. It's the eyes of love and the eyes of looking at that whole landscape and the seasons there. So you're doing that and there's always more to learn, right?

There's always, all these new things. Like I learn something new every day. And ...

ash alberg: And I feel since I've started growing my gardens, that I'm, I like each year as I build more relationships with plants individually, then it also is building in a broader relationship with, within the wider world. Like for me, my, my way in, it does seem to be through plants primarily, but it's, I'm sure that when I end up on different land, that there will then be even further learnings as I then am building more relationships with even more plants and with ... because also I think when we're, especially when we're in urban environments and especially when you're in urban environments where you have some access to land.

If you're in an apartment or a condo or something like that, then you're needing to naturally cultivate your little mini ecosystems, but when you are on a small piece of land that is still in an urban environment, then you're often like inheriting whatever people did before you were then taking care of that chunk of land. And a lot of the time it's people, especially up until recently there's been this kind of generation or two of people having like very specific grass only, and like only a couple of versions of grass, species of grass lawns, and then some annual flowers.

Potentially you might have some perennials, but often those are more what people consider weeds. And then, if you have some trees, but people often seem to separate out the trees from then the rest of the land that they ... because the tree is they do their own thing, and if they are established trees, you're not needing to baby them in the necessarily the same way that you are caring for other plants all the time. Although that also is complicated and maybe we should be caring for our trees a little bit more intentionally.

But yeah. It's interesting I think where, once we start to tune in a little bit more, then you start to realize just like how much, even in like a backyard or in a front yard that there's actually so much happening and so much ... like it's its own mini ecosystem that is then tied into the broader ecosystems and the web goes further out from there. Yeah.

melissa vanek: Yeah and there's just so much that you can do. Like you said, there's so much happening. So there's so much of an impact that you can have even on your small little plot of land and so much to connect to. Even if you had nothing growing, even just the soil itself, like what can be done?

We've taken out so many nutrients from the soil. Like even things that people think are weird, like putting your menstrual blood out on your land, like those types of things are ways that it had been done in the past. And it actually served a purpose. Yes, you can do it ceremonial, but even forget that, you're actually just adding some nutrients back into the soil.

There's just so many different levels and you can choose on which level you want to connect with it.

ash alberg: That, all of this is just making my brain go in so many directions, especially cause it's winter, but I also feel like this winter is going really quickly

and so I'm already starting to think about my plants for, and my gardens for the spring, despite the fact that we have really short growing season.

Sorry, my brain. So how has this magic kind of impacted your work then? And then I guess also like maybe pre-pandemic and now during pandemic, like how has that kind of taken shape?

melissa vanek: Yeah, I'd say before the pandemic it really got me to spending a lot more time with the land and really learning the land which led into the pandemic. So it basically allowed me to have that connection established so that it helped keep me sane during 2020.

And I had my visual map of all the trails here and I'm lucky enough to have trails out back. There's a ridgeline and, so I can go and visit. Like I actually now have a relationship with a mountain. I never really realized, I always think of a tree or a plant or an animal. And then I'm like, oh, I guess the mountain’s actually talking too. [Laughs.]

ash alberg: Mhmm. Yeah, totally.

melissa vanek: And the river. Oh, I didn't even think that the river, oh, hi! So it really just opened it up. So for that year of 2020, it's more than a year now, but it really just allowed that to fully blossom.

And so the, where the magic is taking me now is co-creating different products and journeys that kind of have to do with how everybody's on their own journey. So what are ways that having gone through my own journey, like the hermit in a way of tarot, it's no, I don't want, I want, I don't want someone telling me what to do so what are the things that I've done that could help shine a light for somebody else?

Not tell them what to do, but like this is what helped me. Maybe you get some inspiration from that and you and that'll help you on your path and, so that's where the magic is taking me and where I try to put my intentions for magic.

ash alberg: Side note, do you ... do you, and/or would you consider selling products with the, like either beeswax and/or honey from the bees that you are a guardian of? Like, how does that relationship feel to you?

melissa vanek: That's changed for me over time as well. And I actually, I don't take honey from the bees. I ... the only honey that I ever at this point take from

bees are from hives, the colonies that have passed and it's their time to move on. And so I may take some product from that to work with either ceremonially or make small products again, along these lines of like how to inspire people.

And same with the wax. I really, I don't take a lot of wax at all, even from the ones that have passed, because it's again, that body of the hive and what ends up happening is other things tend to change it and transform it. And either new bees will move in and they'll make it their home and kind of revitalize it and use the organs in a way that were there, and ... or the bones, I should say, that were there and they put their organs into it.

So I tend to use honey now ... I used to use honey a lot more and now I use it very, when you think about actually how much work went into to make one little spoonful of honey, like one eighth of a teaspoon is like one bee’s whole life, so if you think about that, and it's wow. I think of it as a medicine now. And I don't think of it as a food, so I, I take it medicinally and ‘cause there is still a gift.

Again, it's not that, “don't use this ever and don't use this ever.” It's again, how can we use it in ways that are beneficial for everybody so that we can keep that healthy relationship that's not built on either greed or short-sightedness or control, like those are the things that it's okay, how do we move away from that?

ash alberg: Yeah, I love that a lot. So what is something that you wish you'd been told when you were younger about magic and ritual and witchcraft? It sounds like your mom was pretty open to the fact that like you've had a calling in your whole life. But if you can think back to like your younger self, what do you wish you'd been told explicitly?

melissa vanek: I wish I was told from the beginning that the magic is just being yourself and really spending the time listening to yourself. I really feel like it took me a long time to not look out there and not look for like that teacher or if I could just find that one teacher, I feel like I could ... at the same time, it brought me to where I am with all those tidbits, so I'm not I'm not regretful and I feel like I probably could have saved some time.

ash alberg: Yeah.

melissa vanek: And it's, and I feel like with the climate changing and everything that's happening, the political realm and all these different things

coming at you. I feel like the earlier, the earlier we can all learn this the better off we all are.

So to save time, I wish I knew that. Like just really just truly listen to who you are and like let yourself flower, bloom.

ash alberg: It's so funny ‘cause I, I think, as I think of like kids and honeybees, kids actually are like super in tune with that shit usually. And then there's, we reach a certain age and we start to lose it. And then it's like needing to come back to those things that we knew when we were little.

melissa vanek: Absolutely. And yet, and exactly we learn ... like I, I did the same thing with spiders. I loved spiders. I played with them all the time. And then I remember one time watching my mom scared of a spider and he couldn't have it on her. And I took on that fear from that point for a long time until I worked with tarantulas, honestly.

ash alberg: [Gags.] Sorry, my whole body just went ... this is so funny because I, like I've had more than one person, but there's one dear one in particular. I remember them being like ... ‘cause I, I, that is the reaction I have, especially to like large spiders, but like spiders in general.

My thing is that I fear them because they are too smart and the scuttling, I, nyeh, I can't do it, but my friend was like, “You realize how witchy they are and they are weavers. They are literally fiber witches,” like, why, I don't, I'm like, I know that I should have a better relationship with them. I am fucking terrified. [Laughs.]

melissa vanek: I get it. I totally say I had arachnophobia, for real. I get it. And if and when you're ever ready ...

ash alberg: Yeah. [Laughs.]
melissa vanek: ... and want to work on that relationship, I would suggest rose

hair tarantulas ash alberg: Okay.

melissa vanek: And that, literally it, I can't believe it. I wouldn't have guessed it. It took me two months. Actually, my partner at the time had one. [Laughs.]

ash alberg: Okay. Fuck. [Laugh-snorts.]
melissa vanek: I know! I had to, I made him put five bricks on top of the ...

[Laughs.]
ash alberg: So they can’t just like sneak out of it ... a hundred percent!

melissa vanek: I thought it was going to push them up and come out and get me.

[Both talking at the same time.]

ash alberg: Yup. Yup. This is the thing they're so smart. They're so ...

melissa vanek: I know! [Ash laughs.] But it took me two months and I actually got to the point I could hold it, and in my past life, when I was a environmental educator and I was teaching children, kindergarten through high schoolers ...

ash alberg: Yeah.

melissa vanek: ... I ended up having to, I taught them about the little girl who used to be scared of spiders, so I could see a lot of them like, ooh. And it's interesting, the fears that get passed along, or you can help people get rid of those fears early on.

ash alberg: Absolutely. Like I think that's a big part of it. I don't recall either of my parents ... I don't recall either of my parents explicitly being scared of spiders. I remember always being scared of spiders. There was like one brief chunk of my life where I wasn't, and then something happened.

I think it's that they always surprise me and I'm not prepared for them. And that's the thing. And every once in a while, I'll have a slightly better relationship with one spider in particular and like, I'll give it a name. We'll develop some boundaries with each other. We have a conversation, but it still is a thing that I have not figured out how to undo that visceral reaction of “oh fuck.” [Laughs.]

melissa vanek: Yup. Yup. And like you said, it's the same thing with bees, right? We're so, we love them, and look at them on the flower! And then at some point, oh, watch out for the bee, watch out, don't, be careful!

And so then you start doing this and the bees are, and so then that relationship shifts, and then it's fear, then there's fear and that's exactly right. Then we have to come back to that and relearn that. And rewild, I really think it's about rewilding ourselves.

ash alberg: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. It's true. It's funny ‘cause I have a way more patience, I don't think is the right word ... way more capacity to give spiders their space when I am outdoors, because I recognize that it is their space and that if I am, like the spiders that decide that they're going to grow in my plants, I'm like, eh, I don't appreciate this and also technically, yes, this is your space.

And I am the one who's trying to harvest this plant and you have made a home with it. And so I'm the one who's fucking that up. It's like inside, a whole other scenario. And I'm trying to become ... that's where I like try to have rational conversations with some of them and then other ones I'm like, no, we're not having a rational conversation. Not happening. [Melissa giggles.]

melissa vanek: Yeah.

ash alberg: But man. But I appreciate that, where it is a fear and it's actually like a really great basic analogy for fucking everything. Where it's fear is then what causes us to have these really violent, honestly ... I am not kind to the spiders when I am scared of them.

And it, we have very violent responses of trying to protect ourselves when rather than learning how to be in communion and determining, do we actually need to be protecting ourselves in this moment? Sometimes we do. A lot of times we don't.

melissa vanek: And sometimes, honestly, sometimes it can be a gift. The medicine that's given from venom, for example.

ash alberg: Yep, that's true.

melissa vanek: There's a lot of people that I know that have had major problems with different diseases that have worked specifically with bees. And I don't mean even necessarily going to officially get apitherapy bee stings, but like literally out in the wild and it's, I have really bad arthritis here. And working with the bees, it's like, where do you get stung? But exactly there.

ash alberg: Yep. It's like nettles, same thing.

melissa vanek: And they show ... yeah, exactly. Sometimes we need that sting medicine, that venom that might just be exactly, it might be a gift that we're like no. [Laughs.] But we need it.

ash alberg: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh man, this, ah, this conversation is just getting me so excited for when things are not under a blanket of snow and also making me think okay, let's on the next dog walk, seeing what things are hanging out in the snow.

So what what's next for you?

melissa vanek: Yeah, what's next for me? I really have been diving deep into listening and with the space that's been created from the pandemic, it's supported that so, which works out really well. And so putting forward, I think putting forward the journeys, I think, for me and figuring out the best ways that what the bees kind of have guided me towards, how I can put that out there in a way to support others on their own journeys.

In some of what, I do work with some plant medicine as well. And which makes sense, working with the bees, not to the same level that you do, I'm sure. But I, I love paying attention to where the bees are in location to which plants are in full bloom and which ones are being shined on by Venus.

These guys are in love right now, Venus is over here. And ‘cause I do, I think of the bees as the reproductive system of the plants, right? So ... or many of them anyway. Not all require, but ...

So yeah, I, some plant medicines that are out there and some journeys I think are where my attention is going in the next phases. Where that will lead me down the road, I'm thinking of, I'm thinking of a larger farm type area where ... ‘cause I also have some rescued animals as well. So rescued animals, medicinal plants, bees, have my own ... I have that here and I need a little bit more space that's not in the mountains. [Giggles.]

ash alberg: Yep. Where there's that very physical limitation of this, this is how far you can go. [Laughs.]

melissa vanek: Exactly, exactly.

Yeah. So yeah, like just the land where I should be, and listening to that.

ash alberg: I love that. Cool. Thank you. I feel like my brain has had a whole bunch of revelations during this chat. [Snorts.]

melissa vanek: Yeah. That's what the bees do. They do! Between your mind and your heart, it’s like ...

ash alberg: Yes. I've, my body is like processing some stuff and then my brain is going in a bunch of other directions and it’s ...

melissa vanek: Yes. Yeah. I get that.
ash alberg: Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Thank you. I appreciate that.

[Upbeat music plays.] You can find full episode recordings and transcripts at snortandcackle.com. Just click on podcast in the main menu. Follow Snort and Cackle on Instagram @snortandcackle and join our seasonal book club with @SnortandCackleBookClub. Don't forget to subscribe and review the podcast by your favorite podcasting platform.

Editing provided by Noah Gilroy, recording and mixing by Ash Alberg, music by Yesable.