Here's a New One! Entomophagy!

Entomophagy is the practice of eating insects. A person wrote to me to enquire about what I thought about this practice. It was something to ponder...Food for thought, as they say!

Perhaps in the future our culture will embrace this practice as people do in many places around the world. I am not against it, but, as you can imagine....probably something I would not do with honeybees!

Here is the letter and my response. Thank you for sending us your letter W. It definitley helped me come to a deeper understanding about my feelings for the honeybee!

Hello,

I just came across your website and wanted to write. Your work excites me and relates to my longtime interest in insects and my curiosity about honey bees. I am particularly moved by your appreciation of the sacred aspects of honey bees and how they can be a source of wisdom.

I have not kept bees but I want to. I have been looking for a class to take or someone I could mentor with.

As I mentioned, I have had a long-time love of insects and have studied them for years. One interest of mine is quite unusual, though, entomolophagy, eating insects. For the past ten years, insects have been about a third of my diet, including meal worms, grasshoppers (called chapulines in southern Mexico where I first learned to appreciate them as a food), and especially crickets. I had some roasted honey bee larvae years ago, before I became a entomolophage, and I liked I a great deal.

I think there is a link between your interest in the spiritual side of beekeeping and mine in entomolophagy. I believe that by eating insects, in this case the larvae of the honey bee, we take their spirit into our bodies and their wisdom into our souls. This is just a theory, but I want to learn to keep bees so that I can practice it.

Do you have any thoughts on the matter? ~W

My Response:

Hello W!,

This is certainly one of the more unusual emails I have come across in this business!

I understand your diet choice of entomolophagy, it may even be a responsible and sustainable protein source for the future. After a removal of drone bridge comb, a student of mine chomped heartily into a gooey segment, like a Dagwood sandwich! He had learned to eat insects in Japan and tried comb there if I remember correctly. Emboldened by his enthusiasm and with my anthropological curiosity (and "try anything once" attitude) and primarily as a way to understand more deeply the human relationship with the honeybee. I tried it myself, The experience was profound on many levels and unique depsite my experimentation with fish eggs, snails, rattlesnake and crocodile and some questionable mammal meats during travels to Morrocco and Peru, That being said...

As a Sacred Beekeeper I do not condone taking from the Hive. Honeybees are sacrosanct to me as are all their products. I take only small portions of the Hive Products for ceremonial purposes.. You are right to see eating of these beings would be an act of imbibing their spirit and wisdom. However, It is even more true that spending time in service to them and taking nothing would offer the true gifts of their wisdom and spirit. Creation of their forage and spending time in deep contemplation and observation of their bee-ing will grant the most of their true Wisdom and Spirit. I would encourage you to look at this creature as a Holy One in this challenging era for all insects, most especially our precious pollinators.

I would never advocate adopting honeybees as a food choice when their very existence is in such deep peril. To teach this as a practice, or encourage it in any way is like suggesting we fry eagle eggs for breakfast (imho.) This is not a judgement on your question rather something I invite you to ponder, if you are indeed interested in the spiritual aspects of entomolophagy and the Honeybee.

If you are to eat honeybee larvae and you would like to do it ethically and cleanly, as you seem to express, then you must never eat the female, you must never eat in winter or spring and you must choose only a small amount (maybe the size of a deck of playing cards) of Drone Comb toward the end of peak swarm season; say late june or July in the temperate zone. To truly respect them and receive their wisdom and spirit you must at least honor these prohibitions. (This season would also be the peak of energetics of the Drone brood yet when they are less needed for procreation.)

I offer this as a prohibition for humans diet choices are secondary to the Sacred and endangered Work that our honeybees are doing. Like all animal husbandry and hunting, there are seasons and we never take the mothers. We also do not take from the endangered. Ethical hunters protect their prey. If you do not know what a Drone is, please refrain from eating of Her until you have a deep understanding. All sister bees in the hive are extensions of the mother. They care for the needs of the colony and all are needed. Especially in these ravaged times.

Please hear me: When you eat of the bee, any part of the bee, you are eating a part of her body, honey included. The wax is her bones, the larvae is her developing brain, the brood is her womb, the honey is her winter dream, poetry and song. To take from her must be done with the utmost reverence and very conservatively. We must ask permission and do not take if she says no.

Thank you for asking these questions and you will truly receive Blessings if you honor these principles I am sharing with you.

To best receive Honeybee Spirit and Wisdom, First serve, honor and feed Her.

If you choose to eat of Her Larval body: ask first and take only small portion of Drone Comb at peak season. Ask in Prayer, Leave an Offering

Afterthoughts:

In re-reading these letters, I am taken into an even deeper awareness of my own biases and my own taking of plant and animal life for my own consumption. I turn to the mirror and ask myself this: isn't this how we should take all food? In deep honoring revernece in communion, with conscious and informed ethics?

I am humbled by this^ teaching and in reverence of Creator for the ways this message has been presented to me.

A-Ho, All My Relations.

Thank you for asking these questions reader, Mr W.. It has been wonderful to ponder.

(Here is an article from an entomophagous blogger. Some great points! /edibug.wordpress.com//the-ethics-of-entomophagy/

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