Latest / Old Ways New Days / The Honey Moon: Bees, Roses, and the Sweetness of the Gathered Year

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The Honey Moon: Bees, Roses, and the Sweetness of the Gathered Year · Old Ways New Days

0:00
SPEAKER_01: There is a sweetness that comes only in June, not the sharp green sweetness of early spring, the first tastes of life returning.
0:08
SPEAKER_01: This is something deeper, something earned.
0:11
SPEAKER_01: This is the sweetness of fullness, of the bloom that was finally fully opened, of the hive heavy with the work of a thousand small wings, of the rose that no longer holds back.
0:27
SPEAKER_01: Listen and you can hear it.
0:30
SPEAKER_01: The low golden hum that lives beneath the long June days, the sound of the world working its sweetness into being.
0:39
SPEAKER_01: This is the season our ancestors called the honey moon.
0:44
SPEAKER_01: Not a metaphor, a memory.
0:47
SPEAKER_01: A time of year so abundant, so ripe with gathered sweetness that it gave its name to the tender beginning of every union since.
0:56
SPEAKER_01: Today we step into that golden hum, the lore of the bee, the mystery of the rose, and the sacred labor of the hive, and the ancient understanding that sweetness is never given freely.
1:09
SPEAKER_01: It is gathered, tended, earned through devotion.
1:13
SPEAKER_01: Welcome, witches, pagans, heathens, spiritualists, and anyone interested in living sustainably.
1:19
SPEAKER_00: This is Old Ways, New Days, where the old ways meet the good dirt.
1:25
SPEAKER_00: I'm Kayla, and I'm Nell.
1:27
SPEAKER_00: And each week we explore the sacred art of living close to the land.
1:32
SPEAKER_00: From compost to covens, chickens to charms, we're reclaiming self-sufficiency, seasonal living, and ancestral wisdom.
1:40
SPEAKER_01: Whether you're stirring your cauldron or your soup pot, this is a space for wild-hearted folk walking the homesteading path with intention, magic, and muddy boots.
2:27
SPEAKER_01: So this is also being recorded and published on the same day and later than usual, so I apologize.
2:35
SPEAKER_01: This is Kayla, so I want to welcome any new listeners and all of our regular listeners back to yet another episode of Old Ways New Days.
2:47
SPEAKER_01: It is the month of June.
2:49
SPEAKER_01: It is raining finally outside.
2:53
SPEAKER_01: So you may hear some rain hitting the windows in the background.
2:57
SPEAKER_01: A little ambiance, I guess.
3:05
SPEAKER_01: So this rain is very much needed.
3:08
SPEAKER_01: It was like swimming through the air earlier this week with 100% humidity.
3:13
SPEAKER_01: So it's nice that the rain is cutting that down drastically, and I can survive in my garden.
3:22
SPEAKER_01: So we are talking about um honey and moon, the honeymoon, um, which traditionally, you know, people r uh consider associated with marriage.
3:36
SPEAKER_01: And since I am engaged and I just had my weekend with uh my entire bridal party, uh trying on dresses and having a wonderful girls' day, uh, which was a blast.
3:50
SPEAKER_01: So we'll check in with Nell about that uh next time she is able to make it.
3:57
SPEAKER_01: Um but yeah, so I'll just uh hop into the episode, I guess, um, since it's kind of boring just to listen to me talk to myself.
4:07
SPEAKER_01: Alright.
4:09
SPEAKER_01: So the honeymoon, which is older than romance.
4:13
SPEAKER_01: We think we know what a honeymoon is.
4:16
SPEAKER_01: A trip, a celebration after a wedding, a modern indulgence.
4:21
SPEAKER_01: But the word is far older than the holiday industry and far stranger.
4:27
SPEAKER_01: The quote unquote honeymoon reaches back to a time when mead, fermented honey wine, was the drink of celebration, of oaths and of unions.
4:41
SPEAKER_01: In old northern European custom, a newly joined couple was given enough mead to last one full moon cycle, one moon of honey, one moon of sweetness to bind the beginning.
4:54
SPEAKER_01: But the deeper root runs through the bee herself.
4:59
SPEAKER_01: To the ancients, the bee was no ordinary creature.
5:03
SPEAKER_01: She was a messenger between worlds.
5:06
SPEAKER_01: The Egyptians believed bees were born from the tears of the sun god Ra, falling to the earth and become golden winged life.
5:15
SPEAKER_01: To the Greeks, the priestesses of Demeter and Artemis were called Milisae, the bees, keepers of sacred mystery and the sweetness of the divine.
5:27
SPEAKER_01: In old folk practice across Europe, there was the custom of telling the bees.
5:33
SPEAKER_01: When a death occurred in the household, someone would go to the hives and whisper the news.
5:38
SPEAKER_01: When a marriage came, the bees were told.
5:41
SPEAKER_01: When joy or sorrow visited, the bees must know.
5:48
SPEAKER_01: Or they would leave and take the household's luck and sweetness with them.
5:53
SPEAKER_01: The bee was family.
5:56
SPEAKER_01: The bee was Oracle.
5:58
SPEAKER_01: The bee was the small humming priestess of the abundant world.
6:03
SPEAKER_01: And June, when the hives run full and the flowers offer everything, was her holy season.
6:12
SPEAKER_01: Step close to a hive in June and you witness something our ancestors understood as deeply spiritual.
6:19
SPEAKER_01: The hive is not chaos, it is order.
6:23
SPEAKER_01: Devotion.
6:24
SPEAKER_01: A community moving as one body toward one purpose, the gathering and keeping of sweetness for the lean times to come.
6:34
SPEAKER_01: Each bee lives a short, blazing life of work.
6:38
SPEAKER_01: She does not labor for herself.
6:41
SPEAKER_01: The honey she makes, she will likely never taste.
6:45
SPEAKER_01: She works for the hive, for the future, for those who come after.
6:50
SPEAKER_01: There is no individual glory in the hive.
6:53
SPEAKER_01: There is only the whole.
6:55
SPEAKER_01: To our forebears, Celtic, Slavic, Norse, and beyond, this was a teaching.
7:02
SPEAKER_01: The hive showed what reverent community looked like, each one tending their part, no labor wasted, the sweetness of the whole greater than any single life.
7:14
SPEAKER_01: And consider the alchemy of it.
7:17
SPEAKER_01: A bee visits a flower and takes nectar, thin, watery, fleeting.
7:23
SPEAKER_01: Through her own body, through patience, through the warmth of the hive and the beating of countless wings, that nectar is transformed, thickened, made golden, made to last.
7:38
SPEAKER_01: This is the oldest mystery that sweetness is not found.
7:44
SPEAKER_01: It is made through devotion, through transformation, through the willingness to carry something raw within yourself and slowly turn it into gold.
7:57
SPEAKER_01: The bee teaches what no quick season can, that the sweetest things in life are gathered drop by drop and kept through faithful labor.
8:09
SPEAKER_01: What in your life are you slowly turning to gold?
8:17
SPEAKER_01: If the bee is the keeper of June's sweetness, the rose is its open heart.
8:23
SPEAKER_01: The rose has been sacred for longer than written memory.
8:27
SPEAKER_01: To the Romans she belonged to Venus, goddess of love made flesh.
8:31
SPEAKER_01: To the medieval mystics, she became the rose of the virgin, the flower of divine love blooming in the human heart.
8:40
SPEAKER_01: In the Sufi tradition, the rose is the beloved, her thorns and her beauty inseparable, for no true love comes without its piercing.
8:50
SPEAKER_01: But notice what the rose actually does in June.
8:55
SPEAKER_01: For weeks she holds tight, a bud, closed, protected, full of potential, but withholding herself.
9:03
SPEAKER_01: And then when the warmth is deep enough and the light is long enough, she opens, not partially, fully.
9:11
SPEAKER_01: She gives her scent to the air, her petals to the wind, her nectar to the bee.
9:17
SPEAKER_01: She holds nothing back, even knowing the bloom is brief, even knowing the petals will fall.
9:23
SPEAKER_01: This is the courage the rose teaches in her season.
9:27
SPEAKER_01: The courage to open fully, because the bloom is brief, not in spite of it.
9:34
SPEAKER_01: And the thorns?
9:36
SPEAKER_01: The old wisdom never asked the rose to only be soft.
9:40
SPEAKER_01: The thorn is not the rose's failure, it is her sovereignty.
9:44
SPEAKER_01: She opens her heart and keeps her boundary.
9:47
SPEAKER_01: She is tender and she is defended.
9:49
SPEAKER_01: She gives her sweetness freely and still she protects her roots.
9:54
SPEAKER_01: There is a teaching here our culture forgets that softness and strength are not opposites, that you can open your heart fully and still keep your thorns.
10:05
SPEAKER_01: That to love openly does not mean to be defenseless.
10:10
SPEAKER_01: The rose is both.
10:12
SPEAKER_01: She always has been.
10:16
SPEAKER_01: There is a quiet ache that lives in many of us, and June presses on it.
10:22
SPEAKER_01: We are taught to gather, to produce, to work like the bee, and we do this well.
10:30
SPEAKER_01: But we are not always taught to taste.
10:34
SPEAKER_01: How many of us labor and labor, fill our hives with sweetness, and never once sit down to enjoy the honey?
10:42
SPEAKER_01: How many of us hold ourselves closed like a bud long past its season, protected, productive, but never fully open?
10:53
SPEAKER_01: The psychology work the psychological work of the honeymoon season is the work of allowing sweetness in.
11:04
SPEAKER_01: This is harder than it sounds.
11:06
SPEAKER_01: To receive sweetness you must believe you deserve it.
11:10
SPEAKER_01: To open like the rose you must risk the falling of your petals.
11:15
SPEAKER_01: To taste the honey, you must stop, even for a moment, in a world that tells you to keep gathering.
11:24
SPEAKER_01: There is a grief here too.
11:27
SPEAKER_01: The grief of all the sweetness we have refused, the compliments deflected, the rest postponed, the love held at arm's length because opening felt too dangerous.
11:40
SPEAKER_01: The honey moon does not ask you to work harder.
11:44
SPEAKER_01: The bee already works hard enough for all of us.
11:47
SPEAKER_01: It asks for something gentler and far more difficult.
11:53
SPEAKER_01: Can you let yourself be nourished by what you have already made?
11:58
SPEAKER_01: Can you taste your own honey?
12:03
SPEAKER_01: The old ways were sensory.
12:06
SPEAKER_01: Our ancestors did not separate the spiritual from the tasted, the smelled, the touched.
12:13
SPEAKER_01: To work with the season was to fill your hands and your home with its gifts.
12:21
SPEAKER_01: Rose so herbs and flowers of the season.
12:25
SPEAKER_01: Rose, love, the open heart, beauty, sacred, boundary.
12:29
SPEAKER_01: Petals dried for tea, scattered on altars, steeped in honey or oil, the heart flower of the season.
12:37
SPEAKER_01: Lavender bees beloved by bees, calming, purifying, a bridge between the sweetness of June and the rest of the and the rest the body craves, hung in doorways, tucked into linens.
12:54
SPEAKER_01: Chamomile, gentle, golden, soothing, the flower of ease and of letting sweetness settle, a tea for those who have forgotten how to rest.
13:07
SPEAKER_01: Bee balm, also known as Minarda, as its name promises a beacon for pollinators, used in old folk medicine for the throat and the spirit, a plant of vitality and welcome.
13:21
SPEAKER_01: Elderflower, blooming in creamy clusters in June, sacred to the old elder mother of folklore, made into cordials and wines, a plant of protection and abundance, never cut without asking the elder mother's lip leave, the old one said Foods of the season.
13:44
SPEAKER_01: Sweetness gathered and shared honey, of course, the keystone drizzled, baked, fermented into mead, the taste of the season itself early stone fruits, cherries, apricots, the first blush of summer's bounty, fresh cream and soft cheeses, the riches richness of well fed herds at the height of the grass, edible flowers, rose, elder flower, borage, bringing the bloom directly to the table, mead or honey wine, the ancestral drink of union and celebration if you partake.
14:28
SPEAKER_01: Colours of the honeymoon include gold, honey, sunlight, the long warm evenings, the alchemy of the hive, deep rose and blush pink, the open heart, tender love, the rose in flu full bloom, soft cream and amber, warm richness, the glow of beeswax candlelight, warm green, the buzzing fertilefulness of the June garden.
14:57
SPEAKER_01: Wear them, light a beeswax candle, set roses on your table.
15:02
SPEAKER_01: Let the season's colors remind you all day long that this is the time to be open and to be nourished.
15:11
SPEAKER_01: The honeymoon season is not about gathering more.
15:15
SPEAKER_01: It is about tasting what you have already gathered.
15:18
SPEAKER_01: This might look like slowing down to enjoy, sitting with your morning tea instead of drinking it on the move, eating one meal a day with full intention, letting a moment be enough.
15:33
SPEAKER_01: Receiving without deflecting.
15:35
SPEAKER_01: When someone offers you love, help, or praise, let it land, saying thank you and nothing more.
15:44
SPEAKER_01: Let yourself be nourished.
15:47
SPEAKER_01: Because to be honest, we don't do this enough.
15:52
SPEAKER_01: Tending the pollinators of your life, the people, places, and practices that bring you sweetness.
15:58
SPEAKER_01: Are you protecting them?
16:00
SPEAKER_01: Are you making space for them to thrive?
16:05
SPEAKER_01: Opening fully where it is safe.
16:07
SPEAKER_01: Not everywhere, not to everyone, but somewhere.
16:12
SPEAKER_01: Letting yourself bloom like the rose, sent given to the air, heart unguarded, in the right and trusted place.
16:20
SPEAKER_01: And like the rose, keeping your thorns where you need them.
16:25
SPEAKER_01: Sweetness is not the same as having no boundaries.
16:29
SPEAKER_01: The most generous people are often those who guard their roots more most carefully, so they have something real to give.
16:37
SPEAKER_01: The bee teaches discernment in this too.
16:40
SPEAKER_01: She does not visit every flower.
16:42
SPEAKER_01: She knows which blooms hold nectar and which are empty.
16:46
SPEAKER_01: She does not waste her short golden life on what cannot nourish her.
16:51
SPEAKER_01: And neither should you.
16:54
SPEAKER_01: So where are you spending your nectar?
16:56
SPEAKER_01: And is it coming back to you as honey?
17:02
SPEAKER_01: So some simple ways to honor the honeymoon season rooted in the old ways.
17:08
SPEAKER_01: So these are just some ritual suggestions.
17:11
SPEAKER_01: We're not going to go into an actual ritual, but these are things that you can do in your life to help bring the sweetness and nourishment back to you.
17:21
SPEAKER_01: So a honey blessing.
17:23
SPEAKER_01: On a quiet evening, light a beeswax candle if you have one.
17:27
SPEAKER_01: Take a small spoonful of honey.
17:30
SPEAKER_01: Before you taste it, speak aloud one sweetness you are grateful for, one thing in your life worth savoring.
17:38
SPEAKER_01: Then taste it slowly, fully, letting it dissolve.
17:43
SPEAKER_01: This is the oldest kind of prayer.
17:46
SPEAKER_01: Gratitude meant made tangible on the tongue.
17:50
SPEAKER_01: Repeat for as many sweetnesses as you wish to name a rose offering.
17:57
SPEAKER_01: You find a rose from a garden, a market, anywhere.
18:02
SPEAKER_01: Sit with it.
18:03
SPEAKER_01: Notice its bud, its bloom, its thorns.
18:07
SPEAKER_01: Speak to it the way the old ones spoke to the bees.
18:12
SPEAKER_01: Tell it one place in your life where you long to open more fully, and one place where you need to keep your boundary.
18:20
SPEAKER_01: Then, if you like, dry the petals, or float them in water, or steep them in honey, keeping the season's medicine close.
18:30
SPEAKER_01: Telling the bees You need not keep a hive.
18:35
SPEAKER_01: You can go outside on a June day and find where the bees are working, a flowering bush, a patch of clover, a garden bed.
18:43
SPEAKER_01: Sit nearby, do no harm, and simply tell them your news, the way our ancestors did.
18:49
SPEAKER_01: A joy, a sorrow, a hope.
18:53
SPEAKER_01: Is it an old it is an old humble act of belonging, a reminder that we are part of the humming world, not above it.
19:03
SPEAKER_01: Leave a small offering of water for the pollinators if you can.
19:08
SPEAKER_01: And if you do put some pebbles or glass marbles, something that will not harm the environment, as bees will drown in a cup of water if they don't have something to land on.
19:25
SPEAKER_01: And we want to protect those bees as much as we can.
19:34
SPEAKER_01: The hive does not keep its honey for one, so you want to bake something with honey, or pour a cup of something sweet and share it with a neighbor, a friend, a family member, or even a stranger.
19:48
SPEAKER_01: Sweetness gathered alone is not the whole teaching.
19:51
SPEAKER_01: Sweetness is shared.
19:59
SPEAKER_01: There is something deeply powerful about growing your own medicine.
20:03
SPEAKER_01: Not the kind that comes in a plastic bottle from a pharmacy shelf, but the kind that begins with soil under your fingernails, sunlight on green leaves, and the quiet patience of the seasons.
20:14
SPEAKER_01: For thousands of years, people all over the world turned to plants first.
20:18
SPEAKER_01: Long before modern pharmaceuticals, families kept small plots of healing herbs close to the kitchen door.
20:25
SPEAKER_01: Plants for fever, for cough, for sleep, for calming the nerves after a long day's work.
20:31
SPEAKER_01: Those gardens weren't just practical, they were sacred.
20:35
SPEAKER_01: Medicinal garden is one of the simplest ways to reconnect with that tradition, even if you only have a patio, a balcony, or a few containers in a sunny window.
20:44
SPEAKER_01: That's why we have partnered with a medicinal growing kit that's perfect for beginners and seasoned plant lovers alike.
20:50
SPEAKER_01: This kit comes with carefully selected seeds for classic healing herbs like chamomile for calming teas, calendula for skin healing, lemon balm for stress and sleep, peppermint for digestion, lavender for relaxation.
21:06
SPEAKER_01: What we like about this starter kit is that it removes the overwhelm.
21:10
SPEAKER_01: You're not standing in a garden center staring at hundreds of seed packets, wondering where to begin.
21:15
SPEAKER_01: Instead, you start with the plants that have been traditionally used in herbalism for generations.
21:20
SPEAKER_01: With your seed kit, you'll also receive a copy of the Herbal Medicinal Guide from Seeds to Remedies.
21:27
SPEAKER_01: This guide will show you how to turn these 10 plants into tinctures, ointments, salves, poultices, decoctions, infusions, essential oils.
21:35
SPEAKER_01: All in minute detail so you can follow the guide even if you've never made an herbal medicine in your life.
21:41
SPEAKER_01: And if you're someone who practices earth based spirituality, herbal magic, or simply wants to reconnect with older ways of caring for yourself and your family, growing medicinal herbs can become part of your seasonal rituals.
21:54
SPEAKER_01: Planting seeds becomes intention, harvesting becomes gratitude, and every cup of tea carries a story.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: From the soil to your hands.
22:02
SPEAKER_01: If you're interested in starting your own medicinal herb garden, check out the affiliate link in the show notes.
22:07
SPEAKER_01: Supporting the link also helps support the podcast and keeps episodes like this growing.
22:12
SPEAKER_01: Because sometimes the most powerful medicine is the kind you grow yourself.
22:20
SPEAKER_01: So we're going to do the golden hum meditation.
22:26
SPEAKER_01: Find a comfortable place to sit or lie down.
22:30
SPEAKER_01: Unless you're driving.
22:31
SPEAKER_01: Please don't.
22:33
SPEAKER_01: Let your body settle.
22:35
SPEAKER_01: Let the weight of you be held.
22:38
SPEAKER_01: Close your eyes.
22:40
SPEAKER_01: Take a slow breath in, and a slow breath out.
22:47
SPEAKER_01: Imagine yourself lying in a meadow in the warm gold of a June afternoon.
22:53
SPEAKER_01: The grass is soft beneath you.
22:56
SPEAKER_01: The sun is gentle on your skin.
22:59
SPEAKER_01: Not harsh, not demanding.
23:03
SPEAKER_01: Just warm, just kind.
23:07
SPEAKER_01: And all around you a sound.
23:12
SPEAKER_01: A low golden hum.
23:17
SPEAKER_01: The sound of bees moving through the flowers, unhurried, devoted, the sound of the world quietly making its sweetness.
23:29
SPEAKER_01: Let that hum move through you.
23:32
SPEAKER_01: Feel it in your chest, in your belly, in your bones.
23:37
SPEAKER_01: The vibration of a world at work.
23:41
SPEAKER_01: But a work that is not frantic, a work that is full of purpose and peace.
23:48
SPEAKER_01: Breathe with it.
23:52
SPEAKER_01: Now in your mind, see before you a single rose.
23:57
SPEAKER_01: Watch it, a tight bud at first, closed, protected, holding all its beauty within, and slowly, as you breathe, see it begin to open, petal by petal, unhurried, unafraid, until it is fully, completely open, holding nothing back, giving its scent to the air, its heart to the light.
24:34
SPEAKER_01: And as you watch the rose open, feel something in your own chest begin to soften.
24:42
SPEAKER_01: A place you have kept closed, a sweetness you have been holding back, a tenderness you have guarded.
24:52
SPEAKER_01: You do not have to force it, just let it ease.
24:57
SPEAKER_01: The way the rose eases, gently, in its own time, because the warmth is finally deep enough.
25:10
SPEAKER_01: Now imagine a bee, small, golden, devoted, coming to rest on the open rose.
25:21
SPEAKER_01: She takes the nectar, and in this moment you understand your sweetness is not wasted when it is given.
25:31
SPEAKER_01: It becomes honey.
25:34
SPEAKER_01: It nourishes, it feeds the whole humming world.
25:41
SPEAKER_01: Breathe here.
25:44
SPEAKER_01: Let yourself be open.
25:47
SPEAKER_01: Let yourself be tended.
25:50
SPEAKER_01: Let yourself just for these breaths receive.
25:57
SPEAKER_01: The warmth, the gold, the low and holy hum of a world that is always, always making sweetness.
26:09
SPEAKER_01: You are a part of that world.
26:12
SPEAKER_01: Your labor matters, and so does your rest, and so does your sweetness.
26:22
SPEAKER_01: Stay here for a few more breaths in the gold and the hum.
26:28
SPEAKER_01: And when you are ready, gently, slowly, let your awareness return.
26:36
SPEAKER_01: Feel the ground beneath you, the breath in your body, the sweetness still warm in your chest.
26:49
SPEAKER_00: Welcome back.
27:20
SPEAKER_01: Our ancestors knew that sweetness was sacred, too sacred to waste, too sacred to refuse.
27:27
SPEAKER_01: They told their joys and sorrows to the bees.
27:31
SPEAKER_01: They opened to love like the rose, thorns, and all.
27:36
SPEAKER_01: They believed that the small, golden, humming work of the world was holy, and that to live well meant not only to labor, but to be nourished by the fruits of that labor.
27:47
SPEAKER_01: You have made so much sweetness in your life, more than you give yourself credit for.
27:52
SPEAKER_01: This season, from the long June days forward, you are invited to stop, to open, to taste, to tell the bees your news, to let the rose teach you that you can be both soft and sovereign, to receive the honey you have spent so long making.
28:12
SPEAKER_01: Because this is the truth of the honeymoon.
28:16
SPEAKER_01: The sweetest life is not only the one well worked, it is the one well tasted.
28:22
SPEAKER_01: The old ways were never lost.
28:25
SPEAKER_01: They were waiting, golden, humming, patient as the hive.
28:30
SPEAKER_01: Till next time, listeners, this has been Old Ways New Days.
28:34
SPEAKER_01: I'm Kayla, and we'll you'll listen to us here again next week.
28:41
SPEAKER_01: So thank you for tuning in.