There are many ways in which our pollinator kin provide us examples of living in concert with local ecosystems. Entwining our lives with the lives of those who we depend upon to pollinate our food plants leads us down a path of interconnection with the communities of life that surround us. By gaining new appreciations for the beauty and complexities of the lives and ecologies of pollinators and their preferred plant kin, we come to understand our place within the seasonal dance of local ecosystem function and how we can join in the reciprocity of an honorable harvest and environmental stewardship.

Bee Folk is a community of people whose work with bees and pollinators has brought about a clear realization of our interdependence. As a node in the transition network, Bee Folk resides in the liminal edge space between paradigms, utilizing edge-walking to shine light upon our natural allies and kin and our responsibilities to them. We reside and are active in the Columbia River Gorge of the Central Cascades, the traditional territory of the Wishram, Yakama, and Chinook people. The core group of our organization have diverse backgrounds, from over a decade of working with bees, to homesteading and permaculture, to life-long educators and expressive artists passionate about communication and cultural transformation. We collectively recognize the need to shift our cultural paradigm and become better kin to the more-than-human folk who host us in our home place.

The mission of Bee Folk is to offer mentorships, workshops, outings, discussions, sessions, and ceremonies that foster increased awareness, understanding, and appreciation of pollinators and their ecologies through collaborative learning and doing. We seek to address challenges to pollinator health, habitat loss, and human cultural degradation through programs which increase a sense of place awareness, enhance capabilities to live reciprocally, and build supportive bioregional community.

Our programs will provide hands-on and participatory opportunities to learn about bees, beekeeping, and how to build beehives; the types of local pollinators, their lifeways, and their habitats through observation, discussion, and citizen science; the types of local pollinator plants and how to integrate them into local permaculture food systems and utilize them in habitat restoration; the "terroir" (or unique flavor) of place and how it is expressed through nectars, resins, and pollens which become resources for pollinators and ultimately our honeys and hive products; how to use and harvest products of the hive to make medicines, candles, mead and more; invasive species and colonialism and discussions around how we reconcile our histories of ecosystem disruption; the history and relevance of bees and pollinators in ceremony, ritual, and cultural expression, and survival; and different experimental techniques to address challenges to bee health and survival.


Our specific programs for achieving these stated aims include:

• Hives of Home (Bee the Change) - Bees and pollinators as kin and co-inhabitants. Permaculture approaches to integrating pollinators and pollinator habitat with food systems, and health-boosting herbs into polyculture homestead designs.

• Bee Regional - Bees and Pollinators in the Bioregion. The terroir of honey evokes a sense of place. We explore how pollinators dance a unique dance of place and the clues that provides as to how we discover our own sense of place.

• To Beelong - A reconciliation with invasive species and with our own invasiveness as colonial settlers.

• Beekeeping Mentoring & Education - Opportunities to learn about the many ways to host and tend to bee colonies.

• Healthy Bee Initiative - How to observe the health and needs of bee colonies, and how to respond when problems arise. Collaborating and experimenting to find locally appropriate solutions to the many challenges facing bee colonies.

• Bee Alchemy - Exploring, collecting, and using products of the hive.

• Bee Esoteric / Occult - Exploring the many ways bees and pollinators have been present in ceremony, myth, and ritual throughout human history and in varied human cultures.

• Beehive Bee & Be - A lodge where guests sleep, breath, meditate, observe, and commune in intimate quarters with the bees.

Through the programs at Bee Folk, we intend to collectively cultivate within participants the following outcomes:

• Increased awareness of the species and ecologies of plants and pollinators in local ecosystems.

• A better understanding of and appreciation for bees, beekeeping, and the challenges to bee and pollinator survival.

• A more nuanced understanding of the concepts of invasiveness and colonialism, their history, and strategies for addressing them.

• Increased eco-literacy and a greater sense of place and community.

• Enhanced resiliency, reciprocity, and respect through increased awareness and skills in beekeeping, permaculture, homesteading, medicine making, ritual creation, ecosystem restoration, and plant and animal identification and understanding.

• A greater appreciation for the cultural significance of pollinators in our histories, heritages, stories and traditions.

• A strengthened resolve to restore habitats, to seek justice and reconciliation, to harvest honorably, to protect ecosystem integrity, to make kin with the more-than-human, and to shift our cultural paradigm.

Bee Folk engages people of all backgrounds and identities. We prioritize working with youth and marginalized communities, folks with disabilities, and local community members.

Bee Folk relies on a mix of volunteer efforts, donations, grants, and revenue produced through the sale of honey and hive products to conduct its activities and programs. We receive donations from inspired individuals and from local businesses including Melchemy Craft Mead (https://www.melchemy.wine), who also purchases all the honey gathered from the hives which are cared for by Bee Folk.

We invite you to get involved! Please consider supporting our important work through volunteer service, donation, or spreading the word about us. If you are interested, please inquire at edgewalkers@Bee Folk.org.