Spiritual Beekeeping: Interspecies Initiation into the Sacred Superorganism

Bees have a longstanding legacy of influencing human spirituality. Even today, various spiritual beekeeping traditions are widespread—albeit discretely practiced—throughout Euro-American cultures. During this lecture, Jake Eshelman will share his artistic and academic research into how sacred apiculture is currently enacted throughout the present-day United States, leaning primarily on his documentary photography and his field work with practitioners. More specifically, he will explore how sacred apiculture both creates and troubles a sense of spiritual belonging amongst practitioners, who in very radical ways experience a profound sense of inclusion, community, and initiation on behalf of the bees themselves.