A new Response has been added to the Re-framing the Conservation Paradigm Path.
"Jenny is one of the world’s rare keepers of the wild-bee story. Born into a childhood where bees lived beneath the family bath and honey-scented steam rose with evening water, she learned early to read their moods, their silences, their stinging protests. At three years old, watching her father lose control of a boxed hive, she made a private vow: One day I will protect bees where they choose to live, without forcing them into cages of wood and wire.
Eighteen years ago she stepped fully into that promise. Artist, energetic healer, and researcher, she set aside presuppositions and opened every sense to the wild bees of South Africa including the indigenous Cape and African honeybees. She let the bees teach her their language of ultraviolet shimmer, chemical song, and vibration felt through the bones of the earth. The discipline required was total: a body free of toxins, a mind cleared of distraction, a heart tuned to subtle intention. In return, the bees offered an ever-deepening curriculum in wholeness and reciprocity.
For a time Jenny partnered with authorities responsible for protecting South Africa's wild spaces, trusting that agencies charged with guardianship would welcome the wisdom she was gathering. Instead, she discovered corruption and wildlife poaching threaded through the very systems sworn to protect. Her findings—proof of the bees’ intricate value—risked becoming fuel for exploitation.
So Jenny has chosen another way. She located a 7 000-hectare farm in the wide-open Greater Karoo and envisioned The Wild Bee Reserve: a sanctuary vast enough for bees to keep weaving life through every plant, bird, and creature that depends on their invisible currents. Protect the bees, she says, and you protect the whole tapestry.
Guided by the presence of The Mother—a spirit energy who walks with her—and by the ancestral hum of San land, Jenny is gathering a circle of carefully chosen allies. Together we can already feel the presence of The Wild Bee Reserve in the field—an invitation to remember the wild as sacred and sovereign, a refuge governed not by bureaucratic permits but by reverence, research rooted in relationship, and a promise made beneath an old enamel bath: to honor the bees in their sovereign homes for the good of all beings.
There is so much truth and sacred grief in her journey—truth that demands new ways of seeing and supporting."