The fall season is busy at Campbell’s Gold Honey Farm and Meadery in Abbotsford. The gardens and fields produce plums, grapes, currants and other fruits. Late-flowering plants such as goldenrod shoot up along garden rows, providing much needed food for the roughly than 60 hives the farm currently has on site.

And those hives are busy, so much so that measures need to be taken to keep the bees from robbing one another. When the dry season passes through, bee food becomes scarce, and hive fights become common.

Each pair of hives comes with their own wasp trap, to prevent yellowjackets from attacking and killing the bees. The farm also houses a massive hornet’s nest. The hornets hunt and kill wasps, keeping the bees on the farm safer.

Jenny Campbell, one of the beekeepers on the farm knows beekeeping is not easy. It’s work that requires patience and understanding, attributes that she is uniquely positioned to possess.

The founding journey

Jenny graduated from UFV with a Bachelor of Arts in 2000, with extended minors in theatre and fine arts, as well as a diploma in modern languages.

“I have always been an artist, so I was painfully shy growing up. Theatre was something I used as sort of a medicine to address that,” says Jenny.

At the time, her family farm had not yet begun their journey into beekeeping. Jenny wondered what she wanted to do with her arts degree. Aside from the arts, Jenny loved studying biology and languages.

She also felt driven to travel. So, Jenny packed her bags, left the family farm, and began a 13-year journey teaching abroad. During her travels, she worked in many countries, including Korea, Spain, Saudi Arabia, and the Czech Republic. In each place, she had to learn about a new culture and find a way to place herself within that culture.

To her, language teaching was a kind of exchange. She’d teach her students English, and in turn, they’d educate her in their own language and culture.

“I love learning as much as I love teaching,” says Jenny.  “My tools in terms of languages were something that I could work with.”

During this time abroad, Jenny would visit home often. But one return home was particularly tough. Her brother Mark’s death changed everything.

Her parents, Mark and Judy — a retired educator and federal public service worker, respectively — took up beekeeping. For them, it was a way to do something positive for the broader community, and to heal from the loss of their son.

“My mom calls the landscape her Earth therapy,” says Jenny.

Learning the new language of bees

When Jenny returned home a decade ago, she returned to a farm wholly dedicated to bees. Her parents mentored her on how to look after the hives. Eventually, Jenny became a BC Honey Producer’s Association (BCHPA) certified instructor and a bee master. And during this time, she realized that her multilingual and multicultural journey translated very well into the world of bees.

“I treat it just as though I’m moving into a new culture,” says Jenny. “So, it’s not people, it’s insects. And it’s not a country, it’s the farm. But I have that same approach to living here.”

Jenny found herself in a new kind of language exchange — one made up of the chemical world of bees, where scents and pheromones mean everything. She had to take it slowly.

“You observe, you pay attention to norms and then you think, how can I bring my own self into this scenario? And that works really well for beekeeping. Learning beekeeping, like learning a language, actually translates quite well,” says Jenny.

In addition, she found that she’d learned valuable wisdom abroad also.

“When I lived in South Korea, I used to go to a Zen temple on the mountain every Sunday for meditation and dharma talk,” says Jenny. “One of the things the monks used to say was ‘keep a beginner’s mind’. Let things come and go but keep a beginner’s mind.”

This advice resonated with Jenny and became something she took forward in her own learning as an early beekeeper, and as an instructor now.

In translation

“Being a beginner beekeeper has never been harder than it is now,” says Jenny. “I think most experienced beekeepers would agree with me. It’s hard for us.”

Jenny recounts how bee populations are constantly under threat. If it isn’t the overuse of pesticides on farms and public spaces (which bees carry back to their hive while pollinating), it’s decimation through predatory insects like wasps, or mites, or through disease.

All in all, it’s hard to be a bee today. And hives do fail.

But this doesn’t deter Jenny. She continues to teach new beekeepers, helping to prepare them for the current challenging environment.

And as a long-time language teacher, she’s found that her skills are helpful in the beekeeping classroom also.

“The thing about teaching language is that literally no one understands you,” says Jenny. “So, I believe in teaching beginner beekeepers like they’re learning a language.”

She does this by breaking information down into simple, foundational points. The idea is to alleviate any anxiety the learner might have around beekeeping.

“The problem is adult learners, all of us, no matter what we’re learning, tend to come in with a sort of perfectionistic attitude,” says Jenny. “So, luckily, having taught language, I know how to dismantle some of that.

“I lay that foundation and relieve some of that anxiety people have about learning something new. Nobody wants to make mistakes, but you have to make mistakes in order to learn.

“Bees teach patience,” says Jenny. “You can have all your ideas in the world, but if you rush, you’re going to squish someone and you’re going to get stung. My dad calls it instant biofeedback. But if you relax and breathe … and take your time … your whole chemical body changes.”

To Jenny, bees are now her way of life. And she says it’s something she hopes new beekeepers can pick up on.

“I think that is something you can take away with you in life,” says Jenny. “You’re going to encounter problems in life, but what’s the important thing? Are you going to react to everything or are you going to have purpose and thoughtfulness, and be proactive in your strategies in life? Think ahead and be relaxed. I think bees really demand that of you.”

It’s a simple philosophy, one that has helped Jenny find success for herself and for hives.

“You can be present in that moment and embrace whatever’s happening. Sometimes there’s space for that, even in radically different worlds.

“I could go in there and demand all sorts of things from the bees. And they’d just die or sting me into next Tuesday,” says Jenny. “The idea is “to go in and make friends, to walk the gentle walk.”