Yarrow + Honey Bee

A hardy herbaceous perennial, yarrow is renowned for wound healing and protection. Its namesake, Achillea millefolium, comes from the Greek hero Achilles, who purportedly brought yarrow to heal his soldiers’ wounds in the Trojan War (1200 BC). Bloom season is very long, April through October, and it grows 8-40 inches with multiple stems from one rhizomatous root that spreads. Leaves are feathery and fernlike, longer at the base and shorter near the top. Flowers are very small, with ray and tiny disc flowers in grouped bracts to form the whole floral shape. Indigenous folks and folk medicine practitioners used it to treat wounds, soothe headaches and colds, and aid digestion as a tea. In contrast, yarrow beer has been brewed in Europe since the Middle Ages. Otherwise, it has been used in Western Europe and China for divination.

Yarrow is accompanied by honey bee, a VIP of the pollinator sector. From National Geographic: “Honeybees are important pollinators for flowers, fruits, and vegetables. They live on stored honey and pollen all winter and cluster into a ball to conserve warmth. All honeybees are social and cooperative insects. Members of the hive are divided into three types. Workers forage for food (pollen and nectar from flowers), build and protect the hive, clean, and circulate air by beating their wings. The queen’s job is simple—she lays the eggs that will spawn the hive’s next generation of bees. There is usually only a single queen in a hive. If the queen dies, workers will create a new queen by feeding one of the worker females a special food called “royal jelly.” This elixir enables the worker to develop into a fertile queen.”

Original mixed media on raw stretched canvas with maple float frame.