Increasingly foreboding media narratives describing declining global bee populations overshadow the nuanced relationships that people actively foster with bees in rural Ontario today. Wild Leaf Tea with Honey (Craganrock Apiary) (2019) is a creative collaboration between artist/beekeeper Joseph Farrugia, Farrugia’s bee colony, artist Jennifer Martin and photographer Justin Langille that subverts common understandings of human–bee relations through tea as well as honey production. Produced by Farrugia and his colony near Mono, ON, foraged edible leaves are combined to create a tea accompanied by honey made from wild leaf pollen and an outsized recipe card designed by Martin and Langille. The card meticulously describes the careful inter-species collaboration one can follow–from pollination to steeping–to re-create the work of Farrugia themselves. Farrugia, Martin and Langille thereby facilitate an invitation to a vicarious experience of the kinds of apiary relations that may sustain the future ecologies humanity shares with non-human life.
