Lessons from the Hive in a Time of Disorder

Last week I started my first beehive here in Northern Utah after taking a few beginner beekeeping classes and a desire to help support our dying pollinators. We live in an age of plastics and chemicals that are not only affecting our bodies directly, but also are wiping out swaths of bees and other pollinators. With glyphosate readily available to every farmer and on the shelves at your local HomeDepot, we are doing a great job at poisoning our food systems, our yards, and our waterways. Instead of succumbing to doom and gloom I decided I wanted to try my hand at beekeeping to learn more about how I as an individual can make a difference for our struggling bees.

In beginner beekeeping you learn all of the parts of a hive, the life cycle of the bees, and how to interact with them in a way that lets them work their magic with as little interference as possible. In a typical hive you will have a queen, some drones (which are males that are genetic copies of the queen) and upwards of 80,000 worker bees at peak season. The drones sole job is to go out and mate with other queens from different hives while the worker bees spend their day harvesting nectar, tending to the queen, building comb and making honey, propolis and cleaning the hive. The queen spends her time laying around 3,000 eggs daily and nourishing herself to continue laying. On average a drone will live around 55 days, a worker bee 30-35 days and the queen can live around 3-5 years.

Contrary to what you might think, the queen is not the “ruler” of the colony, in fact, no one bee is in charge at all. The hive operates through a term called “Synarchy.” Synarchy, derived from Greek for “joint rule,” refers to a system of shared sovereignty, collective leadership, or harmonious governance. It operates as an alternative to hierarchy, emphasizing collaboration over ranked authority. authority is distributed, not centralized. Order emerges through cooperation and alignment, not coercion. Individuals act in ways that serve the whole system, often without needing direct control. It’s not chaos, and it’s not hierarchy. It’s organized intelligence without a single ruler dominating everything. So while it may seem that the queen bee is “on top,” she does not give orders or control behavior, her role is primarily reproductive. If the queen bee fails, the workers will replace her, which shows that the power lies in the system, not the individual.

No single bee understands the whole plan, yet the hive regulates temperature precisely, food sources are optimized, threats are managed, and new nest sites are chosen with surprising accuracy.

How? Each bee follows simple rules & local information, and the colony produces high-level intelligence. This is often called a super-organism. The colony behaves like one unified being, which is synarchy in action, order emerging from many aligned parts, not imposed from above.

Decision making within the hive is collective and surprisingly sophisticated. When bees need a new home they do not wait for a leader, instead they send scout bees to find a new location, they use a “waggle dance” to communicate location and quality of said location, and rely on gradual consensus building as better options gain more support from the collective.

No one bee decides.

The “decision” emerges when enough bees independently converge on the same conclusion. which is closer to voting, persuasion and evidence weighing than leadership.

The roles of the bees are also fluid, not a fixed status. Worker bees will shift roles over time from cleaning, nursing, building, guarding and foraging. This is not based on ambition or rank, but based on age, needs of the colony, and environmental conditions. This adaptability is key to the hives survival as the system will continually reorganize itself without needing a command structure.

Individual sacrifice is also a part of a hives survival. Bees will work themselves to exhaustion, defend the hive at the cost of their life, and do so without question or needing “orders” from the queen. From a human lens this may look extreme, but the colony is a unit of survival not the individual bee. Synarchy prioritizes wholeness over individuality which is powerful, but also something we humans don’t fully replicate.

Synarchy is not just “working together nicely.” It requires clear roles, constant feedback loops, shared alignment, and trust in the system/community over ego. Bees don’t debate on identity or resist their role, they are fully integrated into the system they’re a part of. You’ll see synarchic patterns in healthy teams or communities, well-run ecosystems, certain indigenous governance systems and high-functioning nervous systems (your body does this internally). But we struggle with true synarchy because the ego competes with collective needs, misalignment of values breaks cooperation, and we don’t share a single, obvious “hive goal.” So when people try to force “leaderless systems” without alignment, it turns into chaos not synarchy (think of the commune movement of the 60’s & 70’s).

As I continue to expand my business and work towards my ultimate purpose of creating a conscious co-op farming community integrated with a wellness/retreat center, I’ve been thinking about what it actually means to build something that works. Not just on the surface, but at a deeper, more sustainable level.

When you look at bees, it’s easy to assume there’s a leader at the center of it all. But there isn’t. The queen doesn’t direct the hive, she doesn’t make decisions or tell anyone what to do. The intelligence of the system comes from somewhere else entirely. From alignment, constant feedback, and from each individual responding to what’s needed in the moment. The hive works because every part is attuned to the same underlying purpose.

And I’m starting to realize that what I’m building with Elevation Wellness Collective isn’t meant to be a business I tightly control. It’s something more like a living system. There are multiple practitioners, each with their own way of seeing and working. No one person holds the full picture, and that’s the point. The strength of the space comes from that diversity, but only if it’s held together by something deeper than just sharing a roof.

Without a shared foundation, it would just be people working side by side. A co-working space which to me feels disconnected.

What makes it different, or what I want to make different, is the intention underneath it all. A clear, shared orientation toward real healing, nervous system work, and helping people come back into their bodies in a way that actually lasts. All while celebrating the individual gifts of each practitioner that truly makes them unique.

That’s my “hive goal.”

Collaboration, not competition.

The more I sit with this, the more I see that my role isn’t to manage or control every moving piece. It’s to tend to the integrity of the system itself. To be clear about what this space stands for. To notice when something feels off and bring it back into alignment. To create the conditions where the right kind of work can naturally emerge. Because systems like this don’t function through control. They function through coherence, and when that coherence is there, something interesting happens. You don’t have to force growth, and you don’t have to push outcomes. The system becomes adaptive, responsive, and alive. Bees don’t build thriving hives by finding better leaders. They do it through shared purpose, simple guiding principles, and constant feedback.

Given all that is unfolding in the world today, I think there’s something in that worth paying attention to. It is time to come together in community and take some of the hive principles to heart to co-create a future for humanity with more peace, love and connection. Not more fear, hate, and separation to fill the pockets of the war machine.

With love & blessings,

Sam