Savvy360: At Home In The Hive
Photos by Gretchen Powers
By Natalie Schack | Originally posted at 360Savvy O’ahu
Listen to Jasmine Joy, founder of Beelieve Hawaiʻi, wax poetically about her beehive removal services, her beekeeper courses, her strong connection with these insects or how bees are part of myth and spirituality, and you’ll immediately understand: for her, bees go deep. And yet, the first lesson Joy remembers about beekeeping is not about bees at all, but about fear.
She is four or five years old, standing at the bottom of a grassy hill, her small body anchored in place by a voice she trusts. Her abuelito (grandfather) wears a white suit that makes him look, to her, like an astronaut preparing for liftoff. Before he walks away and crests the hill toward the stacked white boxes waiting in the sun, he turns back and says one thing to her.
“I don’t even remember bees, really,” remarks Joy. “I just remember him telling me: Don’t be afraid.” The details are muddled, but what lingers is the instruction, the calm certainty of it: “Don’t be afraid.” Years later, that sentence will reveal itself as a kind of compass — one that, like the sun for a honeybee, quietly orients her through seasons of loss, searching and returning. For a long time, Joy didn’t know she was looking for bees. She only knew she was looking for purpose. In the end, they were one and the same.
Born in Los Angeles to a Filipino mother and a Nicaraguan father, Joy grew up feeling the weight of fracture early. Her paternal lineage carried beauty and brutality side by side; her grandfather kept bees but abuse also threaded through that family line.
By the time she was eight, Joy had walked out of her father’s life entirely. Survival demanded self-reliance. Healing demanded something harder: connection.
She gravitated toward living things … bugs, gardens, animals. As a child, she collected insects without fear, cupping them gently in her hands.
She imagined futures that revolved around care, like working with children or protecting animals, something that would make the world a better place, whether broadly or intimately. Jane Goodall became a north star. Some people dream of stardom, but Joy dreamed of service.
