ABSTRACT (Colony Collapse Disorder)

This project is an investigative inquiry into the implications of a compelling and inexplicable event: the sudden mass vanishing of billions of honeybees in what is now termed Colony Collapse Disorder. Use of a Heuristic framework engenders a deep examination of the potential symbolic significance of bees in light of their mass disappearance at both an individual and cultural level.

Employing a Jungian lens, this project considers the ongoing loss of honeybees from the shamanic perspective of soul loss, then examines the increasing rift between humans and nature in relation to colonization, all apparent factors in the condition of colony collapse. Last, this inquiry explores the link between the bees and the goddess in an attempt to understand how the increasing loss of the sacred feminine from our worldview correlates with the plight of the dying honeybee.

Findings include a look at how the symbolic meaning of Colony Collapse Disorder calls for regarding and beholding difficult situations and conflicting elements in order to allow the transcendent function to emerge. Rather than a rigid and surface attempt to analyze and fix the issue of the dying honeybees and to stave off our own potential colony collapse on a human scale, a return to earth and to nature, both inner and outer, is required.