These days, we keep bees, grow food, and otherwise film, write, and work in a mountaintop village in northeastern Bosnia. It’s a steep patch of a funnel-shaped land we inherited from our father, along with an unruly orchard whose edges are furrowed by a creeping landslide. We are now a matriarchy; our mother is to our land what a queen bee is to a hive.
Heirlooms
Larisa is a flawed human being. Also, an anthropologist and a beekeeper, a hobbyist photographer, and a first-time filmmaker. An independent scholar, Larisa dwells in mountaintop village in Bosnia. Her current research interests are in honeybees, climate ecology and climate futures, as well as in the sciences and metaphysics of the heart. Among her books are the Beekeeping in the End Times (IUP 2024), Health and Wealth in the Bosnian Market: Intimate Debt (IUP 2017), as well as several books for children and young readers. Forthcoming, among the latter are Habibee: Your Guide to Ecology and Sultana: Your Guide to Islamic Cosmology. Between us, Larisa is currently working on a book of climate fiction, with a twist.
With her sister Azra, she is post-producing the documentary, Beekeeping in the End Times.
With her sister Azra, she is post-producing the documentary, Beekeeping in the End Times.
Larisa enjoyed taught at the University of Chicago and being a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin.
You can reach Larisa at jasarevic.g.larisa@gmail.com
Azra is an independent filmmaker. A graduate of the International School for Film and Television, San Antonio de los Baños, Azra has been filming worker struggles and social justice movements in the context of post-socialist economic and environmental crises.
Azra had a great time working working for the local radio and television station, RTV-7, based in Tuzla, northeastern Bosnia.Among her film projects is a documentary about pervasive toxicity, “Our Daily ‘Piralen.’” Since 2020, she has been running a film and multimedia school for young adults in Tuzla. With her sister, Larisa, Azra is currently post-producing the documentary Beekeeping in the End Times and researching for their next film project entitled Arboreal Cinema. You can reach Azra at azrajasarevic10@gmail.com
Zumra, an economist by training and a long-time writer, is now retired as a fulltime gardener. Since 2015, she has also been a bee-lover. The most practically-minded one in the family, she has the final word in the household and keeps our apiary’s records and our expense log. The business of our beekeeping to date, according to her count, is financially reckless.
Pepe is ever being a cat.
Postcards from Our Village & Apiary
July 2024. Hot as hell, our summer. Frogspawn used to linger and dragonflies once droned on this patch of the road on the way to the forest .
March 29th dawned brilliant and unseasonally warm. We took a long walk through the fields and forests. Mom and Azra hunted the forest for bear’s garlic while I stalked the foraging bees. There was not much for the bees to find in bloom besides dead nettles, primroses, and wild violets. And this strange forest flower—can anyone name it? Raw and pink as flesh, the flowers emerge beneath the blanket of last year’s leaves, as if they were shrouds. Arching low above the ground, the florets are hiding, though not from the bees. 
Sometime in late May, 2021. A plunge: deep within the parted petals is an offering. We name it pollen but who could tell what the treasure means to this bee.
Springtime 2024
Blooms came out way too early. But they are as gorgoues as ever.
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Our Apiary, spring 2020
The many honeybees that live on our hand occupy a mere eight hives. Our apiary is truly small but our greatest feat is that we’ve been managing to keep the bees alive and healthy over the years. We have harvested honey only three times, since 2015. Gorgeous, umber-colored linden, mixed in with black locust and blackberry blossoms, the honey is so fragrant that a whiff alone gives you a buzz. The jars warm up with golden hues as the honey crystalizes. All other years, we have fed honey and pollen (bought from a trusted source) back to the bees.
Without this emergency food aid (a snapshot of its production above), our bees would not have fared well through the dearths due to strange weather. As the signs of global climate change become more immediately felt on the ground--even ground such as ours, far from industrial pollution and industrial agriculture, lovingly cultivated with bee-friendly flora and surrounded by forests and wilds--it is not clear how much longer we will be able to keep bees. In the meantime, with their perseverance, their beauty, their buzzing that sounds like invocation to Sufis and, anyhow, feels like a blessing, their swarming, nectar gathering, pollen foraging, pollinating and other acts of faith under inclement skies, the bees are keeping us going.
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