The bees of Kvetmir Kvetmirovic
Introduction
At the Spring Equinox, the Lepidean Librarian Hazelelponi of the Shattered Tower asked the Heirs of Lepidus to investigate Kvetmir Kvetmirovic, sometimes called the Bee Shepherd. Recognised as an exemplar of Prosperity in the reign of Empress Varkula, they specifically suggested the Heirs look for any suggestion that Kvetmir might have had hidden heretical leanings.
The commission also included a significant number of bee-themed puns which is notable but has no bearing on the resulting essay.
Early Life
As near as we can ascertain, Kvetmir Kvetmirovic was born in the vale of Zoloto in approximately 200BE. Precise dating is tricky because there are no available records from that time, and we are often having to rely on stories rather than any actual documents. We're indebted to the people of Skoremujac, who shared many tales that form the basis of this report.
While he travelled from time to time, he spent most of his life in and around Zoloto and never lived for any extended period of time anywhere else. In his youth Kvetmir was fascinated by animals of all kinds, but especially bees. One particular prized relic kept by the Varushkan priests of Zoloto are several pieces of cheap parchment sealed between pieces of clear glass covered in intricate drawings of bees and their hives apparently drawn by Kvetmirovic in his younger days. It's clear he had a keen observational eye, and a deft hand with a piece of charcoal. The custodians of the little shrine to his inspiration regretfully indicated that there were many more such sketches at one point, but the fragile parchments all too often fell victim to the ravages of time.
According to the stories, Kvetmir was a man with a quiet nature, who showed gentle respect to all creatures. Nonetheless he was willing to take up an axe in the defence of his vale, and of the bees he loved, on the rare occasions when it became necessary. He never served in an army, or indeed any organised body of soldiers, although he supported the schlacta of the apparently good-natured boyar of Zoloto throughout his life.
In some stories, he shows a lack of interest in material wealth, claiming that the only gold he needed was the gold of honey and of the bright sun in the sky. When offered a pile of silver in return for selling his hives to a merchant-boyar from Miekarova, Kvetmir refuses point blank, saying that he already had everything he would ever need and that nobody should want more than they need.
He trained as an apothecary, but ancient letters preserved in Zoloto alongside his sketches speak of how hard he found it. He described himself as easily distracted and more inclined to spend his time watching bees than practicing his lessons. Hard work, he said, did not just mean hard labour. Any difficult task would bring rewards, and they would be all the sweeter the more arduous it was to achieve them. Reading closer, he also wrote of the idea that what is easy for one person can be hard for another, either due to circumstance or natural tendency, and that it was important for a wise person to understand that. Someone who struggles with a task but works hard to complete it, he wrote, is as at least as worthy of respect as someone who achieves the same task easily.
Kvetmir never lost his appreciation for bees. He had some views that would be considered esoteric today, including the belief that bees were possessed of a unique sense for magic and especially magical disturbances; that in the wild they would often align their hives with the flows of mana; and that the "swarm" or "hive" was the actual creature even though it was made up of hundreds of individual bodies.
He is widely credited with encouraging the use of honey in medicine, especially in the treatment of infections and burns. He also prescribed it regularly as a way to deliver other medicaments, claiming that it was a form of "living ambergelt" that was rich with wholesome energies. By all accounts he managed to achieve some miraculous cures using honey and herbs to create medicines and poultices, but modern healers are not able to replicate everything ascribed to him. While some claim this is a sign of his spiritual power, others argue that he was using a different kind of honey to that collected by the humble honey bee.
While there is no clear-cut evidence, it is notable that Kvetmir argued that the best beehives were kept in areas with ready access to flowering herbs, especially marrowort, true vervain, and bloodbloom (a very old name for Imperial Roseweald). There's also some evidence that Kvetmir was aware of realmsroot, and had some experience in its cultivation, although his techniques appear to have been lost in the five centuries since his death. Its possible that by keeping healing herbs and magical plants in close proximity, and by tending to the bees carefully, the honey Kvetmir harvested possessed additional medicinal properties above and beyond those found in the golden liquid created by most beehives.
The Golden Book
Varushkans have always kept honey bees, and the oldest stories suggest the practice was begun by the paragon Zoria. Kvetmir however is credited with revolutionising beekeeping and honey gathering thanks in part to the intense study he made of how bees lived, and how their swarms operated. His understanding of bees and their hives seems to have gone beyond the merely practical, and into the realms of mysticism. He believed that by tending to swarms of bees, and keeping them healthy, the people of a community would symbolically find it easier to tend to and maintain the health of other animals and each other. He also saw something deeply meaningful in the way that a hive of bees, protected from predators and tended by an apiarist, would repay their keeper with honey and wax. A symbiotic relationship where both benefitted.
Obviously Kvetmir lived before the Way was established in Varushka, but in the early writings in his "Golden Book" there are several verses that are held to encapsulate certain tenets of Prosperity. That hard work would lead to rewards, and that wise people are not selfish but share their bounty with those who have worked for it. Of note is that the Golden Book is full of references to "the wise" and "wisdom" but there's no suggestion this is the [[Wisdom|Virtue## of that name - rather it is a traditional Varushkan usage that encompasses ideas of common sense, tradition, and oral history.
The "Golden Book" then is more than just a collection of folk stories about bees, but contains spiritual truths that resonate with many who read it. The text depicts individual bees as being mere animals, but ascribes a higher form of consciousness that approaches sapience to a swarm as a whole. Individual bees cannot build a hive, but a group of bees can construct a haven for themselves and their offspring. In the same way, individual people can be weak but groups that work together towards a common goal can achieve great things.
It is perhaps due to its gentle wisdom that the book is still found across the Empire today. The most common modern edition was first printed eighty years ago in Sarvos, and that is the version most people who know of it are familiar with. It is somewhat abridged; the common version removes two stories considered to be "unsuitable" for virtuous readers. The first concerns a trio of travelling musicians in Livardz who are cheated by greedy villagers after performing at a wedding, and use their music to rile all the bees of the nearby forest to sting those who have wronged them to death. The other story involves a child who insists on stealing the honey from their neighbour's hives and ends up suffering a gruesome death when the bees force their way down their throat and transform the corpse into a new hive. Both were struck because they were considered to glorify the false spiritual power of vengeance.
Kvetmir did not agree, incidentally. In earlier editions of the "Golden Book" these stories are presented alongside the others and the only editorial note is that cheats, swindlers, and thieves often bring punishment down on their own heads. From a certain perspective, it could be argued that these are lessons about the importance of despising the thieving bandit and the grasping miser.
The rest of the stories are what one might expect from Varushka; a little dark in places but with a clear moral about the importance of hard work, looking after members of your family, earning the gifts of magical bees by being honest and sensible, and so forth. We do not think there is anything there to worry the virtuous.
The Blind Bandit
According to the story, while travelling to a wedding Kvetmir made a point of leaving little bowls of sugar water out for the bees each time his travelling party rested. When brigands sought to rob and murder the wedding party, the local bees protected Kvetmir and his family and blinded their assailants.
The story refers to a kind of traditional Varushkan wedding that has fallen out of favour in recent years but is still practiced in some parts of the nation. When two folk from different vales seek to wed, it is common for one spouse to move to the vale of the other. In this case it is customary for the family and friends of the spouse who dwells in the vale where they will make a life together to travel to the other spouse's vale and escort them and their family back to the vale where the marriage will take place. This was significantly more dangerous before the formation of the Empire, before the roads of Varushka were as widespread and well made as they are today.
To our surprise there may actually be a piece of evidence that this miracle actually happened. In northern Skjoremujac there is a very old statue standing at a crossroads that certainly seems to date to pre-Imperial times. It shows three figures, their features worn smooth by time and the elements. They huddle close together, and each has one hand on the shoulder of one of the others, with their other hand covering their eyes. The sculpture is referred to as the "Blind Bandits", and is said to mark the location where the bees struck down the thieves who beset the wedding party. It may be that this statue is apocryphal - the story of the miraculous bees is very old after all - but it seems to commemorate an actual event rather than just a story.
The Shroud of Bees
Kvetmir died, allegedly at the age of seventy-seven (which is by no means impossible but seems a little pat). He became ill in early Summer, and as the season aged he began to be beset with terrible chills. He deteriorated swiftly, to the point where he could not get out of bed. The physick who attended him said he would not last much longer, and his many friends and close family gathered to pay final respects.
According to the story, on the final day all the bees in the surrounding area left their hives and came to the room where he lay abed. They came in such force they broke down the shutters over the windows, poured down the chimney, and rushed through the doors in a flood of tiny furry bodies. They covered the dying Kvetmir, and kept him warm with their bodies, and soothed his pains with their gentle hum. As one bee would tire, it would take flight and another settle onto the bed to take its place. Rather than having his final hours suffering from uncontrollable shivering, and a hacking cough, he passed peacefully. Descendants of those same bees, by all accounts, continue to live in Zoloto up until the present day. Their honey (and the spirits distilled from it) built the vale into the prosperous place it is today.
The story is interesting because, according to those who study the inspiration of Kvetmir, it shows that the bees repaid the respect with which the "Bee Shepherd" treated them. While he is an exemplar of Prosperity, Kvetmir also spoke a lot about the importance of farmers who tend animals to treat their beasts with gentle respect - not only bees but cattle, sheep, goats and other beasts. Animals are not slaves, he wrote, and we are not their masters. We are their stewards, and their hard work is no less worthy of reward than we are when we labour for payment.
There were some claims early in the history of the vitalism movement to claim Kvetmir as an inspiration, but for anyone who has actually made a study of the exemplar it is clear that his writings don't really support the typical vitalist attitude. He was less concerned about what people were putting in their bodies than he was about the way they treated creatures they considered "lesser" than themselves.
Recognition
Kvetmir was recognised as an exemplar of Prosperity in the early reign of Empress Varkula, as the result of a judgement brought by Marik Casmirovic Zoloto. The signs cited during the recognition were:
- Benevolence, referencing his work spreading medicinal techniques and revolutionising bee husbandry through Varushka and beyond
- Inspiration, meaning the early echoes of the virtue of Prosperity found in his remaining writings and his Golden Book
- Miracle, referencing both the wedding miracle and the miracle of the shroud of bees
- Legacy, in the form of the Golden Book, but also the regal hives of Zoloto (although the original hives were replaced several times they were built to the same design as those Kvetmir created.
There was some very minor argument at the time that Kvetmir was truly an inspiration of Wisdom rather than Prosperity, but it was quickly quashed by the Varushkan assembly who threw their weight behind Marik Casmirovic on the matter. There is also evidence that Marik attempted to secure a dose of True Liao to perform a consecration at Zoloto, but his hopes were dashed. It is easy to forget that we are today quite blessed in the amount of Imperial Liao available to the Gatekeepers, and in the earlier years of the Empire there was significantly less available. Despite pressure from Varushka, the idea of "wasting" a potential past life vision on a "mere" consecration to create a place of pilgrimage for a figure easily dismissed as a minor Varushkan inspiration at best found little traction.
In Conclusion
There is nothing in the life of Kvetmir Kvetmirovic that we can find to suggest that he is anything other than he appears to be. He seems to be a gentle, intense man who was very fond of bees, had some excellent ideas about using honey and cultivating bees, and developed from whole cloth ideas that seem obvious to us today with our greater understanding of the virtue of Prosperity.
There seem to be only two areas where there might be any controversy. The first is that some of his stories, and those in the Golden Book, have an element of punishing thieves. Arguably however, apart from the fact they involve bees rather than a stout cudgel they are no worse than those associated with Good Walder (although I must say that I had some very bad dreams for a week or two after reading the original story of the thieving child and the bees - the words were horrible but the little illustrations were so much worse).
The other is that he had strong views that the Synod might decide are heresy-adjacent. Specifically his beliefs regarding the role of the farmer as a steward, responsible for respecting non-human animals; and his esoteric theories that bees were remarkable creatures with supernatural senses able to perceive magic in ways humans are not.
Unless someone has a past life vision proving that Kvetmir Kvetmirovic went out of his way to be cruel to orcs, or secretly hid Anarchy cultists under his bed, I think it is fair to say that he is a reasonably blameless exemplar of Prosperity whose inspiration is as valid today as it was in the reign of Empress Varkula.
Further Reading
- Saint of Bees - 388YE Spring wind of fortune discussing the inspiration of Kvetmir Kvetmirovic