At the beginning of May 2026, Fabienne Castelain came to place eight beehives at Puech des Heures. Young swarms, still in their early stages, settled into eight wooden boxes, each bearing the name of a flower: Anemone, Lilac, Marguerite… She chose these names for the bees, of course, after the flowers from which they will gather nectar and pollen. But not only that. There is also something distinctly feminine in the way she names them. Flowers, bees, women: in Fabienne’s world, these stories often echo one another without her ever seeking to turn them into a statement.
Fabienne is a beekeeper in Fontrieu, in the Sidobre massif. She moved there from northern France in the early 2000s. “I wasn’t destined to work with bees,” she says. And yet today, they occupy a considerable place in her life.
When she talks about them, she talks about freedom. A particular kind of freedom, since the hives are installed, sometimes moved, and their honey eventually harvested. “We condition them, but I see it as an exchange, a reciprocity. We help them, and they give something back to us.” She insists on their sensitivity, on what they perceive. Bees, she believes, intensely sense the vibrations of a place, things we are not necessarily able to hear. The sky, the earth, the place where a hive is set down. She pays attention to all of it. Before even talking about honey, there is the question of the relationship itself.
And then there is what being with the bees does for her: “When I’m in the middle of the hives and the bees, I forget my worries.” She talks about concentration, introspection, a form of apitherapy. Being there, surrounded by the hum of the bees, allows her to find her centre again. Perhaps because, with bees, there is no real way to pretend that you are somewhere else. She also loves what they make possible around them. “Their role as pollinators in nature means we can have vegetables, fruit… I’m greedy for all of that.” The sentence is very simple, but it sounds like her: ecology can also begin with the pleasure of eating a good mirabelle plum, a courgette, a ripe piece of fruit.
Her strongest memory of honey comes from somewhere else, from childhood. She remembers her grandmother Yvonne taking her from Lille to Strasbourg, to the family of her grandfather Aloïs Schoettel. A farm, vineyards, two brothers, Aloïs and Eugène, and their sister Thérèse, “Aunt Res”, who had never had children. She remembers the house, the stairs where she used to play, the mirabelle plums they picked, that Alsatian abundance and the warmth of the family. And above all, a bowl of warm milk into which Aunt Res would add a generous spoonful of fir honey. A honey with a very distinctive flavour. Perhaps that was, in the end, her first memory of beekeeping: not a hive, not a bee, but a spoonful of honey melting into warm milk.
Today, Fabienne does much more than harvest honey. She has created an entire little world around the bees: jams, poppy-flower syrups, speculoos biscuits, cookies, gingerbread, crêpes made with flour from ancient wheat varieties, caramiel, candles, beekeeper’s balm, propolis, little soaps… She enjoys transforming things, experimenting, making things with whatever she has to hand.
She even imagined her honey house as a series of large honeycomb cells, built by her son, an engineer. Transmission lies at the heart of her work. She runs workshops for children, but also for adults, older people and people with disabilities. She talks about workshops where children build honeycomb cells using wooden construction sets. Each child first makes their own cell, in their own way. Then comes the moment when all the pieces are brought together. One cell. Then another. Then another… For her, it is a very tangible way of talking about collective intelligence. An intelligence that, she says, “we human beings sometimes struggle to have.”
The workshops often end around crĂŞpes and honey. For Fabienne, learning and sharing a snack are never very far apart. She is also involved in a wide range of networks: associations of producers and craftspeople, open-air markets, and the organic market in Castres every Thursday afternoon, all year round. She likes places where people meet, where products pass from hand to hand, where you can talk as much about what you make as about the way you live.
This care for others also takes on a distinctly feminine dimension in her journey. She is part of the “Paysannes81” group and takes part in women’s circles, where rural women can talk among themselves about their work, their bodies, fatigue, well-being, and the things that sometimes need to be repaired or protected.
Fabienne builds a lot of things. She renovated her house. Now she is imagining a guesthouse where mothers, women farmers and other women in need of a place to breathe and rebuild themselves could come and stay. The project is still to be invented, almost from scratch, probably in an association-based form. That too feels very much like her. Building a house. Building a honeycomb cell. Building a collective. Building a place where someone can regain their strength.
And every morning, she does the Five Tibetan Rites! She talks about discipline, then corrects herself: rather, a ritual. Something she does because she enjoys it, because it keeps her body fit and active. There is a great deal of these seemingly ordinary gestures in her life, small things that, over time, come together to create a life. The bees, too, repeat theirs.
At Puech des Heures, the eight hives have spent the whole summer. The swarms are young. It will take time to see what becomes of them. For now, there is only waiting, observing, letting things happen. The flowers will change, the seasons will pass, and the bees will do their work. Iris, Capucine, Marguerite and the five others now have their place in the landscape. Fabienne will come back to see them. And perhaps one day, over a slice of honey-covered bread, someone will in turn carry the memory of these hives with them.
You can contact Fabienne by email: fabee5981@orange.fr
