Apiary uses its live bees for mental health therapy

PHILADELPHIA >> Meet Amelia Mraz and Natasha Pham, the founders of Half Mad Honey, an apiary at the Navy Yard in Philadelphia. They use their hives to help people practice both mindfulness and distress tolerance through apiary therapy.

“It’s incredible to see the transformation from fear to joy when people come here,” Mraz said.

Even though Mraz was scared of bees as a kid, when she needed to fill an elective for her undergrad degree in psychology at Temple University, she decided to take a beekeeping class in 2016 at the school’s Ambler campus.

“I was interested in working with nature, I was not in a good place with my mental health, and I was taking a lot of lecture classes, so I signed up,” she said.

When the time came for field work and Mraz stood among the swarming hives, surrounded by thousands of bees, something incredible and unexpected happened.

“It became a space where I felt calm and focused. I didn’t bring any of my other worries into the apiary,” she said. “And I fell in love with the bees for how they made me feel.”

Pham didn’t grow up loving bees either, but when she saw a picture of Mraz in a full beekeeper’s suit on her OkCupid dating profile in 2019, she felt some kind of way, too.

“I was definitely interested in meeting someone who does something so rare,” she said.

So Pham, a private school chef, sent Mraz a message: “I’m looking for some local honey.”

As they grew sweet on each other, Mraz showed Pham the ins and outs of beekeeping, and she began to see the benefits bees brought to her life, too.

“It’s terrifying but it’s also exhilarating,” Pham, 37, said. “And every time I did it, I wanted more.”

In May 2020, the University City couple founded Half Mad Honey, an apiary of nine beehives at the Navy Yard, with the expressed intent of using their honeybees for mental health therapy. The name of the business is a nod to the Mad Pride movement, which seeks to destigmatize mental illness, and to mad honey, a type of hallucinogenic honey found in Nepal and Turkey.

“Our honey isn’t hallucinogenic, so we’re only halfmad,” Pham said.

Inspired by a program called Heroes to Hives, which teaches veterans beekeeping skills, as well as by alternative practices like equine and music therapy, the apiary therapy conducted at Half Mad Honey is believed to be the first of its kind anywhere.

“I wanted to take therapy out of a clinical office and bring it to the apiary,” Mraz, 30, said. “This is a space where we can practice safely activating our alarm response and bringing ourselves back down to a calm place.”

At its honeycomb core, apiary therapy is about putting yourself in a situation that would typically trigger a flight-orfight response (Ah! Bees!) and learning how to recognize, cope and control your emotions within that space so you can transfer those skills to everyday life.

Therapy sessions are cofacilitated by Mraz, who’s pursuing her master’s of public health degree in social and behavioral sciences and health communication at Temple, and by Amanda Geraci, a licensed clinical social worker who specializes in trauma and dual diagnosis treatment.

The 90-minute sessions, which are held for groups, couples, and individuals, begin with participants gearing up in beekeeping suits and heading to the apiary. There, Geraci has guests conduct a self-body scan, asking them to relax, take deep breaths and notice if there’s any pain or tension in their body.