Life Before Death

One thing I have noticed as I have learned more and more about bees over my years of keeping them is that invariably, if someone who isn’t a beekeeper (or an entomologist) writes a text on bees, they always get something wrong (usually about reproduction). It seems as though bees are so incredibly mysterious that unless you are an expert, or handle bees regularly, bee biology is virtually impossible to get basically right. Thus it was with some trepidation that I started reading The Hive: The Story of the Honeybee and Us (ISBN 0719564093) by aptly nicknamed author Bee Wilson.

Wilson is not a beekeeper, or an entomologist - she is a food writer and a historian. It was her love for honey that prompted her to write this book, which is not about natural science but anthropology and history. She takes us on a journey through history and literature; through the minds of people who have kept, loved, revered or sometimes disdained the honeybee. The book is divided into large chunks with the headings “Work”, “Sex”, “Politics”, “Food and Drink”, “Life and Death” and “The Beekeeper”, and each chapter is riddled with references as well as - gasp! - illustrations.

On the whole, it’s a very pleasant and often amusing read. Most of the book concerns how humans have always imposed their own preferences when trying to interpret the mysterious insects. The way the beehive has been invoked by various writers to represent the perfect monarchy, the perfect oligarchy, the perfect meritocracy and even the perfect republic, depending on the particular preferences of the writer, is a perfect illustration of how humans employ Matthew 7:7 (to get a little biblical). Whatever behaviour or opinion you want to justify, you will find something in nature to support it, if you just look hard enough.

Of course, looking for justification of political ideas in the beehive is mostly a matter of interpretation - it gets much more surreal when it comes to the sex of the queen. To beekeepers today, it seems extraordinary that no one in ancient times, or even a couple of hundred years ago, seemed to bother actually observing the queen, as that surely would have let them realise that she lays eggs. However, not only have people been exceedingly confused about her gender, but also about whether she’s a virgin or not. See, no one actually saw the queen mating, so therefore she must not have. And, according to an altogether different kind of logic, she couldn’t possibly have been female either, as, after all, she carries a weapon. And everyone knows women just don’t do that.

Unfortunately, while Wilson appears to be as amused by this as I am, she does at one point embarrass herself by doing exactly what I was afraid of - making an egregious mistake when it comes to the reproductive behaviour of bees. To any modern beekeeper the error is so blatant and obvious that I’m shocked it made it through to the final edit. Perhaps she didn’t let any beekeepers proofread the book, but that’s hardly an excuse. The error itself consists of her sad misunderstanding of the parthenogenetic birth of drones. While she’s obviously understood that drones are born from unfertilised eggs, she appears to believe that these eggs are laid by the queen before her nuptial flight. This is wrong, very wrong, as the queen’s egg-laying apparatus isn’t fully developed until after she has mated, by which time she’s too fat to fly any greater distance (if a queen fails to mate within a few weeks of her birth, she develops her sexual organs anyway, remaining an “old maid” forever, and the hive dies). Once she has mated, she stores the sperm in special chambers, and makes a choice every time she lays an egg to either fertilise it or not.

Still, just one blatant mistake about bee biology in the whole book is pretty good, I think. And the rest of the book contains enough entertaining stories about other people’s faulty beliefs to make up for it. Wilson is unabashedly harsh on those she considers too kooky to deserve any respect - mormons and anthroposophers fall in this category - while she treats other, more innocently confused sources, with gentle amusement.

Although I think Wilson perhaps exaggerates the importance of bees through the history of humanity (as providers of sweet, sweet honey as well as candle-light), I can hardly fault her for that. Bees are amazing, after all.

bees, honeybees, beekeeping, bee wilson