My vision of bees smacked of domestic idyll – slow buzzing on a calm spring day, productive harvesters meandering from blossom to blossom. Despite a long list of contentious topics to be avoided in line at the post office, bees held sway as a universal good, a bit of wildness at home in suburban backyards, a safe topic of conversation for all social gatherings.
But then I got bees, or rather, bees got me. A swarm of bees arrived last season, and they’ve stayed on in the hive we provided. These bees are tetchy, more reactive than the other colony in residence at the Patch. If I hang out in their flight path to weed or meander too long in front of the hive, they will warn me with a couple of head taps, and if I don't pay heed and move one, they sting.
Before living with bees, I had no means of comparison to see the personality difference between bee colonies. Now, with clear behavioral differences that I experience in walking across my yard, I encounter a puzzle. Are these bees wild or domestic? On what basis do I categorize them?
Humanity’s appreciation of bees and their honey extends back into the mists of earliest recorded history, with some experts hypothesizing that nutrient-rich honey played a role in the evolution of the enlarged and increasingly calorie-dependent human brain. Ancient cosmologies paid homage to bee beings, and documentation of bee gods exists in a multitude of cultures, including the Slavik Zosim, the Mayan Ah Mucan Cab, and depictions of Vishnu in the form of a bee.[i]
The human-bee relationship is lengthy and complex, but the question of domestication remains cloudy. In fact, the domestic/wild binary stands as a potentially limiting or false construction across all species. Animals, plants, birds, and bugs don’t conceive of themselves as altered because of interaction with humans. In fact, some of the most numerically abundant species – dogs and poppies, for example – flourish precisely because they leverage human biology and social structures.[ii] Perhaps it is more accurate to say that some life forms domesticate humans, or at least bend human behavior in a manner favorable to their species.
To complicate this fraught categorization project even further, we can see that ecosystems teem with mutually beneficial relationships like that between ants and aphids, the human gut and micro-organisms, or even – on the topic of honey – the honey badger and the avian honey guide.[iii] The more-than-human world is populated with life forms that cooperate as the rule, not the exception. In these kinds of partnering relationships, the dominant feature is just that – the relationship.
My attempt to categorize the bees as wild or domestic? Wild be damned. Domestic-schmestic. As Helen McDonald said, “Wild things are made from human stories.”[iv] Perhaps in a couple of decades when I’ve accumulated the experience of numerous bee colonies, I’ll be able to assess the characteristics of a hive with pinpoint accuracy. For now, I can appreciate how fascinatingly full of life all bees are.
Do I “keep” bees, or do they “keep” me? I’d wager that it matters not at all to the bees. And it matters less and less to me.
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[i] Richard Jones and Sharon Sweeny-Lynch, The Beekeeper’s Bible: Bees, Honey, Recipes & Other Home Uses, 2011.
[ii] Both Amitav Ghosh (Smoke and Ashes, 2024) and Michael Pollan (This is Your Mind on Plants, 2021) document these kinds of relationships.
[iii] Jan Brett’s Honey…Honey…Lion! (2014), a favorite of my kids, details the work of the honey badger and honey guide, with the bonus of beautiful illustrations.
[iv] Helen Macdonald, H is for Hawk, 2014, p. 200.
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