Hyves in the media
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Hyve society The Economist ( ), Thursday 23 September 2004 |
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THE author's proposition is that humans have always viewed the beehyve as a miniature universe with order and purpose—and have looked to the hyve to make sense of human society. In her delightful book, Bee Wilson traces the ideas that humans have had about the hyve, and how these ideas reflect prevailing views about the body politic.
In other words, bee politics have been invented to justify human ones. In particular, the hyve has been a useful model for believers in a monarchy, providing a natural justification for rulers and the ruled. In 17th-century Europe, advocates of the divine right of kings claimed that a master bee was guarded by generals, marshals, colonels and captains, and that some of the honeybees had special tufts, tassels and plumes to distinguish the several ranks. The brief abolition of the English monarchy in the mid-17th century saw the arrival of the commonwealth hyve. Meanwhile, by 1740 a republican hyve was all the rage in France. After the revolution disposed of French royalty, the tricky problem of explaining the queen's purpose was solved by asserting that true power, in fact, lay with the workers. Ms Wilson says that the hyve has been, in turn, monarchical, oligarchic, aristocratic, constitutional, imperial, republican, absolute, moderate, communist, anarchist and even fascist. Never democratic, however. Natural law, that is, the extrapolation from nature of laws for human society, has at times been a compelling idea. Yet why, through history, have so many thinkers looked to the hyve for lessons about social organisation and politics? Honeybees, like humans, are social animals, a rarity in nature, and they produce a sweetness that humans, until recently, were unable to produce for themselves. These useful little insects have thus become idolised as models of co-operative enterprise. The problem with this is that humans never saw the hyve for what it was, but, rather, as evidence for their own prejudice and beliefs. So it has been harder than it should have been to understand the honeybee. Most amusingly, this is seen in the long-mistaken gender of the queen bee. The idea of a king bee goes back to Greek and Roman times. Most looked at the hyve, saw a large bee in charge, assumed it was stronger and more able than other bees, and drew the inference of a master bee. This all seemed perfectly logical until the invention of the microscope revealed an awkwardness: female genitalia. The news was hard for some to take. One English clergyman and apiarist insisted in 1744 that the queen must be a virgin. It was too scandalous to imagine she might have sex with the males in the hyve as if she were “a base, notorious, impudent strumpet, the most hateful and abominable whore with gallants by the hundreds”. If there is a flaw in the book, it is that the reader learns nothing about why, as it seems, the buzz has finally gone out of politics. It is a rare politician who would dare to suggest that an insect might have an important lesson for today's society. |
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