The School of Bees
By: Meghan Cleverly
“To be or not to be --- that is the question” (Hamlet, III.i.64). While William
Shakespeare’s idyllic phrase pertains to his work Hamlet, it also raises an
important question in today’s agricultural society; To bee or not to bee? Beekeeping
is a vital part of agricultural processes; however, in today’s ever increasing
digital age it is often easily overlooked. Most people no longer rely on their
own farms for their food, but rather mindlessly stop by a grocery store and
pick up an array of vegetables and fruit. Without bees or beekeepers, there
would be no produce for them to pick up. Consumers could learn so much from
bees, if we could only follow their
example to “stop and smell the roses.” Bees and beekeeping teach valuable
principles for any business endeavor, such as the value of hard work,
knowledge, and obedience. Bee symbolism can be found throughout farm life, literature,
pop culture, folklore, and everyday life. Because I am a business major I went
to local beekeepers and literary sources to be taught by the bee.
To study what bees and beekeeping teach about running
a successful business, I thought no better place to learn from than the mouth
of a professional beekeeper. I chose to preform qualitative research, so that I
could get authentic experiences from those in this field. My main purpose for
contacting these individual was to get their personal thoughts and emotions as
beekeepers. I wanted to see if their responses compared to what I have studied
in literature as well as other sources. While not everyone is destined to be a
beekeeper, I hoped that my findings would be a good example on the role that
bees play into society and how learning principles from these bees can affect
any business setting for good.
Literature Review
While gathering hands on research is a great way to
learn more about a subject, it is also important to look at outside research
for more information. Literature provides an excellent source of information
and comparisons to primary research. When I began looking for literature about
bees, I stumbled upon a multitude of books about the physical nature of the bee
and how it is biologically able to make honey. While those books contain
excellent material, it wasn’t the direction I wanted to go for my project. I
wanted to see how literature portrayed the bee symbolically, as well as how
knowledge of bees and beekeeping can expand outside the agricultural scope into
a business in any field. When I began to broaden my search from literary works
specific to bees, to literary works that had an aspect of bees in them, I was able
to strike gold.
The first work that came into my mind that contained
bees was the popular novel The Secret
Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. The book centers around the story of the
narrator, a girl named Lily, and her summer experiences as a lonely 14-year
girl. The story tells of the struggles she faces with her father, and her
desire to move away. Lily is able to find a way to leave her town behind her,
and, with a friend, they travel to an unbeknownst destination where they were
led to a beekeeper named August Boatwright. Lily settles into living in the
honey house and is tasked with taking care of the bees. Through every
interaction Lily has in the novel with others or herself, a bee plays a part in
teaching her.
As Lily continued to care for the bees day after day,
they taught her how to move forward with her life. She came from a difficult
background, but the bees taught her about rebirth; bees die and new ones are
born every day, and that she too could create a new life free from the damage
she left behind. Lily was surrounded by many strong women who also helped tend
for the bees. These women looked up to their leader, August, for guidance and
direction, just like the bees from a hive look up to their queen. This sense of
community was so vital towards her development and brought about feelings of
safety. Kidd opened her novel with an epigraph for her first chapter that
quotes Man and Insects by saying,
“The queen, for her part, is the unifying force of the community; if she is
removed from the hive the workers very quickly sense her absence…[and] they
show unmistakable signs of queenlessness” (Kidd,
1).
In a business, without a designated leader like a
queen, there is chaos. Nobody knows what the goals or plans of the business
are. The workers are at a loss for what specific role they play, and as such
become unproductive. The queen is a great symbol of what creates a good leader.
While a hive typically only has one queen at a time, most businesses have
multiple leaders who work in harmony together. Some examples might include a
marketing manager, head accountant, customer service manager, etc. Just like
August in The Secret Life of Bees, or
the queen bee of a hive, they all have to work together with their workers in
order to establish their community or company.
Bees can also be seen as a religious motif in the
Kings James Version of The Bible. In
Proverbs 24:13 it states, “My son, eat thou honey, because it is good; and the
honeycomb which is sweet to thy taste”. It continues into verse 14 and says,
“So shall the knowledge of wisdom be unto thy soul: when thou hast found it,
then there shall be a reward” ("The Holy
Bible: King James Version"). These verses provide great symbolism between
honey and knowledge. As honey is consumed, it flows throughout the body, the
same way that knowledge can fill the brain. Beekeeping requires wisdom and
knowledge, such as knowing how to start a colony or how to protect and provide
for an established hive. Upon obtaining and using this knowledge correctly
beekeepers are able to find their reward, when a hive flourishes and produces a
high quality grade of honey.
This motif also plays a part in the business world. At
Utah State University there are 3,621 students currently enrolled in the Jon M.
Huntsman School of Business, and I am one of them (University). In my business
courses I am taught by accredited professors who share their knowledge with
their students in their particular field of study. The lessons they teach are
good and “sweet to the taste” in the sense that they prepare us for life after
graduation. Just like a bee collects small amounts of pollen at a time,
students learn little by little from their teachers and are able to build our own
version of honeycomb when they combine the vast knowledge that was taught in
the classroom with their own experiences and ambitions. Students are then able
to take their knowledge honeycombs, or the things that they have learned, out
into the real world where they enter the workforce. In a business when multiple
educated workers come together, they each bring their own honeycomb to the
table and are able to combine into a hive, or a team with a unified front of specialized
information. This symbolism of bees and honey represent such an invaluable piece
of any business endeavor.
In 1902 Mark Twain wrote an essay entitled “The Bee.”
In his essay, Twain conveys his observations of bees in a psychical, as well as
poetical, way. He focuses heavily on the queen bee, and the vital role she
plays as CEO of the hive. He says it best when he states:
“It is the queen’s business to keep the population up
to standard—say, fifty thousand. She must always have that many children on
hand and efficient during the busy season, which is summer, or winter would
catch the community short of food. She lays from two thousand to three thousand
eggs a day, according to the demand; and she must exercise judgement, and not
lay more than are needed in a slim flower-harvest, nor fewer than are required
in a prodigal one, or the board of directors will dethrone her and elect a
queen that has more sense” (Twain 280-281).
The queen represents CEO’s across all fields in
business; each CEO faces extreme pressure to exercise professional judgement
for betterment of their company, and if they fall short, they too can be
replaced. Just as bees can viciously kill their own queen, the same thing can
happen to a CEO or director. Today’s world is fast paced and greedy, and as
such the world of business has become quite cutthroat. While a director could
have made sound judgement calls for many years, in today’s world that could all
easily forgotten when a poor judgement call is made.
As his essay continues, Twain also points out the need
for specialized workers. While the queen may rule the hive, without her worker
bees her position is meaningless. Twain points out that, “The distribution of
work in a hive is as cleverly and elaborately specialized as it is in a vast
American machine-shop or factory” (Twain
284). Each bee plays a specific part in the process.
Male bees are called drones, and their one purpose is
to mate with the queen. In contrast female bees can be either a house bee or a
foraging bee. House bees have duties such as: caring for the new baby bees,
cleaning the hive, taking care of the queen, building and capping honeycomb,
removing dead bees from the hive, and many more. Foraging bees are in charge of
collecting pollen, nectar, and water ("Bee Hive Hierarchy and
Activities"). In any business around the world this is also true.
Consider this
process of specialization in the medical field. While all doctors must go to
medical school, where they learn the fundamentals of the human body, each
doctor’s career enables them to become specialized in their field of study.
Although a cardiologist and a podiatrist are both doctors, they each provide
different skills sets and knowledge. Twain goes on to add that, “A bee that has
been trained to one of the many and various industries of concern doesn’t know
how to exercise any other, and would be offended if asked to take a hand in
anything outside of her profession” (Twain 284). Herein lies another great
example of how bees teach people to find their specialty and perform it to
their best of their ability, and as such the result is precise and productive.
Bees have also found their way into entertainment,
such as the children’s movie entitled The
Bee movie, which teaches children of all ages the importance of every
living creature in nature. There are also children’s books that teach kids
about the importance of bees and beekeeping, such as: The Beeman by Laurie Krebs, UnBEElieveables
by Douglas Florian, What If There
Were No Bees? A Book about the Grassland Ecosystem by Suzanne Slade, The Buzz on Bees: Why Are They Disappearing?
By Shelley Rotner, or The Case of the
Vanishing Honeybees: A Scientific Mystery by Sandra Markle. These books
provide information to children in such a way that they can learn and grow a
relationship and love of bees.
It is very important to learn about beekeeping and
bees, and it as equally important to respect and develop gratitude towards
them. According to the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food, pollination is
responsible for 30% of our foods (Lewis "Seed Giveaway at National Ag. Day
Event"). However, most people don’t even consider the hard work that the
bees spend on our behalf. Wendell Berry explains how uneducated people are in
regards to food in his essay, “The Pleasures of Eating”. In it he states that,
“Most urban shoppers would tell you that food is produced on farms. But most of
them do not know what farms, or what kinds of farms, or where the farms are, or
what knowledge of skills are involved in farming” (Kinkead, Funda, & McNeill 272). I have fallen
prey to this ignorant state of mind, but have since grown such an appreciation
for all the hard work that goes into the foods I love.
As I have
continued to study and explore beekeeping, I have developed such a love and
respect for my striped friends. Their loyalty to their queen astounds me, as
well as their obedience, hard work, dedication, and amazing team work. No
matter what calamities they may face, they continue day after day to build up
their hive. I hope to be able to say the
same about the undertakings in my life.
My Fieldwork
Experience
My basis for this project came from a different
project in which I learned about beekeeping as a hobby. While I was
interviewing a family friend, a former professional beekeeper, I got the itch
to expand my research on bees from beekeeping as a hobby, to beekeeping as a
business, hence this project was born. I’d found a lot of research online about
the financial aspect of starting and operating a beekeeping business, but
couldn’t find much about the feelings people had throughout the process of
creating and operating of their business. While I, as a business major,
understand the importance of a solid business plan, and a firm financial
backing, I felt that I could learn a lot more from this project if I took a nontraditional approach. I interviewed two individuals, Lin Richardson, a family
friend and former professional beekeeper, and Camille Cowley of Cox Honeyland
& Gifts. I asked each a variety of similar questions, but truth be told I
wasn’t focused so much on the answers to the questions themselves, but rather
the emotion and feelings they portrayed in how they answered.
My first interview was with Lin
Richardson, in his home located in Layton, Utah. Lin began telling me about how
he first became interested in bees in high school, and how his curiosity
continued to grow long after. Lin began from humble beginnings, starting his
first hives with bees he collected from his time working for animal control as
a swarm list volunteer. Lin was later mentored by a lady who knew the industry
well, and as such purchased 60 beehives. The next year he and a friend were
able to split their 60 hives into 120 hives. However, they didn’t have any
equipment, and were seemingly at a dead end until they purchased an existing
business from a beekeeper. They were now the proud owners of extra boxes,
extraction equipment, over 1,100 beehives, existing customer contracts, and a
fair amount of debt.
Lin and his partner worked fervently
together to build their business, similarly to beehives working together to
build their hives. Their business boomed thanks to their hearty hives, which
produced an extra 20-30 lbs. more each than the competition. Thanks to their
hard work and dedication to their hives, Lin and his partner were producing
over 35 tons of honey a year by themselves.
As Lin was explaining all this to
me, I could see the pride in his eye and hear it in his voice. Most beekeeping
businesses require a long list of employees to be successful, however Lin’s
business was successful with two men and thousands of amazing bee colonies. His
voice was full of energy and enthusiasm, and I too was proud of their success.
Unfortunately, Lin’s business only
lasted four years. Because they were a two-person operation, the extra labor
was very intensive even with equipment. As such Lin damaged his back to the
point where he had to go a different direction.
During this point Lin’s demeanor
changed, as he explained to me the legal battle that ensued. It was a hard
topic to talk about, due to proper legal action on behalf of the previous
owner, but in the end Lin and his partner had to cut their losses and
completely walk away from their business.
Due to the painfulness and
sensitivity of his memories, Lin expressed to me that it had left a bad taste
in his mouth for beekeeping. He was saddened, and so was I. I see a lot of
everyday examples of businesses who fail, but this one felt different to me.
Lin and his partner worked hard together in unity, but so did their bees. Their
bees worked together and created exceptional honey, and an abundance of it. It
was painful to hear such a sad ending.
Because of his experiences in the
professional world of beekeeping, Lin expressed that beekeeping should be a
hobby, not a business. This correlated well with my agriculture class, where we
learned that huge farms and businesses unfortunately kill their smaller
competition. It’s hard for small businesses to keep up in today’s economy,
especially when mother nature can have a huge impact on that business.
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| Lin let me in on some of the action with his backyard hives. I cleaned out the frames. It took a long time. |
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| I also sanded and repainted the boxes. |
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| I was having so much fun working on this project that my sweet neighbor just had to help too. Helping Lin with this project greatly increased my respect for bees and beekeepers. |
I later interviewed Camille Cowley, of Cox Honeyland and Gifts, in her family’s shop located in Providence, Utah. This company was founded in 1929 by her grandfather, Marion Cox. The business has continued for nearly six generations throughout Cache Valley, Utah. Marion Cox began small, tending and biking hives around. His business continued to succeed and was able to profit from the sale of his honey to large companies. However, during the 1980’s they needed more money to finance their business. While farms across the country fell into huge amounts of debt, many of which were foreclosed on, the Cox family decided to expand their business in order to get additional financial support.
In 1989 the Cox Honeyland and Gifts
store was created. Camille’s mother was a florist who saw the opportunity to
create a gift shop where profits could be earned all year. Camille and her
sisters now run the shop, while her brother tends for the bees. In their shop
is a wide variety of products, from homemade fudge and popcorn, to honey of all
kinds, to trinkets and mementos. The shop is a very welcoming business and a
great addition to Cache Valley.
As I was speaking with Camille I was
able to feel her reverence for her families business. She described some of the
challenges of the beekeeping business, such as selling high quality honey. Much
of the honey on the market today is imported from other countries, full of
additives, but priced very cheaply. This is difficult for the Cox family to
compete with financially, since their honey is 100% pure, and, as such, comes
with a higher price tag.
I could understand her frustration
in running a quality business in a world where consumers are only looking for
the cheapest quantity they can find. I’ve learned the importance of having a
niche in the market from my schooling, but I had a new appreciation for the Cox
family who works hard to uphold their standards even when that means losing to
the competition.
As I watched customers come in to
the shop, I could see the happiness on their faces. They looked proud to be
supporting their neighbors and receiving wonderful products in return. Camille
explained to me that her favorite part of her job is making people happy. She
is in charge of making the gift baskets of honey, merchandise, and keeping
inventory. She takes pride in her work and knows that she makes a difference,
one jar of honey at a time.
Although my interviews were somewhat
nontraditional in their purpose, I walked away from both completely satisfied.
What I had studied and learned about bees in literature were indeed applicable
in businesses today. Through unity each company was able to grow together. Just
like bees in a hive, both Lin and Camille and their respective parties came
together with specialized jobs, and through the use of hard work and
dedication, built their own businesses, just like the bees with their hives.
My takeaway from my experiences
studying bees in both literature and business, is this; on our own we aren’t
capable of much; but when we as individuals come together like bees in a
colony, and use our talents and strengths for good, we can build something
beautiful, and we can make a difference. So the next time you see bees, take a
moment to appreciate their hard work in making our world such a beautiful
place.
Works Cited
"Bee
Hive Hierarchy and Activities." Big Island Bees. Web. 05 Apr. 2017.
"Beekeeping
with Lin Richardson." Personal interview. 10 Mar. 2017.
“Beekeeping
with Camille Cowley.” Personal interview. 04 Apr. 2017.
Kidd,
Sue Monk. The Secret Life of Bees. New York: Penguin, 2006. Print.
Kinkead, Joyce, Evelyn Funda, and Lynne S. McNeill.
Farm: a multi-modal reader. Southlake, TX: Fountainhead Press, 2014. Print.
Lewis, Larry. "Seed Giveaway at National Ag. Day
Event." Utah Department of Agriculture and Food. Web. 04 Apr. 2017.
Shakespeare, William, Barbara A. Mowat, and Paul
Werstine. The tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark. New York: Simon &
Schuster Paperbacks, 2012. Print.
Proverbs. The Holy Bible: King James Version. Salt
Lake City, Utah: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1979. Print.
Twain, Mark. What is Man? and Other Essays. New York:
Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1917. Print.
University, Utah State. "About the School."
About the School. Web. 05 Apr. 2017.
Interview Notes
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