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Show te« The Beehive in Utah Folk Art The people of Utah have inherited and preserved a remarkable and largely unexamined treasury of folklore and art. An attractive aspect of this inheritance is the unusual way in which one particular traditional motif appears repeatedly. The recurrent emblem is the beehive, and its use is both striking and pervasive. More importantly, the beehive motif carries with it a wealth of meaning and information about a people's cultural and psychological connections with the distant past and with its immediate and unique history7. The Beehive in Use and Symbolism The beehive, called by English beekeepers a "skep," is a woven half-sphere with a long history of use in northern Europe which reaches back to the Middle Ages. The beehive's purpose, of course, is to house bees and make their honey accessible to men. If we were to find a rare one in use today it would be in northern Europe on a farm run in the traditional manner, where honey was not the cash crop. In many countries the skep has been outlawed. While utility is a primary characteristic of the beehive, it has always functioned as much more than a farm implement, for it has also been invested by man with symbolic meaning. We cannot really separate the beehive as mythic emblem from the beehive as utilitarian object, since the history of the relationship of bees to man is at the core of man's beehive mythology. As primitive cultures around the world became acquainted with the bee they found a mysterious animal which was at once a docile provider of sweetness and a stinging enemy. This natural paradox required solution, and the cultures provided myths to bring harmony to the discordance. Throughout the history of the myth of the beehive, importance has been attached to it at both the personal and symbolic levels. A. C. Lambert, in his study of symbology, tells us that one of the most inclusive prescriptions of meaning, the Rosicrucian system, like many Western mystic systems such as Masonry, belief interpreted the hive as a place for working and building. It represents a tabernacle inside which we work together in concert. In our work we are servants to others and we take from nature for the good of our fellow man. Honey represents the goal of that quest. We must also take elements from the world to build a sound temple for our spirit to reside within, just as the bee builds a hive in order to store its honey. The History of the Hive When early man first found the hive, honey bees were already being robbed by ancient birds and bears. By the time of the mighty Egyptian dynasties, bees were being cultivated in hollow logs, clay pots, and mud and straw apiaries. Already the bee, its life, its products |
