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Show and independent, whose scope was more gradual. This was to be a place in which the forces of good could be generated for the eventual reaUzation of a latter-day worldwide Kingdom. This vision, much more than Smith's, was very like the traditional kingdom of the hive. The beehive, of course, was built upon the symbols of the earlier church, but it surely represented Brigham Young's kingdom. The beehive began its course to becoming the most pervasive symbol of Mormondom at some time during the immigration of the Saints to a new Zion out on the great western wilderness. That the importance of the beehive grew during the move west is supported by a suggestive parallel in Judeo-Christian tradition. The Mormons during this period of upheaval had always in mind the account in the Old Testament of the flight of Moses and the IsraeUtes from their persecutors. Mormon church leaders comforted their followers with this comparison and promised a similar ' 'land of milk and honey" at the eventual settlement in Zion. A similar event in the Book of Mormon is the flight in ancient times of a group of righteous people called the Jaredites from the unholy city of Babel. God led the Jaredites to a new home in America, and the Book of Mormon records that they carried with them "Deseret," which Joseph Smith translated as "honey bee." The word "Deseret" was further mysterious because it is the only word in the Book of Mormon which survives from the ancient and holy language of Adam. This must have appeared to the immigrants to be an important key to the founding of the new Zion. The land of milk and honey, and the word "Deseret" and its visual symbol, the honey bee, gave great associational importance to the beehive emblems as the Mormons themselves fled from the cities of the unrighteous into the new land. Deseret, represented by the working bee pioneers in the beehive Kingdom of God, became the most pervasive symbol in the building of the Great Basin Empire. This symbol, unlike the more formal and sacred icons of Grand Masonry, became a personal and exclusive symbol for the pioneer. As the pioneers attempted to reorganize the hostile land according to an ideal inherited from the lush gardens of northern Europe, the beehive took on extra meaning. The hive as an agrarian model was crucial in the quest to reap the fruits of the earth and to make the desert "blossom as the rose." It is tempting to imagine that, given all the emphasis on the traditional skep beehive as a symbol, early Utah beekeepers wove skeps, invoked bee charms, and idolized their bees. The truth is that beekeepers in Utah used skeps only very early; they always employed the most scientific methods of beekeeping in order to produce as much as possible. The land must overflow with milk and honey. The most important conception which the beehive suggested in those early days of settlement was the Christian belief that the beehive could be compared to "the Kingdom of God on Earth." This was interpreted as a communal |
