As a symbolic anthropologist, Wood has long been interested in how people organize their knowledge and passions and assign meaning to the world around them. When his father, a beekeeper, died, Wood developed a renewed interest in the practice. As he learned more about bees and beekeeping, he noticed parallels between bee colonies and human social processes.
When he shared his findings with friends, colleagues, and students, he discovered he wasn’t alone in wondering about the link. In fact, human interest in bees extends throughout history. That curiosity is a second facet of his class.
“People have been interacting with honeybees for longer than we’ve been human,” Wood says. “Before we became fully Homo sapiens, we were hunting honey in the crevices of cliffs and in the treetops all over Africa. We developed an almost spiritual interest in bees.”
He says that traditions from Africa, the Middle East, and Europe show that people see bees as a symbolic connection to the divine, to the order of the universe, and to their ancestors. That interest continues today, mainly through worry about climate change, the survival of bees, and their role in agriculture.
Wood adds that while it’s not uncommon for humans to identify with animals — like bears, lions, and hawks — bees are unique. It takes more imagination and symbolism to see ourselves in insects than a fellow mammal.
Still, Kit Crabtree, a sophomore biology major who took Wood’s class last spring, says they learned that while there’s a tendency to humanize bee behavior, it’s important to not view them through an exclusively human perspective.
“Bee hierarchies appear to be gendered in our eyes, but that’s based on the tasks that bees do. Bees don’t have a human concept of gender,” Crabtree says. “While bees make for an interesting lens to look at human society, we have to be careful not to apply our own narratives to these extremely unique animals.”
Whether studying bees leads students to question how they collaborate with others or to consider what bees can — or should — symbolize, Wood hopes this curiosity will help them connect with the broader world.
“That’s the meta lesson in all this,” he says. “By being a beekeeper, I started to pay attention to when plants begin to blossom, to the health and well-being of trees, to trends in the weather.
“Whether you’re interested in ants or squirrels or whatever, it draws us into more aspects of the world, into life outside of ourselves."
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