The Bee in Folklore & Mythology
(Originally written for the Bumblebee Conservation Trust ) The bee features as much in folklore from around the world as it does in our gardens in summer time. Yet, in this article, I can only scratch the surface of this vast body of information. Bees show up in human art forms almost as soon as mankind learned to create them; they are depicted in ancient rock art from around the world, for example from the Palaeolithic in Spain and from the Mesolithic in India and are mentioned in some of the earliest forms of writing in the world. Bees crop up everywhere from poetry to prose and even in our everyday sayings: we can be as 'busy as a bee', we 'make a bee-line' for things, we can get 'a bee in the bonnet' and the term 'bee's knees' now famously refers to something fabulous, although originally it referred to something small and insignificant. Bees are linked with magic, love, industriousness and creativity. The mere presence of bees on a ...