Modern Science, Moral Lessons and Honey Bees in Nineteenth-Century Natural History

The emergence of entomological and social sciences in the nineteenth century constructed ideas about society that relied heavily on analogies to legitimize a particular model of hierarchical social order. The honey bee was featured prominently in these analogies of social insects and human society. Queens, workers, soldiers, scouts and other roles in the hive were identified within a rigid division of labor and compared to the human division of labor. Scientific understandings of the honey bee were then disseminated in various popular texts: natural histories, beekeeping manuals and children’s literature. These reinforced the ideas of hierarchical dominant social order but also challenged it in some cases. Popularizing entomological science through natural history flourished in the nineteenth century and was used to promote the discipline, the practice of beekeeping and often religious or moral lessons. Literary works on the honey bee drew upon the fieldwork of entomologists and naturalists grounded in the latest factual information of the time and using the lexicon of entomological science. Many established entomologists wrote for both the discipline and popular texts for dissemination. This literature aimed at lay audiences and children and at times blurred the lines between science, religion and literature. However, what might be dismissed as merely the moralizing tone in much of this literature actually had more credibility, as it was guided by and explicitly linked to the scientific discourse at the time. This chapter intends to illustrate the connections between these honey bee analogies in the popular literature and scientific discourse of the nineteenth century and the role they played in the Victorian social order.