The Beehive: How Can We Create the Buzz?

by Mark Epstein

As summer winds down, if you have time to watch a flower, you may get a chance to witness the tremendous potential of collective purpose: bees in action. In just five minutes last month, I witnessed over 30 honeybees — sometimes two at a time — visiting one flower. Watching that one zucchini flower in our garden inspired these thoughts. 

It is crucial that people in our country facing challenges — the fifth year of the pandemic, looming climate catastrophe, resistance to racial reckoning, the suffering of livestreamed genocide and war, and massive wealth inequality — experience a renewal of our thinking and a reinvigoration of our hope that positive change can take place. The anthophiles (flower-loving insects) offer us a way to think about this.

Each bee I observed in my garden carried a small yellow bundle away from their visit to the zucchini flower’s treasure trove of pollen, returning (sometimes as far as 12 miles) to help sustain their hive. For bees, everything must lead toward survival of the hive. So what motivates humans to join with others in common intention and direction? There are countless examples of people joining together in unity and feeling part of something bigger. Though some examples of collective vision can have the most negative consequences, others hold the key to the survival and flourishing of our species.

In Seattle Reads’ 2024 book choice, Parable of the Sower (1993), Seattle writer Octavia Butler (1947–2006) begins the story in 2024. Amid fires and the disintegration of society into disparate enclaves, Butler describes the efforts of one group of individuals to develop a community, Earthseed, based on a belief system of equity and love. (Spoiler: In the sequel, Parable of the Talents, their attempts are initially thwarted by roving thugs and bandits and the security apparatus of a presciently imagined presidential campaign based on the concept of Make America Great Again.) Butler posits that the hive approach can either lead to mutual aid and reciprocity or animosity and hostility. Our current systems lead us toward the latter, reinforcing historical inequality and reducing life chances — life expectancy, mental and physical health challenges, greater exposure to violence — for billions of people.

At issue is how each of us perceives the rest of us. Some of the most common manifestations of hive mentality are our identification with the family, the team, the school, the nation, the friend group, the “like-minded,” the people who we assume pray like we do. Others might be race, gender, gender preference, perceived intelligence, or ability. A predominant type of hive thinking is to identify with people of the same chronological age. Identification with a group is about feeling that we are not alone in who we are and what we experience. How do we perceive those we think of as being outside our hive? 

Like us, bees protect their in-group fiercely, driving away and killing invaders and outsider bees and even making war. Hive thinking by humans can have genocidal consequences, as we can see daily from Gaza, Sudan or Congo; it’s the story of the last 532 years on this continent since Columbus’ arrival, and long before that all over the world. It is a wonder (a shame?) that we can accept this status quo as inevitable or unchangeable. We can pay tribute to the victims by saying their names and stopping the killing machines. It must be recognized, though, that there are queen and king bees who are maintaining their reign through these actions.

Stan culture — an intensely loyal form of fandom, such as Beyoncé’s “Beyhive,” Taylor Swift’s “Swifties,” and Kpop — is another current expression of hive behavior: a sharing of loyalty and commonalities through love of a celebrity. Stan culture can lead to shared culture and language, commercial relationships, political awareness, and action, but also, in some cases, to obsessive behavior, harassment, and demonization of outsiders. 

When fame gives someone a microphone, they can change the world outlook of millions of people. Beyoncé challenged the look of patriotism, Taylor Swift endorsed the Democratic Party candidacy of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. Kpop lovers of Korean-based bands demonstrated political power when they organized electronically to buy up most of the seats for a 2020 Trump rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Unfortunately, much of our current economic and values system has been built around the philosophy described in a 1714 poem by Bernard Mandeville. In the poem The Fable of the Bees, the bees, which were motivated to get the most pollen through self-interest, instead begin to care about each other. They lose their incentive, become lazy, and live their lives out in a hollow log. His thinking underpins the basis for our capitalist economic system: self-interest above all, which has led to the massive inequality we face today.

Fortunately, as Brazilian educator Paulo Freire described, humans are capable of developing a critical consciousness, or “conscientization.” As people reflect on their lives, they can move toward an understanding of the systems they are living under and thus engage in the work of changing toward a more just world.

Bees not only play the role of gatherer; in their 40-plus days of life, each worker bee plays numerous roles — nurturer of the young, cleaner, honeycomb builder, hive guard, and, finally, collector of nectar and pollen. In the process, they not only help ensure the survival of their hive, they also enable the plant world (including our food sources) to bloom and thrive. Without them, we literally could not survive.

Neither can we survive without one another. As human beings, our need for each other is deep. There are so many ways we can care for and build each other up. Let’s ask ourselves what values are rewarded in the systems that shape our beliefs. What kinds of hives will produce the best societal outcomes? What honey can our present and future actions produce?

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