[Pollinator] Beeconomy
Ladadams at aol.com
Ladadams at aol.com
Thu Dec 1 05:33:13 PST 2011
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Wednesday, November 30, 2011
‘Beeconomy’ author, Ky.’s Tammy Horn,
examines relationship between women, bees
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Bee hives have been used as metaphors for human societies for centuries.
Hives buzz with activity produced from the coordinated efforts of a multitude
of working parts, the most important of which are the female worker bees.
Worker bees instinctively provide for the well-being of the hive, and they
can also provide for the well-being of women around the world who perform a
similar role within their families.
In “Beeconomy: What Women and Bees Can Teach Us about Local Trade and the
Global Market,” noted bee expert, Kentucky native and Eastern Kentucky
University professor Tammy Horn traces the spread of beekeeping across the globe
from its origins in Africa. Along the way, she examines the symbiotic
relationship between women and bees and discusses the payoffs of a social
system that encourages more female beekeepers.
Horn, who was raised with beekeepers on both sides of her family, is the
director of Coal Country Beeworks, a multiservice project in which surface
mine sites are reclaimed with pollinator habitat in eastern Kentucky. She has
authored a previous book, “Bees in America: How the Honey Bee Shaped a
Nation.” Having traveled to every continent except Antarctica to study the
methods and culture of beekeeping in different parts of the globe, Horn has
accumulated a diverse body of ideas and traditions.
In her newest book, Horn discusses beekeeping as a source of fulfillment
and personal growth for women and explores the negative connotations that
socialized apicultural phrases such as “queen bee” or “worker bee” can have
when associated with women. Such phrases play into the predominant view
that women are of lesser value than their male counterparts; a view that keeps
many women from being able to attain the lifestyle that they desire, she
maintains. Horn combats these social norms by introducing women throughout
the book who have used beekeeping as an opportunity to offset financial
deficits and to manage motherhood, careers, marriage, and single parenthood,
all while helping to promote healthy pollinator ecosystems.
“Beeconomy” tracks the evolution of beekeeping as well as the
socialization of analogies regarding women as both have spread around the world. Horn
organizes each chapter around a specific region of the world and paints an
expansive picture of apiculture using the wide range of beekeeping roles
that women fill in each area, from honey gatherers and queen producers to
swarm catchers.
Beginning in Africa, Horn moves on to the honey-hunting cultures of India
and discusses the effect of recent economic development for women. She then
moves across eastern Asia to Russia, examining how current affairs are
resurrecting ancient agricultural ideas associated with bee goddesses.
Moving west, Horn describes the bee-related religions of Europe before
exploring North America’s introduction to beekeeping in the seventeenth
century. She pays special attention to beekeeping in North America because of the
complex apicultural systems that women there have developed and also notes
the impressive advancements in organic standards and medicinal honey made
by women of Australia. Praise for the quick strides in apiculture technology
produced by South American women concludes her transglobal journey.
Horn emphasizes the importance that bees play in supplying food for the
global population and in supporting local plant species. She connects
pollination with food production and demonstrates the role that pollinators and
beekeepers play in fending off invasive plant species. With one in three bee
hives in North America being lost to colony collapse disorder, along with
similar losses occurring around the world, beekeepers are becoming even more
vitally important players in economic and ecological trends.
“Beeconomy” is the first book of its kind to not only provide plentiful
evidence supporting the need for more beekeepers but also to offer
encouragement for women everywhere to enrich their lives by cultivating bees.
Following is a conversation with author Tammy Horn:
How did you first become involved with beekeeping?
My maternal grandfather from Leslie County, Ky., was a beekeeper. After
years of shunning the agricultural and scientific worlds because of the
difficulty I associated with them, I was literally transformed by the bees and by
my grandfather’s unconditional love of bees one day when I assisted him in
the beeyards. Suddenly, emerging from the opacity of academe, the world
became specific in nice ways: trees had names and definitive bloom seasons;
honey bees had roles and responsibilities in the hive.
My grandfather, too, transformed in front of me, talking very gently to the
bees in a conversational tone I had not associated with him before. Of
course, as I learned more, I began to fill in the gaps of my education: I had
had no idea of the relationship between pollination and food/flowers. Much
of the quality of my lifestyle, I realized, depended upon honey bees and
other insects. As our country has continued to lose one in every three hives
of bees, I decided that the world needed more beekeepers, not English
professors.
This book explores the historical role of women in beekeeping around the
world. Why did you choose this particular theme for your work?
My paternal grandmother from Harlan County, Ky., had been a beekeeper, but
no one could tell me why she started keeping bees. I wasn’t born when she
kept bees, and I didn’t keep bees until long after she had died. I didn’t
realize until I was about two years into “Beeconomy” that my first book,
Bees in America, is very much my maternal grandfather’s book; “Beeconomy” is
very much my paternal grandmother’s book. It is an effort to conjure my
grandmother’s gentle smile, her soft Cumberland River accent and
self-effacing laugh from sepia-toned photographs and share with her this love of bees.
Finally, of course, those memories deflate and dissolve in dreams, but the
women profiled in this book have inspired me with their creativity,
tenacity and clarity.
You also delve into the spiritual and cultural connections of bees with
femininity. In a quick summary, where do you believe these relationships came
from?
Around the world, the honey bees’ ability to communicate, proliferate
(seemingly without intimacy), and produce honeys from all types of flowers have
become time-honored symbols for a human world filled with complex
relationships. Being natural sign-seekers, people concern themselves with how to
negotiate intimacy (chastity being a time-honored value), difficult emotions
(how to keep your cool instead of being a hothead), conversations and
struggles with mortality (my legal will specifies that in lieu of a funeral I
want my bees to be told and the hives draped with black clothes—no need for a
fancy coffin). The bee hive has been a convenient source of signs to some
of those questions as societies struggle to define cultural norms. But the
bee hive has also led to some fallacies regarding human relationships,
specifically concerning women’s roles in society, that need to be re-examined.
In doing your research, you have traveled to every continent, save
Antarctica. What is your most memorable experience from your travels?
>From a beekeeper’s perspective, there were two major international
experiences. The first was a 2006 visit with Las Cachinallas in Mexicali, Mexico.
The women were doing “bare-knuckle beekeeping” in such difficult
environmental and cultural conditions with such grace and dignity that the visit was
a “watershed” moment for me. I realized that we could use their
cooperative model in Appalachia—and should. The only reason we weren’t doing it was
because no woman, including myself at that time, would dare walk away from
a conventional career to try to create a new type of economic model. A 2007
visit to Peabody Coal in Queensland, Australia, was when I began to see
the value of pollinator habitat and to work with industries as partners
instead of adversaries. So, I left teaching to concentrate on forest-based
beekeeping and extension in eastern Kentucky.
You are currently involved in Coal Country Beeworks, an initiative in
eastern Kentucky. How have your experiences contributed to this work? Did you
witness any similar movements in other countries?
As I mentioned before, Mexico and Australia were important in helping me
define rural beekeeping initiatives in an industrial world. I needed the
geographical distance to wrap my mind around legal structures governing
extractive industries. I began to see that one of the main problems in eastern
Kentucky is how the U.S. surface mining laws are written and how they are
interpreted by the civilian engineers who have to implement them. Pollinator
habitat has not been a priority until very recently. Interestingly, traveling
to South Africa was also helpful in defining a new modus operandi for
corporate investments in pollinator communities. In 2005, when the price of
copper flat-lined, Zambia paid unemployed miners to learn beekeeping. It
seemed to me that the U.S. could employ similar strategies in Appalachia.
Presently, the U.S. imports honey from China and Asia, imports wax from Africa,
and imports queen bees from Hawaii. I think if coal companies in Kentucky
can plant pollinator habitat, Appalachia can change those patterns of
importation.
You dealt with many different cultures. What obstacles did this present?
Did anything surprise you?
The grande dame of beekeeping, Eva Crane, once said, “You’ll be a beginner
for twenty years.” In visiting different cultures, I am most surprised by
the feeling of beginning again every time I stepped into the field. I learn
new flowers, new bloom times, new hives, new ways of lighting a smoker,
new cultural standards, new languages, new laws, new myths, etc. The
surprises emerge often and in a variety of ways. Fortunately, the kindness of
beekeepers continues to surprise me. I have never taken it for granted, but I
continue to be amazed at how beekeepers care for each other. I continue to be
unpleasantly surprised, however, by the challenges that federal and state
governments create for beekeepers. An eighteenth century literature
professor and pollination specialist, Christian Konrad Sprengel, once said: “There
should be standing armies of bees.” I agree and lament the fact that we don
’t have the bees or the beekeepers needed to safeguard our food production
capabilities.
As a woman in the apiary industry, have you noticed any differences
between how you and your male counterparts are received?
There are so many more women beekeepers attending bee workshops and
conferences now that if there are differences, I am rarely cognizant of them. The
bee community has been in constant flux for much of the time I’ve been a
beekeeper: there are different types of hives available, there are many more
pathogens to be aware of, there are more economic stresses of families to
consider, and the issues of food/pesticides have forced serious discussion
about contamination. These are issues that affect women who are often the
primary food-producers in the family. So, women are much more educated about
the topics and logically, want to know how to change and perhaps “fix”
food production “breakdowns.” Women subconsciously and consciously contribute
to their food budgets and want to be aware of how to safeguard the food
their children eat.
What does the future hold for women in beekeeping?
Women live longer than men, earn less money than men, and tend to be the
primary caregiver and food producer for both children and older family
members. Beekeeping can be a way to supplement their incomes, improve the quality
of diets and medical care, and provide joy and structure in improving one’
s environment. If the past has taught me anything, it is that the future is
full of opportunities for women who want to think about beekeeping with
creativity.
While some major challenges may be geographical or biological (pathogens),
most challenges are created within ourselves or by our society. Economic
diversity depends upon landscape diversity. As our world approaches the six
billion population mark, women have to take more responsibility in creating
an economy in which the environment matters, not just for children but for
pollinators. In my mind, this responsibility is not a burden—it is
much-needed joy. Emerson said, “The world laughs in flowers.” It is time women
laughed in unison.
>From University Press of Kentucky
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