Purchase Professors Study Urban Beekeeping Trends for New Book

Busy as a bee. The birds and the bees. Like bees are to honey.

These are all familiar phrases in the American lexicon, and samples of evidence for one Purchase College professor of how bees are ingrained in human culture.

"My work is looking at cultural artifacts and understanding how humans make them meaningful through metaphors," Sociology and Gender Studies Professor Lisa Jean Moore explained. "Metaphors are meaningful to deconstruct because they tell us about our own cultural taboos and fascinations."

Along with fellow Purchase College Professor Mary Kosut, Moore is currently working on a book about bees called Buzz: The Culture and Politics of Bees.

While human beings were once dependent upon bee pollination for survival, Moore said that various environmental concerns—from toxins to genetically modified plants, to the mysterious disappearance of entire bee colonies—has caused the relationship between bees and people to change.

"One-third of everything at the dining room table is through the work of bees," she said. "But we've sufficiently created tension in the environment of the bees, and as a result bees are now dependent upon us for their survival."

Both Moore and Kosut have taken a beekeeping training course through the New York City Beekeeping Association, taught by famed beekeeper Jim Fischer. Through the courses, Moore said they were able to interview people interested in bees from a sociological standpoint.

"Their membership has increased from 50 to 1,000 members in one year," Moore said. "That's an indication that there's a social movement afoot."

Moore said they've found that many young urbanites, particularly in the hipster crowd, are going for a do-it-yourself approach to food through projects like beekeeping and rooftop gardens.

"The things they're doing are meant to counteract global warming, neo-liberalism and the massive denigration of the environment," she said.

"Humans have had these impacts on the ecosystem at large, and people are trying to figure out what they can change in their lives to provide an alternative condition for the bees to live."

Moore said that the same highly ordered and efficient system that brings the phrase "busy as a bee" to mind is emulated by the highly efficient agricultural systems that are endangering the very survival of the bee.

"There's this idea of bees being almost like we'd want to replicate their culture, particularly their productivity and social organization. In capitalism that's an idea world. The hives represent a machine of reproduction, but the hive is also vulnerable when it's grown too big to keep up its quarters."

Last week, Moore and Kosut were joined by students from the Campus Garden Club in releasing bees into the campus garden in order to help pollinate native species plants. On Fri., Apr. 29 at 2:30 p.m., Fischer, who has 20 years of beekeeping experience, will speak in the Fort Awesome classroom on campus as a part of the college's "Clean and Green Day."