August tells Lily that, “‘every bee has its role to play’” (Kidd 148). As August says, bees have their own social structure, with different types of bees doing various tasks, that allow the hive to function properly. If all of the bees are not doing their respective jobs, production can slow to a halt. All the people in the Boatwright household are similar to different types of bees.
Many people think bees live a vague life compared to humans. However, Albert Einstein once said “If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man.” This quote illustrates how bees and humans live a similar life, each having their own set of tasks to accomplish. In the novel The Secret Life of Bees, Sue Monk Kidd uses bees as a metaphor for Lily’s life.
Many people may wonder how bees are like humans in ways. In Sue Monk Kidd’s novel “The Secret Life Of Bees”, Lily is a young girl whose mother died when she was a child. She is than being taken care of by T-ray who is a terrible father, as he doesn’t help Lily take care of herself. Lily has a mother like figure though whose name is Rosaleen, the families “maid”.
Events such as the human hive collapsing are foreshadowed when August tells Lily, “Well, if you have a queen and a group of independent-minded bees that split off from the rest of the hive and look for another place to live, then you’ve got a swarm” (Kidd 93). The independent-minded bee is May, when she goes off and drowns herself, she tries to find a better place to live. As a result, the house erupts into tears, anger, and depression. The next link is with the worker bees, who leave the hive to collect the nectar, which is later turned into honey. In the novel, the worker bees are August, Zach, and their new companion, Lily.
“The queen, for her part, is the unifying force of the community; if she is removed from the hive, the workers very quickly sense her absence” (Kidd 1). Bees are a part of their own strong community with their queen as their leader; likewise in a family, the parents hold an important leadership role. This symbolism of community is seen throughout the book The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd, where the protagonist Lily loses her sense of community when her mom dies. Bees and beehives come up from the beginning to the end of the story, symbolizing the state of Lily's community, whether she feels supported or alone. Kidd uses symbolism throughout the novel to support the theme that a loving and strong community can make you stronger.
One could look at a bee hive as a single living entity (otherwise known as a Superorganism).They ingest and digest food,regulate water control and achieve locomotion as well as many other things that humans do to stay alive. This is were the similarities stop. Bees are raised for certain jobs that are never changed. Queens lay eggs,Drones mate with queens,and workers well….. They work.
Bees can regulate the temperature of their hive by collectively fanning the air around it. They are capable creatures that are frequently put aside as less than the hexagon-crafting, hive-conditioning team coordinators that they are. The Secret Life of Bees depicts female protagonists that are underestimated in a similar way, their diverse skills being reduced to the era’s stereotypes for women and Afro-Americans. As a result, a lot of internal and external conflicts occur within the story. The story encircles Lily, who accidentally murdered her mother at the age of three.
In the text, “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan, Tan reminisces a particular speech she is giving towards a crowd and in this crowd contains her mother. At some point she suddenly realizes that the type of language she is using is quite different than when speaking directly to her mother; Understanding the complexity of it, she decides to ultimately change her ways by changing the type of English she uses- that of which she was accustomed to using with her mother. After noticing several similarities, I decided that “Mother Tongue” was a great text to relate to: the (unable to speak English) parent, the struggle to translate or talk in their place, and the dislike for writing. Although it was not a call to a broker, I recall having to speak to a few representatives sometimes not even knowing why or who I
As reported by The National Center for Families Learning, “In a hive, the female worker bees are the bees that sting. The larger male drone bees don't have stingers. Queen bees also have stingers, but they rarely leave the hive to use them. When a bee stings you, its sharp, barbed stinger pierces the skin to inject venom called apitoxin.” Abruptly, a buzz startled Lily, the protagonist in The Secret Life of Bees, as bees swarmed into her bedroom.
In \cite{seeley2010honeybee} there is a detailed and accurate description of the organization and life of a colony of honeybees; of interest for us is the problem of nest selection since it helps to reveal some mechanisms of decision making, that as we will see later, are not accounted for by a big family of sequential
A human’s first reaction to a bee is defense. People are convinced that the bee is there to harm them by stinging them. Most people that have experienced an encounter with a bee, wasp or hornet would say it wasn’t a positive encounter. Swinging, swatting and trying to hit the bee away is what people instinctively
“Beekeepers across the United States lost 44 percent of their honey bee colonies during the year spanning from April 2015 to April 2016” (“Nation’s Beekeepers lost 44 percent of bees in 2015-2016”). Many famers today plant their cops in sections farther apart depending on the plant. When the bees go to collect nectar they cannot get as much food without getting tired. This has had an effect on bees because they die faster from having to fly so far. Many beekeepers think that this reason causes bees to fade away.
Bees do not go far, so they pollinate local areas rather than an extended amount of land. Patricia E. Salkin says, “Small-scale beekeeping has proven to be especially popular among people looking to obtain more of their food from local resources.” Not only does it help the people and the wildlife in their surrounding area, it supports producers who raise and sell their crops there. Patricia E. Salkin states, “Urban bees provide important pollination services to community gardens, home vegetable gardens, and fruit trees.” Not only will it help neighbors’ goods and plants, but it will help others’ gardens and plants as well.
So what makes these bees so important? In order to survive, bees must gather pollen and nectar and bring it home to their colony. While they are moving from flower
This prevents the bees from having nutrients, causing them to lose weight and reducing their lifespan. But the worst thing about them is that they transmit a host of viruses, which are transferred to bees when mites feed. One of the most terrible of these is deformed wing virus. Bees usually die shortly after reaching adulthood. Making matters worse, honeybees are spreading the virus through their saliva and feces to plants used by other pollinators, such as bumblebees and other bees.
