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>> 123 5 Entangling with Bees Sex and Gender As you might expect, the walls of Sunflower Academy in Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, are covered with letters, numbers, shapes, and colors arranged in a slightly frenzied yet organized manner. Once you’ve entered and turned to face the cubbyholes, you are met by smiling, cheerful yellow and black bees that adorn the walls, with the date and days of the week written on their abdomens. On this particular spring day, Lisa Jean’s eighteen-month-old daughter’s teacher had organized a Bee Day that featured special guest visitors: seventysomething beekeeper Farmer John, an affable man dressed in baggy overalls and a straw hat, and the real stars of the show—a box of live bees safely contained behind glass. Twenty-five of Brooklyn’s tiniest hipsters, from one to three years old, crowded around Farmer John’s observation hive, peering in at the insects and excitedly pointing to show their teachers (see figure 5.1). Children were encouraged to handle many beekeeping tools, smokers, bee suits, veils, and brushes. Plush bee stuffed animals and shiny plastic bee models were arranged on the tool table. Then sitting “crisscross applesauce” on the colorful patterned rug, the children, at varying degrees of attention , listened to Farmer John talk about beekeeping. With the help of a bee hand puppet and some large posters of bees performing various tasks, Farmer John told the “boys and girls” how very important bees were to all the food they eat. The next generation of urban beekeepers was on the way to caring for their own rooftop hives. Pausing dramatically, Farmer John offered, “The queen bee is the mother to all the bees—the mommy. The drone bee is the daddy of all bees. His only job is to fly up in the sky and meet the queen and then they get married. After he gets married, he dies. The queen then comes back home and has all the babies you see in the hive. Every bee you see is the baby of the queen mommy. That’s a lot of children she takes care of.” Clearly the adults were the only ones startled by this 124 > 125 put their faces into the flowers and say “BUZZ” really loudly. Instantly the room was alive with toddlers, chanting buzz and banging into one another as they shoved flowers in each other’s faces (see figure 5.2). A combination of bewilderment and frenzied energy led to several children crashing into one another and some children falling on the carpet, laughing and rolling about. Clearly these children were not able to perform pollination with the same choreography that the bees used. The finale of the presentation was tasting honey from Farmer John’s bees. Children lined up with their index fingers extended. From a plastic honey bear container, Farmer John squirted a bit of honey on each finger. Several children returned to the end of the line to get more honey, clearly enjoying the sweetness on their sticky fingers (see figure 5.3). In this classroom visit, these preschoolers caught the buzz. As Farmer John packed up his traveling hive, their teachers attempted to Figure 5.2. Buzzing the room in pretend bee play. (Photo credit: Lisa Jean Moore) Figure 5.3. Farmer John gives honey tastes. (Photo credit: Lisa Jean Moore) 126 > 127 depicted in how bees, among other creatures, are shown participating in conception. These stories help to cement the naturalness of heterosexuality throughout the animal kingdom. What is fascinating about Farmer John is that he in effect explained social reproduction through what we sociologists would call “heteronormative master narratives” of insect/biological reproduction. Ironically in this case, the bees are used to show how the animal kingdom asserts the naturalness and superiority of heterosexuality. Yet these ideas about heterosexuality are what frame our understanding of mating in the first place. Toddlers are actually being taught multiple messages through the medium of the bee as a vehicle of communication. Humans have long inscribed bees with meanings to broach the subject of burgeoning sexuality , as well as gender relations and even the importance of a work ethic. To be as “busy as a bee” speaks to how we value industriousness over indolence. The term “queen bee” is synonymous with the “it girl,” the one whom we are socialized to aspire to be in contemporary American popular culture. In both instances, she occupies a particular social and hierarchical location that signifies her...

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