Reciprocal Work Bees and the Meaning of Neighbourhood

Reciprocal work bees (barn raisings, quiltings, logging bees, etc.) were an integral part of the farm economy and a key component in the structuring, operation, and definition of neighbourhood in nineteenth-century rural Ontario. The bee was part of a hidden, informal labour exchange that had its own accounting system and social code. Reciprocal work bees concentrated and redistributed labour so that individual families, often short on labour and capital, could establish a workable farm unit, insure against hardship, and create the physical infrastructure of the neighbourhood. They also brought people from diverse cultural backgrounds together for work and pleasure, and incorporated them according to their wealth, age, gender, and skills. In this manner, bees helped to create a structural and cognitive order in the neighbourhood, one that was based on interaction, process, and a sense of belonging. The experience of one particular farm family suggests that each ‘beeing network’ had its own spatial configuration. Beeing was a dynamic process that was modified over the generations as the main actors changed and as it was experienced differently by each family member and each household. The author argues that the bee was not the simple embodiment of a selfless communal ideal, as it is frequently depicted, but a complex and sometimes paradoxical phenomenon that played an important role in a rural society of private property and social hierarchy.