This week I’ve been thinking about bees and idioms and idioms with bees in them. Also, I’m going to get this out of the way right now because I can’t talk about bees without my brain immediately going to The Simpsons.
Okay, I feel better now.
Why bees? Why idioms? They’re both common, but mysterious, and we tend to take them for granted. They just do their jobs in the background — enhancing our world and our language.
Okay, enough buzzing about, let’s make a bee line straight to the heart of this edition.
The Bee’s Knees
When I say something like, “the readers of my newsletter are the bee’s knees!” most English speakers immediately understand what I mean. They know I’m saying that people who read The Short Story are the BEST people. Idioms are fascinating like that — we see “bee’s knees” but we hear “best.”
As native speakers of a language, idioms are a shared inheritance. We understand them, we use them, but we don’t usually know how they came into being.
Bee’s knees is a weird one even amongst idioms. It’s earliest usage was a literal interpretation — it meant something small and insignificant. See, THAT MAKES SENSE, but by the 1920’s it meant the opposite. So, in addition to being weird, it’s also an idiomatic example of semantic shift. Why the change?
Long answer: we aren’t entirely sure.
Short answer: FLAPPERS.
Wow, women had a whole PAGE in the newspaper just for them?? Men in the 20’s were just too generous. To be fair, I do want to read that Flapper Dictionary though.
The general consensus is that flappers liked to play with language and imagery. “It was fashionable to use nonsense terms to denote excellence.” So, phrases like the bee’s knees, the cat’s pajamas, the snake’s hips, or the canary’s tusks were all compliments.
Bee in Your Bonnet
While we’re talking about things that don’t really exist, let’s talk about king bees. Here’s where you say, “but Ava, bees have a queen, not a king,” and I say, “well, tell that to Shakespeare!”
In Henry V, Shakespeare uses bees as a metaphor for human society… sorta.
This is where every human woman and bee-woman out there collectively rolls our eyes, sighs, and says, “yep.”
There’s evidence to suggest that those able to write so eloquently and in such a detailed fashion about bee society *cough* Shakespeare *cough* knew that bee hives were organized around a queen, not a king — but they kept the king bee charade up anyway… for man reasons.
Queen Bee
It’s precisely that kind of thing that might make a female bee want to say heck with all this and run away and live in the woods away from all men and men-bees, right? Well, say hello to solitary bees!
Solitary bees are all females, act as both a queen and a worker bee, AND make up over 90% of bee populations. They live alone in a hole. We never really hear about them. They like it that way.
Honestly, I had never heard of solitary bees until this year and now I’m obsessed with them. They don’t make honey or wax, so they don’t get all the praise and attention of honey bees, but I’ve decided that solitary bees are the Joan Jetts of bees — strong, independent women achieving their dreams in a male dominated world and they don’t give a damn about their reputations.
Listen, I don’t want to hear from any melittologists out there that might disagree with my whole solitary bees are the Joan Jetts of the bee world. LET ME HAVE THIS.
Alright, that's it for this week. You guys are the bee’s knees and I'd wear a 15 pound beard of bees for you all!
Wait, no, I just watched some videos of that and it's creepy. Here, have a bee comic instead.
Until next time,
Ava
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Love it! ‘The Joan Jett of Bees’ 😂 also: need the Flapper Dictionary! Finally: I have a bee tattoo on my wrist, it’s the bee’s knees 🐝 Fun read, Ava!