bee

Because they were sociable and busy as bees, when people got together to work or play in early America that is what they called it. The Boston Gazette and Country Journal in October 1769 reported that "Last Thursday about Twenty young Ladies met at the House of Ms. Nehemiah Liscome, here, on purpose for a Spinning Match: (or what is call'd in the Country a Bee)." There were bees for neighborly work like sewing, quilting, knitting, and paring; plowing, chopping wood, husking corn, raising barns, painting, and roofing. For entertainment there were singing bees and even kissing bees.

"Everyone has heard of the 'frolic' or 'bee,'" explained one author in 1837, "by means of which the clearing of lots, the raising of houses, the harvesting of crops is achieved." In 1846 another wrote, "They came cheerfully to the 'bee,' and after the usual amount of eating, drinking, swearing, and joking, the house...was raised and covered in."

Thanks to the orthographical oddities of English, one kind of bee has persisted to the present day and become a formal national competition: the spelling bee.

Bees were social gatherings that combined work with pleasure and often competition. They were named specifically for the task around which they centered. Apple-paring, corn-husking, quilting, wool-picking, house-raising, log-rolling, and other sorts of bees served to ease the labor of the individual.

Cooperative work for productivity and pleasure was an English custom that came across the Atlantic with early settlers. In the New England and middle colonies and on the early frontiers, various communal activities formed an important exception to the ordinarily isolated lives of American farm families. The motivation was both economic and social. Log rollings and Barn Raisings necessitated collective effort; corn-husking and threshing were most efficiently done by common endeavor. Quilting, sewing, and canning bees afforded women the opportunity to discuss family, friends, and community while they worked collectively. The cooperative nature of bees served as a basis for socialization. Bees roused the competitive spirit, making a sport of work. And the feasting, music, dancing, and games that followed the work itself provided courting opportunities for young people.

Machinery and specialized labor largely ended these practices. Some, such as the threshing ring, survive where farms are not large and farming is diversified.

Bibliography

Earle, Alice Morse. Home Life in Colonial Days. 1898. Stock-bridge, Mass.: Berkshire Traveller Press, 1974.

Hawke, David Freeman. Everyday Life in Early America. New York: Harper and Row, 1988.

—Deirdre Sheets