Beehives In The Secret Life Of Bees

Intro: Working around the hives; dedicated and faster with each movement. Honey drizzling in golden crevices; a family unit working together, buzzing in harmony. Bees and beehives is a significant motif in the novel Secret Life of Bees: By Sue Monk Kidd because it represents the community of women in the novel. It also represents Lily Owen’s longing and need for a mother figure in her life. And finally, it was significant because the bees lived a secret life, just as Lily and Rosaleen did in the novel.

Para 2: First of all, Bees and beehives is a significant motif in the novel by Kidd because it represented the community of women. The Boatwright sisters, along with Our Daughters of Mary, stood up for Lily when T. Ray came to take her home. Quoted from page 721, “The four of them lined up beside us, clutching their pocketbooks up against their bodies like they might have to beat the living heck out of somebody.” The Daughters of Mary all stood in the parlor of the Boatwright house, ready to take on whatever came their way. The community of women in this novel stuck together

through hard times, and good times. They also supported one another when May died. “The Daughters passed around a wooden bowl full of something they called manna. A salted mixture of sunflower, sesame, pumpkin, and pomegranate seeds drizzled with honey and baked to perfection. They ate it by the handfuls, saying they wouldn’t dream of sitting with the dead without eating seeds.” Just like bees working in their hive, the women worked together to overcome grief, using their own rituals. The women worshipped honey and believed that their black Madonna honey was the cure for anything.

Para 3: Bees and beehives also represented Lily’s longing for her mother in The Secret Life of Bees.

According to pages 31 and 32, Lily said, “I watched their wings shining like bits of chrome in the dark and felt longing build in my chest. The way those bees flew, not even looking for a flower, just flying for the feel of the wind, split my heart down its seam.” She was the bee, flying to feel the wind, but full of emptiness because she couldn’t find her flower; her mother. Since the age of 4, Lily grew up without a mother. After the bees came the summer of 1964, she thought, “Looking back on it now, I wanted to say the bees were sent to me. I want to say they showed up like the angel Gabriel appearing to the Virgin Mary, setting events in motion I could never have guessed.”(32) The bees set the course of the novel, and finally, at the end of the novel, helped her find closure for her

longing.

Para 4: Last but not least, bees and beehives signified the struggles and secret life of Lily and Rosaleen. As August Boatwright said on page 374, “Most people don’t have any idea about all the complicated life going on inside a hive. Bees have a secret life we don’t know anything about.” Lily struggled with the thought of her mother being at the Boatwright house, and her leaving her behind. Nobody knew all the complicatedness going though Lily’s head everyday; her head was her beehive. The motif also related to Lily and Rosaleen living a secret life, away from T. Ray. Lily and Rosaleen had nowhere to go, except the Boatwright house. They couldn’t stay at any hotels, or eat in any restaurants, because Rosaleen was colored. They had to thumb a ride to get near where they were heading; to find the maker of Black Madonna honey.