In "The Arrival of the Bee Box," bees are a tantalizingly ambiguous symbol. They clearly stand in for something that both fascinates and frightens the speaker. Some interpretations argue that the bees symbolize the speaker's own thoughts, while others suggest that they symbolize social expectations or other people in the speaker's life. At the same time, no symbolic reference point can detract from the vivid physicality of Sylvia Plath's portrayal. The bees may stand in for something abstract, but they're also noisy, constantly moving, and unpredictable creatures. Plath's multifaceted and ever-shifting portrayal of these animals makes perfect sense, because the symbolic meaning of the bee has been shifting in Western society and art for centuries. In fact, that's one reason they're so maddeningly and powerfully evocative in this poem. Readers approach with plenty of preconceived notions about what these animals will connote, and Plath both meets and dodges those expectations to dramatic effect.
In the 1600s, the intense organization and productivity of the beehive led the insects to be associated with morality and even godliness. In fact, in 1609, beekeeper Charles Butler published one of England's early beekeeping manuals—and this wasn't a coincidence. The growing interest in beekeeping, and the determination to practice it as a skilled art form, reflected feelings of respect and admiration for bees and their perceived industriousness and cooperativeness. In this sense, attitudes towards bees and beekeeping reflected cultural values of the period. At the same time, Butler's interpretation of bee societies also sheds some light on the values and norms of his day. In antiquity and in medieval Europe, many thinkers believed the highest-status bees to be males. It was Butler who pointed out that they were females and called them "Queen Bees," perhaps because he wrote in the aftermath of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I, making him and his readers more receptive to the idea of bees being both admirable and matriarchal. Meanwhile, throughout this century, bees were often depicted in religious art—especially in swarms, since the complexity of their formations were seen as symbols of God's design. Bees even feature prominently on the tomb of Pope Urban VIII, who died in the mid-seventeenth century.
In the eighteenth century, meanwhile, the consensus on bees' symbolism began to fracture somewhat. The insects were personified in fables by writers like Jean de la Fontaine and John Mandeville. Mandeville's 1714 work The Grumbling Hive describes a bee society that falls into disarray—not when the industrious bees grow lazy or selfish, but rather when they become self-sacrificing and virtuous. In Mandeville's depiction, individuality is more valuable than cohesiveness, and individual desires collectively produce social prosperity. Mandeville's portrayal isn't a mere sign of the shifting symbolism of bees themselves. It also gives us a clue that the values of mercantilism and the free market were seeping into more areas of life in England, and even working in concert with ideas about morality and piety. In contrast to Charles Butler, the authors of these moral fables tended not to discuss the fact that bees' hierarchies were led by females, and tended to put dialogue in the mouths of male bees. But Mary Leapor's 1748 poem "Silvia and the Bee" describes a young woman crushing a bee who mistakes her for a flower. Here, the bee seems to be a symbol of unwanted objectification and sexual attention—a possible echo of which appears in Plath's own poem.
In Victorian England, bees continued to stand for hierarchy and maintenance of the social order—artistic depictions like George Cruikshank's 1840 British Bee Hive, which shows various members of Britain's social classes peacefully arranged within a hive, reflect these associations. It was also in the nineteenth century that one especially fascinating tradition, known as "telling the bees," became most prominent. In this folk tradition, popular in both Europe and America, household members would share important news including births and deaths with the bees in their family hives. These traditions varied from place to place, sometimes involving elaborate mourning rituals, songs, or rhymes. The custom of telling the bees was featured in art including an 1858 poem by New England writer John Greenleaf Whittier. In that work, bees are associated with mourning, mystery, and the pastoral rather than industry and discipline. These nineteenth-century traditions reflect a new symbolism, in which bees and humans were seen to share an inexplicable connection.
"The Arrival of the Bee Box" suggests and is perhaps influenced by many of these different symbolic depictions. The bees in that poem certainly have a magical or mystical connection with the speaker; they at times suggest a cooperative cohesion, and at other times suggest intrusiveness and aggression. Meanwhile, in the years following the publication of Plath's poem, bees have taken on new significance in art. In particular, the collapse in bee populations worldwide has prompted artists to explore the creatures through new lenses. Contemporary artists have used photography, in particular, to examine the insects and to draw attention to the problem of their disappearance.
