Beekeeping Folklore in Utah

 Recently, I was reading about beekeeping folklore in Utah, and I realized that we had a great opportunity to talk about folklore. I was reading the Utah State University Folklore Archive's interview of Camilla Cowley, one of the foremost family members in local Cox Honey.It was neat to learn about honey and the connections beehives have to the state of Utah.

Interview:

NC: That's great. Um, we kind of were talking about this earlier, but you ties the beehive state and was there, is there any connection that you see maybe with why your grandpa started the business or people maintain the business or even with the community kind of feeling a connection to honey or to bees because of that? And maybe there's not and that's fine, but I was just curious about that. 

CC: There's some big connections there. Um, when the settlers moved west, they brought bees with them and so on the wagon trains and the hand carts that come, the last few handcarts last ones in the wagon trains would have bees because bees is so vital to pollinate our food. That's most important thing that they do. So they knew in order for us to eat, we have to have bees to pollinate. And originally when the settlers come across from Europe, they carried bees in the boats and they'd just put blankets or stuff or rugs over the bow, put them down in the bottom of the boat and they'd sleep all the way across the ocean and then they take them out and then then move on around as they settle. But they brought the bees on the, on the handcarts and the wagons coming to Utah. 

And when they got here, you know people, okay, we're here, we'll start working on our own stuff. And Brigham Young got a little bit frustrated and he started using the symbol thought and decided to use the symbol of the beehive because they're, the symbol is industry. They all work to the good of everyone else. There isn't no individual bee that doesn't help out and contribute to help everyone else so the queen lays the eggs and, and she uh, and she can lay up to 2000 eggs a day, which is kind of crazy, but she lays the eggs and then they'll go on out there.

 They genetically progress through different jobs being a nurse bee, taking care of the Queen, guarding the hive, cleaning the hive. Um, the last job they do is gather the honey and they end up wearing their wings out as they go back and forth, gathering the honey, bringing that in. And so they started putting the symbol of the beehive so people would be conscious in order for us to make it and succeed here, we have to all work together. So that's, there's some really good things like daughters of the Utah Pioneers have some different things like that.

Territorial Seal

State Flag of Utah (1903-1913)

State Flag of Utah from 1913-2011

Commemorative Flag of Utah, 2021

 That's really nice. And then you can get in the old wagon master journals from years ago and you'll get the journals and about how they would, when they were not even just settling Utah when they were moving around the wagon Masters would, would, would put a wagon full of bees and have the tarps up so that people would see, you know, whether the Indians or, or robbers or whatever, would see that they were carrying bees because when they come in they're shooting and hollering and yelling. That upset the bees and that all get stung up. So it was a way of help protecting the wagon train too, and there's some really good journals about that that's interesting to read. [9:53]

This wagon folklore is neat! I never knew of it, and i wonder what the indigenous peoples thought or how they reacted.

A beesting that did not penetrate.

See the abdominal innards on top of the sting.

Camilla Cowley: Basically I'm really allergic to bees, so I've got a genetic, when you've been in a beekeeping family so long, you get a genetic susceptibility and so about half of the kids in our family is allergic to bees and the other half isn't. 

NC: And so how does that happen? If you know, I have no idea. So no pressure to answer. 

Camille Cowley Page: 6 CC: Will tell you that, but you're not, you're going to keep it on record. But, uh, basically the, the men that are working in the bees, they get stung a lot and it builds up in their body and, and through intercourse it's passed onto the wives because usually the wives become very allergic, but it gets into the body fluids and then it's passed on to the children. So after, after about the third gen, when it gets to the second generation, people can start having a little bit of allergies. When it gets to the third generation, um, then you have a really strong susceptibility for it and you'll have, it's about a 50% susceptibility

. I think this is a bit of folklore. It might be true.but I would argue that it is not so much genetic as it is epigenetic, and there is a big difference there in terms of terminology. A genetic change as suggested would require a change in the gametes, or undeveloped reproductive cells such as the sperm and the egg, which is what she suggests here, where the bee venom enters the human body through intercourse. It is possible that as a toxin the gametes are fundamentally changed through mutation. I believe that epigenetics is the more likely cause. Changes in the histones, or the "beads on a string" chemicals that control access to the DNA of your body. Depending on what parts of your DNA the histones allow access to the protein makers (the ribosomes), the proteins we make change shape, size, and function. This is why a grandma smoking or secondhand smoke can increase the odds of her kids or grandkids of having emphysema, despite the grandkids not smoking.  The same thing could be the cause of the bee venom allergy. I could be wrong, and just because something is not in the literature does not mean it isn't true, it just means it has not been studied yet.

By National Institutes of Health - http://commonfund.nih.gov/epigenomics/figure.aspx (rasterized from PDF), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=89191872