215accepted that only a male could be the leader of a hive , and the honeybee colony was
often used in political and sociological writings of the time as an allegory of kingly
power, wise and benevolent rule, loyalty, industry and a unity of purpose [ 219 ].
Confi ning himself to a discussion of biological gender, Prete [ 220 ] relates how the
association between bees and kingship was common in other beekeeping societies
such as ancient Egypt, and how, even in sixteenth century Britain,
...an increasing number of seemingly anomalous discoveries about honey bees forced the
authors of beekeeping texts to deny or distort scientifi c fi ndings in order to continue to use
the honey bee as a metaphor for the ideal English society; some authors continued to do so,
however, going to fantastic explanatory extremes, until the sheer weight of scientifi c evi-
dence to the contrary could no longer be denied. (p. 117)
It is against this backdrop of western intellectual tradition that I wish to showcase
the honeybee knowledge of the Solega.
7.5.2.1 Honeybee Gender and Reproduction
Individual worker honeybees are called kunni in Solega, which is also the word for
‘girl’, while the ‘leader’ of the hive is called ra:ṇi , or ‘queen’. This is consistent
with the fact that at any given time, most, if not all, the insects in a honeybee colony,
including the queen, are biologically female. Already, it is clear that certain basic
facts that eluded the beekeeping societies of Europe are known to the honey -
gathering Solega, even in the absence of technological developments such as micro-
scopes and observation hives.^9 A skeptical reader might object to my claims on the
grounds that my consultants may have internalised such knowledge following con-
versations with researchers from the ATREE fi eld station, some of whom have
worked on honeybee-related studies, and have employed Solega fi eld guides in the
process. I present two lines of evidence to counter this claim: fi rst, the younger of
my consultants, who are employed by ATREE deny that this knowledge originated
from non-Solega people, and insist that it was taught to them by their parents; and
second, even older Solega consultants who live in interior settlements away from
Kannada (or other) infl uences were able to verify the views of the younger Solega,
in spite of having had little contact with the outside world.
Throughout much of this book, I have tried to avoid making explicit comparisons
between the information provided to me by my consultants and the corpus of ‘west-
ern’ scientifi c knowledge that I have acquired through years of university education.
That is because a proper appreciation of Solega TEK requires that it be understood
as a coherent and independent system of knowledge—one that exists not in relation
to other knowledge systems, but is instead founded on the very observations that
Solega speakers repeatedly make in the everyday lives, and the mental categories
(^9) A hive with a clear glass (or recently, Perspex) wall that allows observation of the interior of the
colony.
7.5 Solega Knowledge of Bee Natural History