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organised or opportunistic fashion. I hope to argue in this chapter that the Solega’s
understanding of the natural history of honeybees—exploited, but not managed,
wild organisms—is at least as good as that of societies that have indulged in
beekeeping for centuries. In doing so, I hope to provide evidence to counter the
claims implicit in Berlin ’s hypothesised mechanism of the ‘ evolution ’ of classifi ca-
tion systems.
7.2 The Word je: nu
The Solega word je: nu is polysemous , and can mean honey , honeybee (an individ-
ual insect) or even a honeybee colony or honeycomb. In Kannada , although the
morpheme je:nu occurs in the words ‘honey’ ( je:nu tuppa ) and ‘honeybee’ ( je:nu
noṇa ), one must necessarily make use of the full lexemes, in order to distinguish
between the insect and its product. Solega speakers, however, often refer to the
individual insect, the colony/comb, as well as the harvested product, using just the
word je:nu , as exemplifi ed below:
je: nu = individual bee(s)
kembare.bare je: nu ken-je:nu
place.name bee red-bee
‘The bees found at Kembare Rock are red bees.’ (excerpt from a song)
a:ga: ho:gi fffff... a:ge ke:ḷ-a be:ku oḷa:ge
then go.CONV 2 (puff.of.air) thus listen-CONV 3 need inside
bush en-d-a:de je: nu
ONOM say-CONT-3SG.N bee
‘Then you go and (blow into the hole), you need to listen like this, the bees inside
go ‘BUSH’.’
je: nu = honeybee colony/comb
nalavattu aivattu je: nu band-a:de ond-e mara-ka
forty fi fty colony come-3Nsg one-EXCL tree-DAT
‘Forty or fi fty honeybee colonies come to a single tree.’
Ondu mara idda-le a: mara-ka je: nu ku:t-ur-de
One tree be-COND that tree-DAT colony sit-IMPERF-3SG.N
‘If there’s a tree, a colony will come and sit on the tree.’
iṭṭu koda:ṇi je: nu
pollen bearing comb
‘ pollen -bearing comb’
je: nu = honey
je:n-iga ele kitturu ba-ḍau kunna
honey -DAT leaf pick.CONV come.IMP-ADD.NONHON boy
‘Pick some leaves for the honey and come here, boy!’ (leaves for a receptacle)
7 Honeybee Lore