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The Mormon Hive: A Study Of The Bee And Beehive Symbols In Nineteenth Century Mormon Culture, J. Michael Hunter

Faculty Publications

From antiquity to the middle of the eighteenth century, humans used the bee and beehive symbols to represent monarchy. Political and social changes resulted in a reinterpretation of the bee and beehive symbols during the eighteenth century. Republicans ignored the royalist associations of bees and beehives, and used them to represent values of the new republicanism. In nineteenth-century America, the Mormons, members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, encountered the bee and beehive symbols while participating in the rites of Freemasonry. In the nineteenth century, Mormons used the bee and beehive symbols to represent the Kingdom of …