Bible, Bees and Boxes
TL;DRAbstract
This article tells the story of beekeeping in Palestine in the late Ottoman and early British rules. It focuses on a French-Swiss missionary family, the Baldenspergers, who introduced “modern beekeeping” to the area through the adoption of a new technology—the movable-frame beehive. Bees thus began to move to completely new places, produce different kinds of honey, and revolutionize the ecological and economic systems. The adoption of particular technological measures, by this manner, helped the family demonstrate that the land was literally “flowing with milk and honey.” As the governing rule increasingly encouraged this process, resistance came from other directions. In this regard, I examine theft as a way to resist to the creation of a holy land. I position the story of honey production in the larger context of European colonialism at the turn of the twentieth century, and the global search for “the ultimate race of bees.”
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This article tells the story of beekeeping in Palestine in the late Ottoman and early British rules. It focuses on a French-Swiss missionary family, the Baldenspergers, who introduced “modern beekeeping” to the area through the adoption of a new technology—the movable-frame beehive. Bees thus began to move to completely new places, produce different kinds of honey, and revolutionize the ecological and economic systems. The adoption of particular technological measures, by this manner, helped the family demonstrate that the land was literally “flowing with milk and honey.” As the governing rule increasingly encouraged this process, resistance came from other directions. In this regard, I examine theft as a way to resist to the creation of a holy land. I position the story of honey production in the larger context of European colonialism at the turn of the twentieth century, and the global search for “the ultimate race of bees.”
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