The beehive – symbol of industry, cooperation and community – is one of the warmest and most meaningful of pub names
The Beehive in Brixton – a JD Wetherspoon pub – holds twenty-one hundred and one reviews and a 3.8 – a below-average score, though on a very large sample, which is typical of the busy, high-volume Wetherspoon houses – and it bears one of the warmest and most meaningful of all pub names: the beehive, the ancient emblem of industry, cooperation and community.
The Wetherspoon note
First, honestly, the number: a 3.8 sits below this survey’s average, but it comes with an important context. This is a JD Wetherspoon pub, and the great Wetherspoon houses are high-volume, budget, all-things-to-all-people establishments, serving enormous numbers of people cheaply. They attract huge review counts (over two thousand here) and, characteristically, middling averages – the busy, cheap, cheerful Wetherspoon formula divides opinion, and rarely earns high ratings, even as it serves vast crowds. A 3.8 across two thousand reviews is entirely typical of the chain – a busy, popular, affordable pub doing exactly what it sets out to do. With the number and its context honestly noted, we turn to the excellent name.
The emblem of industry
The beehive is one of the oldest and most meaningful of all symbols – and one of the warmest and most fitting of pub names. Above all, the beehive is the great emblem of industry and hard work. The bees, famously, are tireless workers, labouring ceaselessly and cooperatively to build their hive and make their honey – “busy as a bee” is one of our oldest sayings, and the beehive has for centuries symbolised diligent, productive, cooperative industry. In the industrial age, the beehive became a proud emblem of hard work and productive labour, appearing on the coats of arms of industrial cities and trade organisations, and symbolising the dignity and value of honest, cooperative work. It is a warm and positive symbol – the reward of diligent labour, the sweetness (literally, the honey) that industry produces.
The emblem of community
Even more beautifully, the beehive is the great emblem of community and cooperation. The bee colony is one of nature’s supreme examples of cooperative, communal living – thousands of individuals working together selflessly for the common good, each playing its part in the life of the whole. The beehive thus symbolises community, cooperation, harmony and the common good – the many working together as one, for the benefit of all. This makes it a genuinely lovely name for a pub, for the pub is itself a place of community and gathering – the “hive” where the local community comes together, buzzing with life and conviviality. “The Beehive” evokes exactly this warm sense of community, gathering and shared life – the pub as the hive of the neighbourhood, humming with warm, communal life.
There is a lovely fittingness in it. Just as the beehive hums with the busy, communal life of the bees, so a good pub hums with the warm, communal life of its regulars – a gathering-place, a hive of local life and conviviality. And the sweetness of honey – the reward of the bees’ industry – makes a fitting emblem for the pleasures of the pub. “The Beehive” is thus a warm, meaningful, fitting name – industry and community, hard work and gathering, the hum of shared life and the sweetness of its rewards. Whatever the busy Wetherspoon house’s middling score, it flies a genuinely lovely and meaningful name – the beehive, ancient emblem of industry, cooperation and community.
The pub
A large, busy Wetherspoon pub doing a below-average but chain-typical 3.8 across a very large sample, warmly named “The Beehive” after the ancient emblem of industry, cooperation and community.
Verdict
Below-average by the numbers but typical of the busy Wetherspoon houses, and warmly named “The Beehive” – after the ancient and lovely emblem of industry, cooperation and community.
Have an affordable pint at the Beehive, and enjoy the warm meaning of the name – the beehive, humming with busy communal life, the ancient emblem of industry and community, and the sweetness that honest work produces.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
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