It’s appearing all over social media, people are queuing to get it tattooed on them but just what is it about the bee and Manchester?
Actually the connection is quite simple. The humble worker bee was adopted as a motif for Manchester during the Industrial Revolution, at a time when Manchester was taking a leading role in new forms of mass production, becoming the world’s first industrial city.
The Manchester worker bee denotes Mancunians’ hard work ethic and the city being a hive of activity.
Travel around the city and you will see the bee adorning Manchester’s coat of arms, granted to the newly founded city in 1842, and appearing on everything from grand industrial buildings and bridges, to the exquisite mosaic-tiled floor in the Town Hall which was designed by Venetian architects and includes sixty seven of the creatures.
In 2014, Manchester city council commissioned 600 bespoke bins with a distinctive honeycomb design and luminescent bee logo which quickly became prominent across the city, the following year Elbow’s Guy Garvey had one tattooed on himself and named an album after the bees.
In 2016, The Manchester Bees half-hour audio documentary by Matthew Beckwith about the bee’s history, present and future came out, there has been an After the Bees Exhibition at Manchester Museum and beehives are appearing across the city including on top of the roof of The Printworks, where you’ll find a little oasis of peace and calm, featuring an allotment, herb garden, orchard, beetle hotel and bee garden, which has produced its own honey.
It is home to four beehives housing four colonies of around 80,000 bees. Manchester Museum is also home to two beehives.
The beehive meanwhile has been a synomous symbol of the Cooperative movement, representing working together for the good of the whole, the original shop founded in Rochdale in the 1840’s had a beehive on its exterior.
