Bees have been kept since ancient times, and the word bee has been buzzing around English since its earliest days as a language. As you would expect, the oldest English sense of bee referred to a honeybee, an insect of the order Hymenoptera.

Anyone ever accuse you of having a bee in your bonnet? That metaphor owes its existence to the second sense of bee to develop: "an eccentric, fantastic, or delusive notion" or "fancy." That sense first appeared in the 16th century.

Your bonnet may be bee-free, but perhaps you're as busy as a bee. The origin of that simile is easy to explain. Bees are hardworking arthropods, and around the middle of the eighteenth century, bee came to refer to a busy worker.

Curious about the Bees?

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