As Bees to Wanton Boys

Garth Knight: The Last Honey Bee (2010)

angelinecollinsart.com

Any entomophiles thinking of reading D. H. Lawrence's first novel, The White Peacock (1911), should be warned that it opens with a very disturbing scene involving the narrator, Cyril Beardsall, and his friend George Saxton:  

"'I thought,' he said in his leisurely fashion, 'there was some cause for all this buzzing.'

      I looked, and saw that he had poked out an old, papery nest of those pretty field bees which seem to have dipped their tails into bright amber dust. Some agitated insects ran round the cluster of eggs, most of which were empty now, the crowns gone; a few young bees staggered about in uncertain flight before they could gather power to wing away in a strong course. He watched the little ones that ran in and out among the shadows of the grass, hither and thither in consternation. 

      'Come here - come here!' he said, imprisoning one poor little bee under a grass stalk, while with another stalk he loosened the folded blue wings.

      'Don't tease the little beggar,' I said. 

      'It doesn't hurt him - I wanted to see if it was because he couldn't spread his wings that he couldn't fly. There he goes - no he doesn't. Let's try another.'

      'Leave them alone,' said I. 'Let them run in the sun. They're only just out of the shells. Don't torment them into flight.'

      He persisted, however, and broke the wing of the next. 

      'Oh dear - pity!' said he, and he crushed the little thing between his fingers.'" 

Although Cyril is clearly made uncomfortable by George's will to knowledge - an often lethal lusting for intellectual understanding and an exercise of power that combines curiosity and cruelty - he doesn't physically intervene on behalf of the young bee, tormented (unsuccessfully) into flight and then casually crushed between fingers.

Perhaps, subconsciously, Cyril harbours a fear of insects (entomophobia); or maybe he has a secret crush fetish and derived a certain perverse pleasure from watching his brutish friend squash the little bee, despite asking George not to tease the poor creature. I've no evidence to support either suspicion; nor do I know, as some commentators have suggested, if Cyril is full of (homoerotic) admiration for George's masculine indifference to suffering:

"Then he examined the eggs, and pulled out some silk from round the dead larva, and investigated it all in a desultory manner, asking of me all I knew about the insects. When he had finished he flung the clustered eggs into the water and rose, pulling out his watch from the depth of his breeches' pocket.
      'I thought it was about dinner-time,' said he, smiling at me."

But in the queer fictional universe created by Lawrence, aka the priest of kink, anything is possible ...  

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, The White Peacock, ed. Andrew Robertson (Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 1-2.

Interestingly, in a poem originally published under the title 'Song' in 1914, but composed before the summer of 1908 - i.e. at the same time he'd have been working on an early version of The White Peacock - Lawrence again plays with the idea of a black and amber field bee that has only just left the hive and is creeping and stumbling about in the warm spring sun, as it attempts to unfold its heavy little wings. See 'Flapper' in The Poems, Vol. 1, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 16-17. Or click here to read the version that appeared in Poetry (December, 1914).

Field bees, for those who don't know, are worker bees - the smallest and most numerous members of a hive - which are old enough to leave the nest in order to search for pollen, nectar, and water. 

For a related post to this one on insect fetish (with specific reference to melissophilia), please click here.

Entomophilia 1: Insect Fetish

Ian Moore: Formicophilia (2014) 

MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art)

Entomophilia is more than just a fondness for insects. It's a form of zoosexuality which might involve being crawled upon, nibbled, tickled, or stung by insects, spiders, or other small creatures such as slugs and snails.

Arguably, it also includes squashing these things underfoot, though some see this as an entirely separate form of sadomasochistic activity based upon animal cruelty rather than animal love; an illicit fetish, rather than a legitimate sexual orientation. I'll discuss the controversial topic of crush fetish in part two of this post.

Here, I want to speak about the innocent practice of applying insects to various parts of the body, including the genital and perianal areas; a practice sometimes known as formicophilia, though, as indicated, it often involves more than simply having ants in your pants (some, for example, are aroused by the gentle touch of a butterfly's wing beating against their nipples, or stimulated by having a cockroach scuttle up their inside leg - and mosquitoes are apparently very popular amongst insect-lovers with a thing for flies).     

Not that there is much more to say; academic research in this area has been extremely limited, so one mostly has to rely upon anaecdotal evidence and personal testimony provided by entomophiles in online chat forums. And, ultimately, there are not that many entomophiles in the world. In fact, as paraphilias go, this one is extremely niche.    

However, in her Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices (1992), the American author and sexologist Brenda Love does describe how one melissophile chanced upon the joy of bees, having discovered that stings to his penis not only greatly increased its size (girth, not length), but also extended the duration and intensity of his orgasm.

Realising that stings to his penis were relatively painless compared to other parts of his body and delighted with the results obtained, the man soon developed his own procedure which consisted of first catching two bees in a jar and vigorously shaking it to ensure the insects were dizzy and thus unable to fly away:

"They were then grabbed by both wings so that they were unable to twist around and sting. Each bee was placed each side of the glans and pushed to encourage it to sting. (Stings to the glans do not produce the desired swelling and the venom sac tends to penetrate the skin too deeply, causing difficulty in removing them)."

Sadly, having performed what was required of them, these cockstinging bees then die, which raises an interesting ethical question that comes into much sharper focus when we discuss the insecticidal aspect of crush porn, a fetishistic practice which certainly offers a new and kinky perspective upon the question of cruelty in relation to eroticism and animal welfare (as well as bringing to mind the line from King Lear involving flies, wanton boys, and killing for pleasure). 


See: Brenda Love, Encyclopedia of Unusual Sexual Practices, (Barricade Books, 1992). 

Readers interested in part two of this post on crush fetish should click here. 

And for a vaguely related post on D. H. Lawrence and field bees, click here.