"There are a great many other practices that are observed concerning bees. Among those that know them well, bees are understood to be quiet and sober beings that disapprove of lying, cheating and menstruous women. Bees do not thrive in a quarrelsome family, dislike bad language and should never be bought or sold for money. Bees should be given without compensation but if such compensation is essential, barter or trade is greatly preferable so that no money changes hands.

"The practices and observations, illuminated in this exhibition do not even begin to scratch the surface of the wondrous body of information known as 'vulgar knowledge'. This extraordinary field of information is the product of the observation, intuition and understanding of the minds of our species, millions of individuals, over many thousands of years. Much of this knowledge has fallen into disrepute in the recent past, a mere few hundred years, a blink of the eye in our collective history.

"We would suggest that there is at work in this body of vulgar knowledge a form of collective intelligence about this existence in which we find ourselves, a kind of road map of life compiled by those who have gone before.

"Like the bees from which this exhibition has drawn its name, we are individuals, yet we are, most surely, like the bees, a group, and as a group we have, over the millennia, built ourselves a hive, our home. We would be foolish, to say the least, to turn our backs on this carefully and beautifully constructed home especially now, in these uncertain and unsettling times."

From Tell the Bees... Belief, Knowledge, and Hypersymbolic Cognition, an exhibition at The Museum of Jurassic Technology. Today we saw a cedar with a thin crevasse in the bark and honeybees swarming in and out. Imagine the hollow heart of that tree, full of buzzing and honeycombs and the smell of cedar.