What is the best way to explore the Bee-ing Human website?

In the Introduction we explain that we conceived our project as a research hive with different disciplinary perspectives brought together in a common space: our Digital Bee Book. Our landing page takes inspiration from both an abstracted beehive and the frontispiece to Butler's book. It offers four separate entry points (literature, music, science, and connections). Each represents a honey storage/brood cell. You may be interested in one cell / disciplinary approach only, and choose to spend your time there. That's absolutely fine by us. But we'd be delighted if you also decided to jump from perspective to perspective—from music to literature to science to connections—by following one of the many hyperlinks in the articles, or by using either the view selector at the top of each page (), or the search tool ( top right).

By changing perspective you will understand Butler's multidisciplinary approach better. You will also understand how his interest in the 'emotions' of bees is taken up (differently) by today's scientists exploring animal sentience. You can collect perspectives on Butler's interest in sound as a tool for understanding emotions in the literature and music cells. You can also read our own reflections on working across space and time: e.g. in the connections cell you can read the reflections of a literary scholar on being in the bee lab (as we called it), or of a scientist on how reading Butler led him to rethink the idea of an experiment.

You may be wondering, though, where you can find the bees in this human-made hive.

You will find photos of the bumble bees in the science lab, and learn about experiments in the science cell. You will hear both queen honeybees piping, and humans piping like queen honeybees in our music cell, and find humans (beekeepers and artists!) working with bees, even co-creating works of art with them in our connections cell. If you look carefully you may occasionally spot a bee on our landing page, and spy another one in the title bar of the browser…

What is the best way to explore our born-digital edition of The Feminine Monarchie (1623)?

Our digital hive not only includes essays inspired by (or about) Charles Butler's remarkable seventeenth-century bee manual, The Feminine Monarchie (1623), it also shares it.

This hyperlink will take you directly to our born-digital edition of The Feminine Monarchie, which you can also access from the landing page by clicking the literature cell. The view selector at the top of the screen offers you different ways of viewing the edited text.

The copy text for our edition is the 1623 edition. You will see that Olivia Smith's edited transcription sits alongside the facsimile (the images of the 1623 edition). With a click of a tab you can choose to view the facsimile only, or the edited transcription instead. If you view both side by side (the default setting), then the facsimile images will follow the transcription, changing page by page as you scroll down. If you want to go to a particular chapter, then click the dropdown menu top left. Olivia has compared 1623 with 1609. You can see the changes, and track Butler's revisions, and thus the evolution of his thinking, by clicking the variation button (major changes/all changes). The kinds of changes Butler made have been colour-coded (green, grey, pink). If you want to see the 1609 edition only then you can do so by clicking the down arrow next to 1623 at the top left corner. The translations button will give you access to Henry Howard's complete Latin translations for the 1623 edition, while the editorial notes button will share our team's collective annotation of the central Chapter 5.

You can also explore Butler's remarkable system of cross-referencing by clicking the hyperlinked marginal references.

You can explore and compare the cross-references in 1609 and 1623 with these interactive graphs.

And you can learn about what makes our edition born-digital here.

How might you use Bee-ing Human in your teaching?

Watch this space: we are working with our students in 2025/6 to hear what they say.

Who made Bee-ing human?

The Project Lead is Jennifer Richards

The Project Co-Leads are Bennett Hogg, Vivek Nityananda, Magnus Williamson.

The Research Associates on this project were Balu G.S., Olivia Smith, Luigi Baciadonna.

The born-digital edition was edited by Jennifer Richards, Olivia Smith and Tiago Sousa Garcia.

Charles Butler's bee song was transcribed by Magnus Williamson.

The digital book was designed by Tiago Sousa Garcia.

The editorial work was proof-read by Simon Davies; Charles Butler's Latin was translated by Henry Howard. Henry also checked the Latin transcriptions in our edition. 

Please see our people page for the full list of everyone who co-created this Bee Book, including our Advisory Board, and the scholars (Contributors) who shared their work with us.

Our House Style

Style guides for academic writing offer conventions for the presentation of information, and they vary by discipline. Scientists usually use in-text citation, whereas humanities scholars usually use footnotes. (Long essays by humanities scholars in this project, though, use in-text citation.) This is a multidisciplinary project, and our contributors are familiar with different conventions, and styles of formatting. We have chosen to respect those differences.

You can find out why there are different referencing styles by discipline here.

Image credits can be found here.

How do I cite something from Bee-ing human?

Please cite the author/s from the page you are referencing, along with the title of their piece.

For example:

‍Baciadonna, Luigi and Vivek Nityananda. 'Inner Life - Emotions - in Invertebrates'. Bee-ing Human. https://bee-inghuman.newcastle.ac.uk/science/emotions-in-invertebrates [Accessed October 1, 2025.]

Wistreich, Richard. 'Music-book Layout: Functionality and Sociability'. Bee-ing human. https://bee-inghuman.newcastle.ac.uk/music/music-book-layout. [Accessed October 1, 2025.]

You can use the 'Citation' button at the top of each article to copy a preformatted citation in several commonly used style guides.

The born-digital edition should be cited as follows:

Butler, Charles, The Feminine Monarchie (1623). Bee-ing human. Edited by Jennifer Richards, Olivia Smith, and Tiago Sousa Garcia. [Accessed October 1, 2025.]

Who do I contact if I want to suggest a correction or make a contribution?

This is a live project, and we are keen to keep improving it. If you spot an error do let us know. Similarly, if you have a project you think we should know about, please get in touch with Jennifer Richards.

Lovely beekeepers, please fill out our Survey! We are keen to continue working with you.

Usage rights

TBD