Founded in Manchester
A worker, not a superhero.
The bee is Manchester’s emblem, and it has stood for the same idea here since 1842 — the people doing the work rather than the people taking the credit.
A single bee is unremarkable. What makes a colony work is that every one of them turns up and does the same unglamorous job, every day, and the results add up to something none could manage alone.
That is the whole idea. Not the big day, but the ordinary ones either side of it. Sort the small things out in advance, so when the day asks something of you, the answer is already yes.
1842
Manchester is granted its coat of arms, with worker bees on the globe at the crest — chosen for the industry of a city rebuilding itself around cotton and machinery.
The hive
The mills are spoken of as hives of activity, and the bee comes to mean the people inside them rather than the owners. A symbol of labour, not of wealth.
Still here
It is in the mosaic floor of the Town Hall, on the bollards and the bins, and inked on a good number of arms — a mark of a city that closes ranks.