Beorn literally keeps beehives. They are explicitly mentioned in the hobbit.
this post was submitted on 10 May 2026
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Nobody claimed they were good Tolkien scholars.
I’m pretty sure The Hobbit directly mentions bees and hives and honey when they stay at Beorn’s place
I recall the bees were rather large, what Tolkien would have described as dummy thicc.
Like what are we even talking about? Beorn explicitly keeps bees.
Came here to say this. Damned lies. The hobbit is such an easy read.
@The_Picard_Maneuver except they literally mention bees.
“Then Aragorn laid his hand on Merry’s head, and passing his hand gently through the brown curls, he touched the eyelids, and called him by name. And when the fragrance of athelas stole through the room, like the scent of orchards, and of heather in the sunshine full of bees, suddenly Merry awoke, and he said:
‘I am hungry. What is the time?”
And it's not a one-off, either!
In The Hobbit, Tolkien goes on at some length about the bees in Beorn's house.
yeah this isn't a slam dunk. I want to hear the 6 hour argument against bees in middle earth
You need to let the nerds tire themselves out before you jump in. These seem to be cardio nerds so it just took a while.
Indeed, if you don't let them tire themselves out then both will instead jump on you as the sudden uniting factor.
This principle applies to all nerds both IRL and online threads.
both will instead jump on you as the sudden uniting factor
"uniting factor" as in "common enemy"
Also domestic disputes. Never get involved with those.
No, I think it's analogous to why people go to a NASCAR race. They don't want to see the race, they want to see the crashes.
I think maybe this didn't happen
I can totally see it. I think most people are imagining this as a six hour long continuous debate between panelists, which sounds unrealistic to me. More likely it was a conversation that started over lunch between a few attendees, then paused for the afternoon sessions (or w/e I don't know how Tolkien conferences are structured) and then picked back up during evening drinks. It could have gotten quite heated, and less scholarly, as the libations flowed, before OP mentioned the mead halls.
It's also possible that the scholars in question did know about the The Hobbit references but quibbled over whether that was a canonical reference, since JRRT wrote The Hobbit as a standalone work before retconning it into the broader Eä extended universe.
This society sounds like a bunch of people who think they're well versed in Tolkien lore.
Most conferences have a pretty high enthusiast:expert ratio. The whole point of conferences is to get together and swap ideas. People who only know a little bit about Tolkien but want to learn more are the perfect people to go to Tolkien conferences.
The difference is that the enthusiasts would exercise humility and defer to an expert, not double down for six hours.
That tends to happen when someone's opinion of themselves exceeds their ability.
The problem is that everyone* is an enthusiast and it's unclear who the experts are. The definition of "expert" is extremely subjective and highly variegated even within very small domains. Even among mutually-acknowledged experts, it's not easy to come to an agreement on the minutia of a particular area of expertise. The bees of middle earth is a silly and rather inconsequential example, but this kind of arguing is what conferences are for. Claims are meant to be supported by evidence, and experts are regarded as such if their ideas are well supported by the facts, and claims that are weakly supported should be challenged. If I deferred to every blowhard "expert" with a laminated badge I heard speak at a conference I would be A) confused** and B) probably up to my eyeballs in crypto MLM debt.
* at every conference there always seems to be a small cohort that just utterly does not want to be there. They seem to detest their own area of expertise as well as anyone involved with it. Sometimes they are frauds but more often than not they have something valuable to contribute, but they do it with deepest disdain. I do not know how this happens but it seems like a miserable existence.
EDIT:
** I am still confused, but if I were uncritical of "experts" I would be considerably more confused about a lot of stuff, because experts are wrong all the time. They're still more right about their fields of expertise than non-experts, I'm not trying to say that experts are useless, but conferences are the exact right place to be critical of expert claims.
That seems like an appropriate level of confusion.
In another genre one might have been heard to say "no one hates Star Trek more than Star Trek fans".
More like 6 minutes probably.
In which a bunch of Tolkien enthusiasts eagerly take this bait. Much like a swarm of angry bees, in fact.
Everybody clapped i guess?