The Oak Openings

The novel is set in Kalamazoo, Michigan's Oak Opening, a wooded prairie that still exists in part today,[1][2] during the War of 1812.

[3] After returning from his European travels in the 1830s, Cooper was persuaded by his niece's husband, Horace H. Comstock, to invest in Michigan real estate.

By 1837, Cooper's $6,000 investment was losing value, though he watched as his fellow New Yorkers attempted to colonize the area like honeybees.

[4] The experience inspired The Oak Openings; or, The Bee Hunter, and the novel became one of the first representations of beekeeping in American literature.

[5] The main character, Benjamin Boden, is compared symbolically to the bees which he tends through nicknames like "Buzzing Ben" and the French term le Bourdon ("the drone"), which shows him as an industrious laborer.