A bee, as used in quilting bee, working bee or spelling bee

Spelling bee

A spelling bee is a competition where contestants, usually children, are asked to spell English words. The concept is thought to have originated in the United States....

, is an expression used together with another word to describe a gathering of peers to accomplish a task or to hold a competition. Especially in the past, the tasks were often major jobs, such as clearing a field of timber or raising a barn

Barn raising

A barn raising is an event during which community men come together to assemble a barn for one or more of its households, with the support of women. The event was particularly common in 18th- and 19th-century rural North America. In the past, a barn was often the first, largest, and most costly...

, that would be difficult to carry out alone. It was often both a social and utilitarian event. Jobs like corn husking or sewing

Sewing

Sewing is the craft of fastening or attaching objects using stitches made with a needle and thread. Sewing is one of the oldest of the textile arts, arising in the Paleolithic era...

, could be done as a group to allow socialization during an otherwise tedious chore. Such bees often included refreshments and entertainment provided by the group.

History

This use of the word bee is common in literature describing colonial North America. The earliest known printed example of the term was the use of spinning bee in 1769, but most printed occurrences of the word didn’t occur until the 19th century. Some types of bees (with the date that they first appeared in print) include:

• spinning bee (1769)
• husking bee
  Husking Bee
  Husking Bee was a Japanese Punk Rock band formed in 1994 that disbanded on March 6, 2005.HUSKING BEE was a popular Punk Japanese rock Band.According to Oricon, HUSKING BEE’s member were Isobe Masafumi, Kudo "Tekkin" Tetsuya and Hiramoto Leona . They debuted in 1995 by "NOT SUPERSTITIOUS III"...
  
   (or cornhusking) (1816)
• apple bee (1827)
• logging bee (1836)
• spelling bee
  Spelling bee
  A spelling bee is a competition where contestants, usually children, are asked to spell English words. The concept is thought to have originated in the United States....
  
   (1825)

Spinning bees were popular in colonial America

Colonial America

The colonial history of the United States covers the history from the start of European settlement and especially the history of the thirteen colonies of Britain until they declared independence in 1776. In the late 16th century, England, France, Spain and the Netherlands launched major...

 as a way to demonstrate opposition to purchasing heavily taxed British

Kingdom of Great Britain

The former Kingdom of Great Britain, sometimes described as the 'United Kingdom of Great Britain', That the Two Kingdoms of Scotland and England, shall upon the 1st May next ensuing the date hereof, and forever after, be United into One Kingdom by the Name of GREAT BRITAIN. was a sovereign...

 goods.

Uses in literature include:

• There was a bee to-day for making a road up to the church. — Anne Langton
  Anne Langton
  Anne Langton was an aristocratic English artist who specialized in landscapes and miniature portraiture. In 1837, she settled on the frontier in Upper Canada, where she continued her artwork and also became known for her writing.She was born to Thomas and Ellen Langton in the Yorkshire Dales, but...
  
  
• The cellar … was dug by a bee in a single day. — S. G. Goodrich
• When one of the pioneers had chopped down timber and got it in shape, he would make a logging bee, get two or three gallons of New England Rum, and the next day the logs were in great heaps. ... after a while there was a carding and jutting mill started where people got their wool made into rolls, when the women spun and wove it. Sometimes the women would have spinning bees. They would put rolls among their neighbors and on a certain day they would all bring in their yarn and at night the boys would come with their fiddles for a dance. ... He never took a salary, had a farm of 80 acres [324,000 m²] and the church helped him get his wood (cut and drawn by a bee), and also his hay. — James Slocum

Derivation

Because the word describes people working together in a social group, a common false etymology

False etymology

Folk etymology is change in a word or phrase over time resulting from the replacement of an unfamiliar form by a more familiar one. Unanalyzable borrowings from foreign languages, like asparagus, or old compounds such as samblind which have lost their iconic motivation are...

 is that the term derives from the insect

Bee

Bees are flying insects closely related to wasps and ants, and are known for their role in pollination and for producing honey and beeswax. Bees are a monophyletic lineage within the superfamily Apoidea, presently classified by the unranked taxon name Anthophila...

 of the same name and similar social behavior. According to etymological research recorded in dictionaries, the word in fact probably comes from dialectal been or bean (meaning "help given by neighbors"), which came from Middle English

Middle English

Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....

bene (meaning "prayer", "boon" and "extra service by a tenant to his lord")