Communal work is a gathering for mutually accomplishing a task or for communal fundraising. Communal work provided manual labour to others, especially for major projects such as barn raising, "bees" of various kinds (see § Bee below), log rolling, and subbotniks. Different words have been used to describe such gatherings.

They are less common in today's more individualistic cultures, where there is less reliance on others than in preindustrial agricultural and hunter-gatherer societies. Major jobs such as clearing a field of timber or raising a barn needed many workers. It was often both a social and utilitarian event. Jobs like corn husking or sewing could be done as a group to allow socializing during an otherwise tedious chore. Such gatherings often included refreshments and entertainment.

In more modern societies, the word bee has also been used for some time already for other social gatherings without communal work, for example for competitions such as a spelling bee.