Bees in America Read online

  Furthermore, the German Americans in the region could not stand the Icarians. To quote German immigrant Viktor Bracht, who wrote about the Icarians when they lived in Texas: “Communism and Mormonism are diseased plants that will not thrive even in the healthful West nor anywhere else in the New World. There the human spirit tolerates no restrictions…. Communism in America, therefore, need not set its expectations too high.”46 Initially, Bracht appeared to be right. The Mormons had been shuffled off to Utah, where circumstances for survival, much less long-term successful civilization, did not seem promising. As soon as Cabet had to go to France to settle legal matters, the Icarians split between those who felt it was beneath their station in life to work and those who were expected to use their skills. Eventually, the Icarians got into a massive food fight. The cooks became angry at the elitist attitudes shown to them by some of the Icarian members and rebelled by throwing food, pots, pans, and plates.

  Among the Icarians who moved to Illinois was a man named Marinelli, who had been a tailor in France. When he married, he and his wife had a daughter named Marie, but after the disaster at Nauvoo, they relocated to St. Louis with some of their fellow Icarian friends. Others went to California, and some went to Iowa. A few Icarians stayed in Illinois, however, and made a lasting impact on American beekeeping in the following way. In 1857 a former Icarian, Emile Baxter, planted the first vineyard in Hamilton. When a beekeeper named Charles Dadant decided to relocate to America, he chose to relocate to that region because of its strong French connections and his initial desire to plant his own vineyard. Although he failed in this attempt to be a vintner, he soon followed his passion of beekeeping. His son Camille Pierre married Marinelli’s daughter Marie later in the nineteenth century. Thus, when Governor Ford banished the Mormons, he initiated a course of events that would profoundly improve American beekeeping in ways he little suspected.

  Whereas Mormons simply wanted to be away from the United States to set up Deseret, Texas wanted to be included. The Mexican War broke out in 1846, and Texas finally became a state in 1848. The most famous beekeeper serving in the Mexican War was a Kentuckian named Gen. D. L. Adair, who led the Fourth Kentucky Regiment in Mexico. He returned to Kentucky to become one of the most respected beekeepers, lawyers, and writers in the region. In addition to helping set up a public school system, he served as the agriculture editor for the Louisville Ledger and issued Progressive Bee Culture during the 1870s.

  When Texas became a state in 1848, shortly before the Civil War, the West truly opened up for many people. For, according to Walter Prescott Webb, the West was more about how cattle were kept rather than if cattle were kept; this central difference separates the eastern farms from the western. If one would succeed in the cattle cradle, one needed to have fodder and water for the livestock. Furthermore, if an ambitious man named James Gadsden had had his way, Texas would have had a railroad running to California before the Civil War. In league with his friend Secretary of War Jefferson Davis, Gadsden wanted to make the West dependent on the South for transportation needs. When President Franklin Pierce gave Gadsden permission to buy land from Mexico, he made few stipulations. Gadsden had dreams of a southern industrial-agricultural empire stretching from South Carolina to California, linked by railroad.47

  With the signing of the Guadalupe-Hidalgo treaty in 1848, Mexican general Santa Anna signed over much of present-day New Mexico, Arizona, California, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada. But Gadsden, president of the South Carolina Railroad Company, wanted more. He wanted a last section of southwestern New Mexico and southern Arizona. After agreeing to pay $10,000,000 for a parcel of land as big as one state in 1852, Americans expressed outrage, although the Gadsden Purchase was a part of the much-larger Manifest Destiny movement.

  Although it was a beautiful dream, Gadsden did not count on two things when it came to his southern railroad company: the Plains Indians, who could be a formidable force, and the Civil War. In fact, the Indians would rule the region until after the Civil War, during which time the technology was developed to conquer the Plains Indians who did not want to be “bribed.”

  In 1849, Germans, discontented with their failed revolution and industrialization, began to leave Germany en masse. Its strict laws regarding property ownership also pushed young men to America because only the oldest son could inherit land. German immigrant Viktor Bracht wrote a treatise “Concerning Emigration,” describing the poverty in Germany: “One must be totally blind not to notice the alarming increase in the number of poverty stricken. The dire poverty of the proletariat is ranged in extreme discontent against the wealth of the small number of well-to-do. For the present, the property class is enabled to control the propertyless.”48 When Texans wanted to populate the new republic, German Prince Solms Braunfels set up a company to send immigrants over.49 He chose the crème de la crème of German society, “a class of bold, intelligent and enterprising people,” as Viktor Bracht wrote in his travel literature.50

  Among these new scientists, engineers, and teachers was an apiculturist, Wilhem Bruckish from Prussia. He settled in New Braunfels and established progressive beekeeping. A friend of German bee master Johann Dzierzon, the Congregationalist pastor who learned that queens determined the sex of the bees, Bruckish maintained contact with Dzierzon after he arrived in Texas, although records of Bruckish corresponding with American beekeepers do not exist.51 Probably the unreliable postal system and language difficulties were factors because New Braunfels was a frontier village until after the Civil War. However, in the lists of commodities that Bracht recorded, honey was plentiful, in either bee trees or beehives. In New Braunfels, San Antonio, and Fredericksburg, one could buy five to eight pounds of honey for a dollar. Beeswax cost a dollar for eight to twelve pounds.

  Another young man named Christian Diehnelt landed in New York from Saxony, Germany, in 1852, but eventually made his way to Honey Acres, Wisconsin, to establish a beekeeping business. He recognized the innovative technologies as they were occurring, and he was one of the first buyers of industrial beekeeping equipment once it was offered for sale.52 But Germany was not the only country sending immigrants to America. The Irish also migrated to America beginning in 1849 because of the potato blight that occurred in 1846. Although Irish beekeepers enjoyed a long and storied tradition that rivaled that of Germany and England, many of the immigrants who arrived in America were penniless and sick. When the famine ships were rejected in New York, which had strict quarantine laws, the Irish who recovered were admitted to other ports such as Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Savannah, Georgia.53 The Irish could not buy land immediately and often settled in the poorer sections of their adopted cities and took low-paying positions.

  For those Irish immigrants who went to Texas, the War for Independence decimated their communities. They had to move immediately to Victoria or Petersburg for their safety. Compared with the German immigrants, the Irish were more unsettled in Texas for a longer time. However, in The Historical Story of Bee County, Texas, historian Ezell Camp emphasizes that the Irish recorded frontier barter exchanges for beeswax near Galveston.54

  Midwest settlers found gold in the limestone before they found oil in the panhandle. Bee Cave, Bee Creek, and Honey Grove are only a few oft-repeated place-names.55 But as idyllic as the names were, the living conditions were otherwise. When Ole Rynning created his travelogue for Norwegians, he emphasized honey bees in Illinois, which would appeal to the Norwegian mind-set. In his persuasive True Account of America, Rynning wrote of “the prairies, the wild game, the bees, fruit, rivers.”56

  “It is the Prairie,” ranted English writer William Cobbett, “that pretty French word, which means green grass bespandled with daisies and cowslips! Oh God! What delusion!”57 And sure enough, Ole Rynning’s account was pure fiction. He had been sold a malarial swamp in Illinois. His entire colony either died or fled. Nevertheless, in spite of being known as “one whose mouth never knew deceit,” Rynning wrote convincingly enough to ensu
re that the Norwegian people would know the beekeeping skills they had in the Old Country would transfer to the New World as well.

  Propaganda is an ugly word to use, but early nineteenth-century writers used bees and honey to create an impression that America could right the wrongs of European culture—disease, famine, hunger, overpopulation, unfair land distribution, and political unrest. The technique worked, but democracy and its rewards were not quite as simple as writers suggested. For most immigrants, the American government indeed had provided opportunities and freedoms that European immigrants could only have dreamed about. But even independent bee hunters depended on larger circumstances to provide them with the liberty to hunt bee trees: available land, lax enforcement of laws, easy immigration systems.58 Those circumstances hardly mattered to the reading public, fascinated with the frontier and the bee hunter’s role in it.

  Meanwhile, the shy beekeeper Reverend Lorenzo Langstroth quietly prepared to revolutionize the beekeeping world by examining the mysteries of the beehive in his backyard. Langstroth began beekeeping in 1838, but he found only one book about beekeeping, Edward Bevan’s The Honey Bee, Its Natural History, Physiology, and Management (1838), although he was very familiar with Virgil’s Georgics. Langstroth stated that neither publication was appropriate to the conditions in America.59

  3.3. Lorenzo Langstroth. Courtesy of Bee Culture. This Congregationalist minister discovered the principle of bee space, the working area that bees need in which to build their combs to store honey and brood. He constructed a hive in which moveable frames were spaced equidistant from each other; these moveable frames made possible a beekeeping industry. Langstroth also imported Italian bees, the variety most common in America today.

  Born on Christmas Day, 1810, in Pennsylvania, Lorenzo Langstroth was indeed a gift to the beekeepers who followed him. He gave the world a concept known as bee space, which is the space between frames that bees need to have to build their combs in a systematic order, although he did not use that term.60 In any modern hive, one can look into a box filled with removable frames. If a space is larger than 3/8 of an inch, bees will fill the space with comb, which is difficult to crack once it has solidified in place. So if beekeepers keep frames spaced equidistantly, less than 3/8 of an inch, they can remove frames filled with honey and replace them with empty frames that bees can build on. Although a fairly simple concept, Langstroth’s realization about bee space took the guesswork out of beekeeping. Beekeepers no longer had to keep bees in skeps or box hives. They no longer had to wonder if their bees were suffering from disease or being attacked by moths. They no longer had to kill their bees if they wanted to remove honey; they could simply replace moveable frames of honey.

  But Langstroth had studied to be a pastor, not a scientist or apiculturist. Even though he went to Yale College, according to Naile, “there was little if anything in the prescribed course of study which Langstroth took at Yale College that could have prepared him for such a pursuit as that of his later years—the patient observation and study of the life of the honey bee.”61 In school, he roomed with Professor Denison Olmsted, who completed the first survey of geographical and mineralogical resources of North Carolina. But Yale tested Langstroth’s convictions, which would serve him well when he had to defend his contributions to beekeeping in later years. When students organized a strike against the school cafeteria for poor food quality, Langstroth alone walked through it. As a pastor and teacher, Langstroth had a phenomenal amount of tolerance and patience.

  Further, Langstroth’s respect for women defined him as a progressive. Whenever his “head trouble” would begin to disrupt his pastoral duties, he would return to teach school to women.62 His belief that women should be educated was as radical as his ancestors’ ideas about abolition.63 He also had great love and respect for his wife, with their marriage being a happy one. When he finally moved back to Philadelphia to open a school for women, he also began to keep bees in a log hive in 1838.

  It was hardly the time to begin beekeeping. Wax moth had spread quickly to Ohio and the Midwest. In spite of many efforts to find a suitable hive, no one had been able to improve the basic skep. As if the wax moth weren’t enough, the two books Langstroth turned to for advice about beekeeping were problematic: Bevan seemed to doubt the existence of a queen bee, and Virgil’s Georgics was hardly an authoritative manual in American beekeeping. Even the best beekeepers in the region could not teach Langstroth, because “none of them knew enough to drive bees out of their hives, nor used smoke to facilitate their operations.”64

  Yet Langstroth felt an instinctive love for bees. He wrote of the passion he first felt upon seeing a globe, one of the radical experiments then being done with hives: “In the summer of 1838, the sight of a large glass globe, on the parlor table of a friend, filled with beautiful honey in the comb, led me to visit his bees, kept in an attic chamber; and in a moment, the enthusiasm of my boyish days seemed, like a pent-up fire, to burst out into full flame. Before I went home I bought two stocks of bees in common box hives, and thus my apiarian career began.” Fortunately, Langstroth read Francois Huber’s letters. One of the great ironies in beekeeping history is that Francois Huber, who was to do so much in the way of an observation hive, was blind. comb, led me to visit his bees, kept in an attic chamber; and in a moment, the enthusiasm of my boyish days seemed, like a pent-up fire, to burst out into full flame. Before I went home I bought two stocks of bees in common box hives, and thus my apiarian career began.” Fortunately, Langstroth read Francois Huber’s letters. One of the great ironies in beekeeping history is that Francois Huber, who was to do so much in the way of an observation hive, was blind.

  3.4. The bee space inside a straw skep. Originally illustrated in Cheshire, 1888. Courtesy of Kritsky, October 2003. This illustration provides a look at the concept of bee space (i.e., the 3/8 inch that bees need to have between combs of honey). Not only could beekeepers increase the profits from hives, they could begin regular maintenance of the colonies, which had been impossible with bee skeps.

  3.5. Langstroth moveable frame. Originally illustrated in Langstroth, 1852. Courtesy of Kritsky, October 2003. When the frame is full of honey, it can be replaced with a new one. Moveable frames made a beekeeping industry efficient and worked with the bees’ need for distance between the combs.

  3.6. Munn’s hive, showing moveable frames for examination. Originally illustrated in Cook, 1884. Courtesy of Kritsky, October 2003. Many people quickly manufactured their own versions using Langstroth’s “bee space.” Langstroth never received any payment from his patented version of the hive; however, the beekeeping community generously provided funds and aid to him throughout his life.

  3.7. Langstroth frame showing “bee space.” Courtesy of Gene Kritsky. Langstroth never used the term “bee space,” but once his discoveries were published, he became the Father of Modern Beekeeping.

  Born in Geneva, Switzerland, in 1750 and blind from the time he was fifteen, Huber nonetheless advanced beekeeping with the help of his wife, an assistant, and his son. In order to understand how the hive worked, this group devised a leaf hive, which would separate the frames much like the pages of a book standing on end. Huber himself best explains the advantages: “Opening the different divisions in succession, we daily inspected both surfaces of every comb; there was not a single cell where I could not see distinctly whatever passed at all times, nor a single bee, I may almost say, with which we were not particularly impressed.”65 Although Huber advanced the world of beekeeping, he could not offer a practical hive for the average beekeeper.

  After his initial experience with box hives, Langstroth obtained two of Bevan’s bar hives. In these hives, “the bees constructed combs that hung down from a top bar and were connected to the sides of the hive,” writes Gene Kritsky. “The difficulty in working this hive helped Langstroth realize that to have a truly useful hive, he must prevent the bees from attaching the comb to the hive’s side.”66

  1850 to I860: Eureka! />
  Enough said. Langstroth uttered this word in 1851 when he finally realized that bees need an exact amount of space between the frames. His breakthrough moment occurred on October 31: “The almost self-evident idea of using the same bee space as in the shallow chambers came into my mind, and in a moment the suspended movable frames, kept at a suitable distance from each other and the case containing them, came into being. Seeing by intuition, as it were, the end from the beginning, I could scarcely refrain from shouting out my ‘Eureka’ in the open streets.” This simple discovery revolutionized beekeeping, not only in America but throughout the world. In his patent, Langstroth did not mention bee space by name; he only provided the dimensions: “There should be about three eighths of an inch space between a and c and the sides and C C and the bottom board of the hive [sic] this will prevent the bees from attaching the frame to the sides or bottom board of the hive, hindering its easy removal, and will allow them to pass freely between the sides and the bottom board, and the frame so as to afford no lurking place for moths or worms.”67

  Langstroth’s “understated” (to use Kritsky’s word) description was the most critical aspect of the public’s failure to grasp the significance of his discovery. He never reaped the financial windfall that generally accompanies such inventions in America. While he waded through the normal patenting process in 1852, many entrepreneurs had hastily crafted their own versions of his hive and marketed them as their own. When Langstroth tried to reclaim his product through lawsuits, he found that litigation required too much energy. His mental problems would make him an invalid for several months at a time, just what speculators needed to make money off his invention.