Bees in America Read online

  J is for James, to all mischief alive

  Who was stung by the bees

  When he lifted the hive.95

  Another British nursery rhyme was popularized in “An Alphabet for Animals” written “by a Lady.”

  B is the Bee,

  So busy and gay;

  He is seeking for honey

  Sweet honey, all day.

  From him to be idle

  We learn to avoid—

  How happy he is,

  For he’s always employ’d.96

  The British press determined how bees would be marketed to children in America during the nineteenth century. Values such as industry and good attitude—long associated with the honey bee—were marketed to American children. The illustrations depicted bees gathering food from flowers, or bees ready to sting. In short, nursery rhymes extended a tradition of using bees to moralize lessons for humans, except this time the audience was children.

  During the early nineteenth century, Langstroth’s achievements were undoubtedly the most important affecting beekeepers. But other advances tend to be forgotten because so much attention is placed on the progress made possible with the Langstroth hive. The country’s settlers made significant inroads—geographically and culturally—using honey-hunting skills to survive in the frontier and to form social relationships with the people they met there. The complexities of the bee-hunter stereotype were finally challenged in literature and on the frontier as more women accompanied men to Utah, Oregon, and California. Unfortunately, these inroads stalled when the Civil War erupted.

  Chapter 4

  AFTER BEE SPACE 1860–1900

  To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee.

  —Emily Dickinson

  Compared to honey, sugar always has been a more political commodity, but especially in nineteenth-century America. Until that time, Americans had relied on the sugarcane industry (which had been profitable because of slaves) to serve its collective sweet tooth and had neglected to address the conflict between democratic principles and chattel slavery. The American slave trade had been inextricably linked to sugarcane and rum since the colonial period, when the Dutch were establishing trade routes in the West Indies. During the eighteenth century, John Adams had the temerity to suggest that the American Revolution was really about one item—molasses, which was the main ingredient used in rum and was defined by the British as sugar.1 As pioneers moved west, the contradiction of allowing slavocracies in a democracy became much more clear when territories organized into states. Although I don’t want to simplify the causes of the Civil War, I want to suggest that the sugarcane industry was a catalyst because sugar was everything honey was not—cheap, convenient, and free from stings—and slavery was tolerated in order to have it.

  African slaves labored on sugarcane, indigo, and rice plantations long before cotton was an established industry in the southern states. Because sugarcane could spoil rapidly, slaves often worked eighteen to twenty-hour days during harvest so the crop would not be lost. Given the stressful elements of the tropics (malaria, snakes, and heat), the average life span for a male slave on rice and sugar plantations was no longer than thirty years. As slaves were gradually exposed to, and accepting of, Christianity, they used the Bible to find hope and freedom.

  Yet as slaves gradually accepted the Christian religion, they used the Bible to find hope and freedom. They readily identified with the stories of Israelites and their search for Canaan, the land of milk and honey. In their songs, slaves appropriated references to Canaan. Ethnologists recorded slave songs after the Civil War. Of the south Georgia spirituals, “The Lonesome Valley” was one of the earliest recorded by Allen, Ware, and Garrison in 1867.2

  My brudder want to get religion? Go down in the lonesome valley.

  Go down to the lonesome valley to meet my Jesus there.

  O feed on milk and honey. Go down to the lonesome valley.3

  The slaves focus on Canaan as a promise for deliverance from slavery, leaving free the possibility to wonder if Canaan is the North or simply an emotional plateau.

  However, the slaves also could take a spiritual and turn it into a satire, as illustrated in the case of an old English folk song:

  The Lord made the bees,

  The bees made the honey,

  The Lord made man

  And Man made money.

  In 1863, Frances Anne Kemble recorded the same verse with a twist from a Negro boatman’s song while visiting in Georgia:

  God makes the bees

  The bees makes the honey.

  God makes man,

  Man makes money.

  By the time Joel Chandler Harris heard the song in the 1880s, blacks had turned it into a sharp satire about the capitalistic ways of whites:

  De old bee make de honeycomb

  De young bee make de honey,

  De n—make de cotton an corn

  An’ de white folks gits de money.4

  Harris recorded this song and other proverbs in Uncle Remus, which appeared after the Civil War. Uncle Remus reflected and recorded how slaves reversed the value system in which they labored. The slaves—not the white masters—were the industrious ones, and the whites were lazy. Other sayings worth noting: “It’s a mighty po’ bee dat don’t make mo’ honey dan he want” emphasizes industry. Another proverb, “Hit takes a bee fer ter git de sweetness out’n de hoar-houn’ blossom,” emphasizes the importance of maintaining an optimistic outlook when dealing with life’s bitterness.5

  Recipes showed that blacks from honey producing regions in Africa remembered food patterns and incorporated them into the plantation menus. According to a slave narrative taken from Shad Hall in Sapelo Island, the writer’s grandmother would make a dish called sakara.

  She make strange cake, fus ub ebry munt…. She make it out uh mean an honey. She put mean in bilin watuh an take it right out. Den she mix it wid honey, and make it in flat cakes. Sometime she make it out uh rice.

  Duh cake made, she call us all in an deah she hab great big fannuh full an she gib us each cake. Den we all stands roun’ table, and she says, “Ameen, Ameen, Ameen,” an we all eats cake.6

  Recipes and songs are the few texts that provide proof that the slaves had used honey in Africa before coming to America. Once established in America, the slaves appropriated the biblical image to refer to the North, to the afterlife, or to remember their past African heritage.

  As soon as South Carolina troops fired on Fort Sumter in 1861, honey rose in value. The sugarcane industry in the South was suspended, not just for the next four years but for fifteen. Southern lands were ravaged, and southern railroads were destroyed. The slave economy was in turmoil. More people (Northerners and Southerners) were affected by the loss of sweeteners than at any time before the colonists’ arrival in the 1630s. The Civil War affected beekeepers in negative ways. The American Bee Journal, started in 1861 by Samuel Wagner (Langstroth’s good friend) in Philadelphia, was suspended during the war.7 ABJ informed many people how to be beekeepers before schools taught the science and gave people a venue to talk about common problems.

  Many beekeepers went to war. Lorenzo Langstroth’s own son fought for the Confederacy even though his French Huguenot ancestors abhorred slavery. Others fought in the Army of the Grand Republic. Capt. J. E. Hetherington of Cherry Valley, New York, a successful beekeeper before the war, was wounded three times. During one battle, “his sword was struck and bent by a bullet that would have pierced the Captain’s heart while he was in the thick of fighting.”8 He returned to his hives after the war, although “his life remained in jeopardy for two years,” according to historian Wyatt Mangum.9 Another soldier, O. O. Poppleton, entered the Iowa troops as a private and worked up to the rank of lieutenant and colonel.10 Dr. Godfrey Bohrer, from Ohio and Kansas, worked as a surgeon for the Northern troops.

  Honey-hunting skills were important to both armies. In the South, soldiers were on leaner diets than the Northern army. So when Gen. Joseph Johnston’s
army was in Mississippi, a region known for its excellent honey, the soldiers took advantage of their good fortune. In an article written extolling military life in the Louisville Courier-Journal, the writer records a bee-hunting episode:

  When Johnston’s army was about twelve miles from Vicksburg, orders were issued that death would be the portion of any man who fired a gun, chopped with an ax or made any noise whatever…. One day some soldiers noticed that some wild bees had selected an old dead tree as the depository for their honey. Away up in the top the little workers could be seen storing their sweets.

  The soldiers eventually talked a countryman into setting fire to the tree, and when it crashed, the countryman was nowhere to be found. Hence no one was punished. The bees were smoked out, and the soldiers feasted on the honey “like dogs upon a lame coon.”11

  4.1. “Gone Off with the Yanks.” Courtesy of the Library of Congress. Edwin Forbes (1839–1895) drew this cartoon as part of a larger series titled, “Life Studies of the Great Army.” This soldier’s activities are known among modern beekeepers as “the unknown transfer of ownership of hives.”

  But Union soldiers were equally skilled at foraging for honey. While writing home from Mississippi, Henry Schafer of the 103rd Illinois gave a detailed list of confiscated items: “Last night was a jolly time in camp with some of the boys as hogs, calves, sugar, honey mollases [sic]. came into camp plentifully.”12

  Of course, some soldiers didn’t know what to do with bees, and those occasions provided a few humorous instances during these dark times. A cartoon shows the joys of stealing bee skeps. Hattie Brunson, writing in her diary as a young girl in South Carolina, recalled seeing one soldier from Sherman’s army attempting to steal honey just as the rest of his peers were robbing their plantation home. “His face was just black with bees!” she recalled gleefully.13

  The 132nd Pennsylvania infantry regiment found itself in a tight spot at the battle of Antietam when it advanced upon William Roulette’s farmyard on September 17, 1862. Roulette was a beekeeper, and his bees did not take kindly to having their hives overturned by the crushing movement of Union soldiers. In the midst of gunshot, smoke, and hot temperatures, the bees became another enemy. “With bullets and artillery shells whizzing through the putrid air,” writes Kent Masterson Brown, “thousands of swarming bees created an impossible situation.”14

  Roulette’s bees were not the only ones disturbed by the Civil War. Two years later, when the war was all but decided, honey bees in Okolona, Arkansas, showed a truly nonpartisan dislike for both Union and Confederate soldiers. On April 3, 1864, Gen. Joseph Shelby’s Confederate troops clashed with Gen. Samuel Rice’s Union troops. During a severe thunderstorm (complete with hail and high winds), several beehives were overturned. Although the bees first attacked the Confederates, they were just as furious in attacking the Union army. Both sides decided to call it quits and resumed fighting the next day.15

  Perhaps suggesting the bee’s ability to defend itself, the 72nd Pennsylvania Fire Zouave regiment adopted the honey bee as a mascot to fly on its left General Guide Marker. Historian Jason Wilson explains, “This would not be the official flag for the regiment, as they had another state-issued color that was standard for all Pennsylvania infantry regiments. This particular guidon was originally owned by Lieutenant Thomas F. Longaker, of Company F, and was donated to the state’s collection in 1930.”16 In contrast to the billowy, scarlet Zouave uniforms, the flag itself is more subdued, having a blue field, with a white oval; a golden honey bee is in the middle. The Pennsylvania Fire Zouave unit, the showiest of the Union troops, was known for its brilliant uniforms, precise marching maneuvers, and steadiness in combat, and perhaps for these reasons, some independent soul decided to create a flag with a mascot that was known for stability.

  On the business side of the Civil War, Moses Quinby was getting top dollar for his honey in New York. During his lifetime, Quinby owned or partnered in as many as 1,200 hives. But it was during 1865, the last year of the Civil War, that Quinby shipped eleven tons of honey to New York City, “causing both quite a stir in the press and a strain in the market.”17 Because of his pacifist religious stance, he stayed out of the war but profited handsomely.

  The Shakers in Pleasant Hill and South Union, Kentucky, also pacifists, did not profit nearly as well because they were located in a border state. The Shakers emptied their stores to feed both Northern and South ern troops passing through. They did not charge for their meals, nor did they participate in the war. In their communities, all people were equal and supposed to work.

  4.2. Seventy-second Pennsylvania Flag. Photo courtesy of the Pennsylvania Capitol Preservation Committee, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Lieutenant Thomas F. Longaker, of Company F, owned this flag and used on the left guidon; it was donated to the state’s collection in 1930.

  In spite of the stresses caused by the Civil War and Reconstruction, the Shakers used the honey bee in hymns to lift the morale of their members. At the Shaker community in Lebanon, New York, “Busy Bee” was just one of the songs Shaker Anna White “received” in a spiritual vision:

  Like the little busy bee,

  I’ll gather sweets continually

  From the life giving lovely flowers, which beautify Zion’s bowers.

  No idle drone within her hive, will ever prosper, ever thrive,

  Then seeds of industry I’ll sow, that I may reap wherever I go.18

  This hymn and other hymns collected by beekeeper Elder Henry C. Blinn in A Sacred Repository of Anthems and Hymns (1852) encour aged Shakers to see themselves as bees able to serve a divine purpose.19 Blinn, a beekeeper until the early 1900s, “seemed to be very fair of his judgment” by all accounts, states Pleasant Hill Shaker historian Brian Thompson. Given that Blinn had been a teacher before becoming a Shaker, he was “very observant,” according to Deborah Burns.20

  4.3. Elder Henry C. Blinn of Canterbury, New Hampshire, Shaker Village. Courtesy of Hancock Shaker Village. A former teacher, Blinn was a good beekeeper and recorded many Shaker hymns using honey bees as a symbol of heaven on earth.

  It should be noted that bees helped to serve a financial purpose as well. The Shaker brethren were among the first Kentuckians to experiment with Italian bees once they become available.21 They were also some of the first queen breeders in Kentucky. Although the Shaker culture had very little iconography, the bee was one of the few consistent Shaker symbols. Although the Shakers survived the Civil War into the twentieth century, the communities could not keep up with the multifaceted changes taking place after the war.

  The most poignant Civil War exchange involving a beekeeper occurs in letters written by John W. Wade to his wife Rutha Cox Wade. Drafted to serve for the Confederate troops in 1862, Wade was in his thirties, had a small farm, and two children, with a third on the way. He fought in some of the worst battles of the Civil War. As he continued to survive each one, he dreamed of returning home. In a letter dated January 14, 1864, he admitted sadly, “A few nights ago I dreamed of taking honey out of the bee hives and eating of it. I study and dream a good deal of home, so much so it makes me uneasy.”22 Wade died at Spotsylvania a few months later.

  After the Civil War was over, beekeeping as a hobby and industry escalated in the North. Railroads expanded into the western territories. The wartime industries changed back to domestic goods. Printing presses were back in business, publishing American Bee Journal and Gleanings in Bee Culture: Or how to Realize the Most Money with the Smallest Expenditure of Capital and Labor in the Care of Bees, Rationally Considered.23 A. I. Root and his magazine (now titled Bee Culture) established a unified presence in beekeeping because they were in one central location, whereas the American Bee Journal changed editors and places of publication several times before it finally found a home in Hamilton, Illinois.

  A. I. Root transformed the image of the beekeepers in America. He was not James Fenimore Cooper’s bee hunter: semicivilized, wild, and living on the frontier. In fact, before he became a
beekeeper, he was a jeweler living on Main Street and settling down into Christian ways. One day, while looking onto the Medina, Ohio, square, Root spied a swarm fly into a tree. He made a friendly bet with his employee that basically offered the employee a dollar if the man could woo them down. The man caught the swarm, collected his dollar, and convinced Root that bees were a fascinating wonder.

  In short order, Root read Langstroth’s book and struck up a friendship with the pastor. According to historian Pellet, Root did the most to commercialize beekeeping by standardizing the Langstroth hive in 1869.24 He also published a how-to book called the ABC and XYZ of Bee Culture, which arranged topics alphabetically and remains in print. The straightforward friendly tone of Bee Culture was an immediate success with readers. In its inaugural issue, Root states, “Improved Bee Culture is our end and aim, and we trust no one will hesitate to give any fact from experience.”25

  4.4. A. I. Root. Courtesy of Bee Culture. The friendly caption at the bottom of this photo marked a transition in the public’s perception of beekeepers. A businessman, Root adapted nineteenth-century industial principles to beekeeping. His magazine, now known as Bee Culture, provided an early forum for beekeepers.

  By the end of the century, Root formed one of the major bee supply companies in the world. It had a bee yard, a railroad spur, its own water tank, a printing press, and a lumberyard. In keeping with the progressive nature of social reform, Root would help his employees if they needed money. But he could be ruthless with dishonest people, publishing a “Swindler’s Column,” which provided a checks-and-balances system to protect his customers. In one particularly damning column, Root took George Moon to task for producing an unprofessional magazine, Bee World, in 1874: “If the man can neither read, write, nor spell himself, he certainly should not leave his readers to infer that no one in Rome, Georgia, can do any better … we have never before seen any thing so lamentably deficient in the principles which any common school education should give, as Mr. M’s attempts at editorials.”26