Bees in America Page 13

  In the same column, Root praised Mrs. Tupper’s Journal, in which he says that Mrs. Ellen Tupper “presents us one of the most valuable nos. yet issued.” In fact, he invited women to send letters. In one response to Cyula Linswick, who worried that her letter would be too long to include in the issue, he assured her: “Please do not imagine that articles like the above are in any danger of being found too long for [Bee Culture] … if we have so many letters from our lady apiarists that we cannot find room, we shall enlarge [Bee Culture], we assure you.”27 It is hard to overestimate Root’s importance at galvanizing an expanding beekeeping community, which had splintered during the Civil War.

  The South had difficult adjustments to make. Soldiers returned to find their fields and homes destroyed; railroads, likewise. Industry was nonexistent. For many white soldiers, it was easier to move to the West than remain in the South. The 1862 Homestead Act promised free land if settlers could survive on it, and many decided to move, taking their beehives with them. Kansas historian Edward Goodell describes in great detail how skeps were brought to the West:

  A light four-wheeled cart was built especially to carry the skeps…. A framework of hickory poles was built over the car, and over these a strip of canvass [sic] could be pulled in bad weather; in fair weather this was taken off, and fresh cut green boughs were laid across to provide shade for the bees. A long detachable double length tongue with a metal ring in the end of it was used to fasten the cart to the rear of the covered wagon in which the family traveled…. The purpose of that long tongue to the bee-cart was of course to keep it as far as possible from the covered wagon pulling it.28

  Those who did not carry their hives often found bees waiting for them in Texas, Missouri, Illinois, and Kansas.

  One Texan, Edouard Naegelin Sr., decided to start a bakery in New Braunfels, given that he had a steady supply of honey. Arriving from Alsace-Lorraine, France, in 1844, he fought on the Confederate side when he was nineteen. Four years after the war ended, Naegelin returned to New Braunfels with a sack of flour and less than a dollar in his pocket. In short order, he bought the original baker’s lot belonging to Heinrich Zuschlag, the baker to Prince Solms. Then Naegelin advertised in the paper that he was “baking all kinds of bread and cookies.”29 He was especially noted for making lebkuchen, a light cookie made with honey.

  Perhaps the most neglected honey bee researcher was born two years after the Civil War.30 Charles Henry Turner, an African American, was born two years after the Civil War in Cincinnati, Ohio. “Turner was a pioneer of the comparative psychology/animal behavior movement in America,” according to scholar Charles Abramson. Turner’s experiments suggested that honey bees could see colors and discriminate among them. Following his initial experiments with color he performed more sophisticated experiments with patterns by suggesting that honey bees could be conditioned to fly to certain stimuli, provided they were trained. In some ways, his studies prefigured those of Karl von Frisch, although Frisch never acknowledged Turner. Even though his greatest achievements would occur in the twentieth century, Turner was preparing for the challenges in admirable fashion: he was selected valedictorian of his high school class and became the first African American granted a doctorate from the University of Chicago.

  Although the sugar trade was disrupted by the Civil War, the Appalachians did not suffer from the lack of sweeteners. Timber made it possible for people to have bee gums, even though the honey was often likely to be raided by armies from both sides. One mark of how many bee swarms existed is an article which shows that, in the Smoky Mountains’ Cataloochee section, two thousands pounds of honey were taken in the late 1860s.31

  Fortunately, the Civil War did not discourage Charles Dadant from immigrating to Hamilton, Illinois, in 1863 with dreams of starting a vineyard.32 At age forty-six, Dadant arrived penniless after paying for his family to come to America and buying a farm in Hamilton. He also did not know a word of English, but he was determined to succeed in this country. Even though there were French-speaking people in the area, because some Icarians had stayed in Nauvoo, Dadant learned English by subscribing to the New York Tribune.

  Dadant turned to beekeeping, a hobby he learned while a clerk in Langres, France, an area known for its dry goods business in locks and knives, when his dreams of being a vinter were not fulfilled. According to biographer Kent Pellett, Dadant educated himself while a traveling salesman throughout the French countryside. As the horse would plod along a well-traveled road, Dadant would read the works of French biologist Lamarck and the theories of socialist Charles Fourier. Dadant, always bothered by the ever-present poverty in his region, renounced the Catholic Church and became a socialist.33

  4.5. Charles Dadant and John Hammon. Courtesy of Dadant Company. A French socialist, Dadant believed in working in the factory along with his workers. Exodusters like John Hammon, women, and immigrants enjoyed progressive benefits at his factory. Dadant set up savings programs and shared profits with his employees. When he became editor of American Bee Journal, he provided an international forum to the beekeeping community.

  When he moved to America, he modeled the early stages of his business on Fourier’s principles. Even as the business grew, Dadant worked alongside his employees, sharing in the difficult stages of many tasks. According to Pellet, Dadant hired people of different races, ethnicities, and genders: “carpenters who made hives and packing boxes, men for dipping foundation, men who worked about the farm, and during vacation days, girls who interleaved the sheets of foundation.”34 John Hammon, a former slave, is mentioned twice in Kent Pellet’s biography of Charles Dadant. Both episodes illustrate the philosophies that Dadant had when it came to caring for his employees. Hammon initially had difficulty handling money, something that Dadant could also appreciate because his son Camille Pierre was the financial genius behind the company’s success. Charles Dadant initiated a savings program for Hammon so the former slave could buy land. The second occurrence was when Hammon finally located his mother in Georgia. Dadant himself happily broadcast the news to everyone in town and wrote letters to the Review Internationale and American papers.35

  In addition, Dadant paid his employees by piecework, which cost more: the employees “did their work more promptly, which was very desirable, as customers were always in a hurry for their orders.”36 Dadant was “delighted” when an employee would throw out an imperfect piece of wax comb foundation. “Visitors at the little factory were surprised at the atmosphere of cooperation and at the zeal of the workers,” concluded Pellett.

  The same type of good will characterized Dadant’s friendship with Lorenzo Langstroth, who could speak French.37 Although there were religious differences, their friendship surpassed those.38 In fact, Dadant first described the Langstroth hive to French beekeepers and served as an unofficial liaison between the two countries until his death. Langstroth succeeded in importing the Italian bee into the United States before the Civil War, and with Ellen Tupper’s help, Dadant secured funding for future imports when foreign trade resumed. In fact, it was he who figured out an easier way to ship bees across the Atlantic. Dadant even created his own hive, which had success in France and America. A prolific writer, he championed Langstroth’s hive against those who claimed that Langstroth wasn’t the inventor. Having had marked experience with the log hives and skeps in France, Dadant knew firsthand Langstroth’s contribution and said so in the American Bee Journal.39

  More importantly, Dadant took over the printing and publication costs associated with Langstroth’s The Hive and the Honey Bee. Because he suffered from debilitating headaches, Langstroth could not bear the burdens of revisions and updates. The Dadants offered to publish the revised version and translated his books into French, Italian, Polish, and even Russian. Therefore, Langstroth’s work was known around the world within a very short time. When the American Bee Journal needed a new editor, Dadant was a natural choice. Although his English-speaking skills were always awkward, his prose was quite solid, and he ha
d a wide network of friends and colleagues.40

  The Civil War exacted a physical and mental toll on many veterans, including beekeepers such as Langstroth’s son; Capt. J. E. Hetherington; and honey hunters headed West. There is a sense of military strategy added to the honey-hunting tales that didn’t exist before the Civil War. And perhaps the hard feelings between the two regions lingered longer than they should have, which could have hampered Texas beekeeping, according to bee historian Clark Griffith Dumas. In his thesis, Dumas argues that Texans did not appreciate having black soldiers impose civil curfews during Reconstruction. It was a credit to beekeeper Judge Andrew McKinney that he could keep order and encourage beekeeping.41 Dumas also speculated that people in the South were too poor to be able to travel the long distances to beekeeping conventions, often held in Toronto, Cincinnati, or Chicago.42

  Fortunately, at the 1906 National Beekeeper’s Convention in San Antonio, Dr. Godfrey Bohrer received a bouquet for being the oldest member of the National Beekeeper’s Convention. He used the occasion to mention the stark contrast of the harsh feelings between the North and the South and the present brotherly feeling of being a Union. The speech, according to the writer, was so full of feeling that it “brought tears to the eyes of several old Confederates still present.”43

  1870 to 1880

  The decade began with an emphasis on educating women about beekeeping. Although women had been pictured with bee skeps, few written records existed about women beekeepers before the nineteenth century. Eva Crane notes that “most women who did any bee work assisted their husbands,” but she is not specific about the time periods.44 Scholar Frederick R. Prete, writing about British beekeeping textbooks, convincingly argues that by the Restoration “gender distinctions [in England] became more ossified, and gender roles were seen to be separated by nature as well as by function.”45 The British bee books were written to convince women beekeepers that they should be chaste and submissive, even though the biology of the hive argued quite the opposite.

  In America, however, technological improvements made beekeeping easier, but women had to depend on themselves as a result of the Civil War, and the gender differences became blurred. Women participated in the beekeeping community by writing to American bee journals, attending conventions, and keeping bees. Women became members in beekeeping societies, and several even edited beekeeping magazines and owned their own apiaries.46 In fact, the decade began by promoting the interests of women beekeepers: “It is interesting to note that the National Beekeeping Federation constitution adopted in 1871 provided that ladies might be admitted to membership without charge, while the fee for men was one dollar each,” muses Frank Pellet.47

  When the American Bee Journal resumed publication after the Civil War, Mrs. Ellen S. Tupper of Brighton, Iowa, garnered national attention as a frequent contributor, editor, and teacher. Tupper was a well-known beekeeper, queen rearer, and editor of the National Bee Journal.48 Her peer, A. I. Root, praised her work: “We shall have to conclude that woman’s taste is certainly equal, if not superior to that of the sterner sex, in such matters. The typography and general appearance externally, and the whole work certainly does her credit.”49

  Frank Pellet briefly mentions an article published in The Illustrated Beekeeper’s Journal, which published Tupper’s plan for queen fertilization in 1870. The writer, L. C. Waite, testified that Tupper’s plan worked, but nothing more is mentioned about using her wire cage method.50 Nonetheless, Tupper regularly published after 1865 and even taught at Iowa State College in the 1880s.

  Charles Dadant’s trip to Italy in 1872 was to import large shipments of Italian queens to his and Tupper’s apiaries. They each wanted approximately a hundred Italian queens, and Dadant thought if he could pack and unpack them, he would learn how to import queens.51 Through trial and error, Dadant finally realized how to ship bees so that they would arrive in good condition and established a relationship with a shipper who would follow his directions. Tupper, however, “had abandoned importing [Italian bees] after she had lost several thousand dollars.”52

  There were other female beekeepers. At one convention, for example, a lady speaker, not named in the meeting’s notes, talked about the benefits of beekeeping for women, saying, “It was a very pleasing occupation, and about the only outdoor one for women to pursue.”53 Another oft-mentioned beekeeper was Anna Saunders, who lived in Mississippi. In 1874, she specified geographical differences that affect beekeepers: “We must have a journal on Apiculture in the South. Our wants are so different from yours; our troubles are chiefly summering, over swarming, and insects of whose annoyance you can scarcely form a conception there.”54

  Yet there were obstacles for women to overcome. Cyula Linswik complained: “One of the thorns in the path of the woman who undertakes to master the theory and practice of beekeeping is her lack of natural or acquired ability to drive a nail straight, to use a saw with safety to the implement, or a sharp knife with safety to herself [ … ] And the woman who begins to keep bees without having her attention directed to this matter is in danger of suffering from vexation of spirit and wounded fingers many times during the course of her novitiate.”55 Linswik questioned the benefits for women. “Does apiculture offer any special inducement to women? May it not be that the work, no longer impossible, is still for them undesirable?”56 In fact, Linswick shared a poem written to her by a neglected friend. The writer’s humor doesn’t mask the real loneliness that women must have endured in the 1870s:

  My eyes have grown big,

  And my ears have grown long,

  Watching and listening for you;

  Every morning I say,

  “She will be here today!”

  But the prophecy never comes true.

  Then I think of your bees,

  Round the dry, leafless trees,

  And I think, as I fancy them, humming,

  That the day may be warm,

  And the rascals will swarm,

  Just enough to prevent you from coming.

  The writer signed the poem, “Yours crossly!!”57 Linswick concurred that the bees were the reason why she had not visited her friend, and in her letter to the editor, she promised that she would make amends.

  Other women became equally prominent beekeepers in the South. Sarah Elizabeth Sherman was born in Georgia to an impoverished family. When she made an alum basket and filled it with wax flowers, her father sold it for seven dollars. From that moment, she “began to feel that she was not a cipher in the arena of life, but a living reality, and that she could do something to help make a living.”58

  She moved with her family to Texas, married, had a son, and settled down. Widowed at a young age, she began to rent a section of her farm and keep bees on the other section. Starting with black bees in the 1870s, she quickly switched to Italians as soon as she could. In spite of the frontier conditions, she kept her own hives, constructed them, sold them, and even exhibited her honey at the World Exposition in Paris, France.59 She was a frequent and forthright contributor to Texas Farm and Ranch.

  Jennie Atchley, who lived in Beeville, Texas, had between eight hundred and one thousand colonies devoted exclusively to queen rearing. Born in Tennessee, she moved to Texas in 1876 and began beekeeping. The Atchley family kept Jersey cows, hogs, and chickens. Atchley was a transitional figure between nineteenth-century beekeeping and twentieth-century beekeepers. She briefly published The Southland Queen at the turn of the century, but eventually moved to California.60

  Even in the Hutterite communities, which migrated to the Dakota Territory in the 1870s, equality between men and women was promoted in an effort to share everything.61 During the nineteenth century, men and women shared the work associated with beekeeping and honey production, but the chores broke down along gender divisions. The social role of beekeeper, for example, was generally given to a man, although women often did most of the honey production.62

  Mormon women beekeepers were given as much respect as men in their s
ociety. In 1885, Edward Stevenson wrote to the Deseret News, “Brother George Bailey of Mill Creek told me last week that he had already taken 5000 pounds of honey with the aid of his son and wife, who by the way is very efficient and more than equal in the business to most men.”63

  Ironically, given its emphasis on equal roles between genders, the Shaker community at Pleasant Hill, Kentucky, relegated this task to the men. Women canned and put up preserves, while the brothers took the honey. In 1872, according to Julia Neal, the Shaker sisters “finished 155 quarts of cherry preserves and attended two meetings. The same week, some of the brethren took 212 pounds of honey.”64

  4.6. Woman beekeeper. Courtesy of Bee Culture. Date unknown. Identity unknown. Women wore long dresses in the field until the twentieth century, although Moses Quinby argued in 1879 that “every woman should wear a dress suitably short…. drawers should be tolerably wide, gathered on a band at the bottom, and buttoned tight about the ankle.”

  Women in California were making a presence in beekeeping. Root encouraged Dr. J. J. Jansco and especially his wife not to be depressed by the labor-intensive nature of beekeeping. Root wrote in Bee Culture: “Remember that a nation of sisters are debating whether they are fitted for such duties … and even one who gets discouraged and gives up may exert a wide influence over the rest…. remember what a great boon it will be to many of your sex if they once learn that they can thus be useful, and feel that their acquired skill and knowledge places them where they may not feel dependent on others, no matter what reverses may overtake them in life.”65 Wise advice.