Bees in America Read online

  Still, maternal concerns were a real factor in a woman’s ability to be a beekeeper. In “Beekeeping for Women,” written by Mrs. H. D. Woods for the 1911 Texas Beekeeping Association, she stressed that beekeeping is a great occupation because it doesn’t interfere with being a mother: “Texas is the promised land, while to many it is a howling wilderness just because they do not prepare to gather up the milk and honey while both are being wasted…. But, Brother Bee-Keeper, beekeeping with me is a side line, for the work that interests me most is the boys and girls, the raising of noble sons and daughters according to God’s laws.”20

  5.1. Margaret Murray Washington’s Beekeeping Ladies, from Booker T. Washington’s Tuskegee and Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements (1905). The wife of Booker T. Washington taught beekeeping classes in addition to cooking, gardening, and other vocational skills at Tuskegee. The bee classes were more popular with women than men. Most women in this picture are not wearing bee veils.

  By 1917, Frank Pellett, editor of the American Bee Journal, stated that “so many women have taken up beekeeping that there is no longer any novelty attached to a woman beekeeper.”21 In fact, Pellett featured an article about three former schoolteachers—R. B. Pettit, Mathilda Candler, and Emma Wilson—because they became successful honey producers, not hobbyists. Each left the classroom, that traditional bastion for professional women, for the freedoms and demands of beekeeping. Pettit, Candler, and Wilson had no regrets about leaving the classroom, although they approached the industry in different ways. R. B. Pettit plunged in immediately, buying one hundred hives, but then again, her brother, Morley Pettit, was the provincial apiarist of Ontario. She merely extended the tradition.

  Mathilda Candler drifted into beekeeping slowly. Her plans to study art in France were disappointed when a family member invested her savings unwisely. Although bees had been a sideline hobby, she gradually increased them so that she was able to make a profit. When bees provided enough money to pay the bills, Candler abandoned the classroom.

  Emma Wilson “forgot her resolution to return to the classroom at the earliest possible moment” when she went to visit her sister and brother-in-law, the famous beekeeper C. C. Miller. In fact, Wilson was as much the star of the Miller household as C. C. Miller: “Miss Wilson is a strong-minded individual and no mere echo of Dr. Miller.” Wilson enjoyed a national reputation as a good beekeeper; she wrote for the American Bee Journal for many years.

  5.2. Beehive Beverage advertisement, courtesy of Utah State Folklife Archives, Utah Arts Council. By straddling the ad, the young man creates a triangle that automatically focuses attention on the advertisement.

  Women were good crew workers in the field. M. H. Mendelson, the same man who taught N. E. Miller to render beeswax, hired women to be queen rearers for his large California 1,400-to 2,000-colony apiaries. Women “were careful and painstaking,” and because no heavy lifting was involved, it was a win-win situation.22 His queen-rearing crews wore overalls and heavy jackets—there was not a dress-wearing woman in the bunch.

  Bees and beauty go hand-in-hand in advertisement campaigns during the early part of the twentieth century. Twentieth-century advertising changed nineteenth-century perceptions about women and cosmetics. Although honey was a common beauty aid, victorian culture associated cosmetics with prostitutes. Feminine beauty should come from within, it was thought.

  5.3. Beehive Beverage advertisement, courtesy of Utah State Folklife Archives, Utah Arts Council. This soft drink used honey in its recipe. Ads emphasized energy, health, and mobility.

  Beeswax and honey were fundamental ingredients in many cosmetics. And models often used products such as lipstick and creams in advertisements. The Mormon company Beehive Beverages promoted its soft drink with the slogan “Good and Good for You” as early as 1914. A beehive flanked by pretty women appeared in advertisements. Later, when Beehive Beverages used photography in its ads, the women wore short skirts, bobbed hair, and makeup. The hive, long known as a symbol of industry, is in front of an automobile, a classic American symbol of mobility. Two women on either side of the automobile promise beauty, vitality, and security—provided one bought the beverage!

  Reflecting a new democratic principle, twentieth-century cosmetic surgeons and beauty industries suggested that even if one had been born unattractive, one could become attractive because cosmetics such as lipstick were affordable and available.23 When women decided to wear makeup, especially after World War I, honey and beeswax became prized commodities.24 Beeswax is still used in cosmetics to make lipstick, rouge, and cold creams, but beeswax was especially used during the early twentieth century. By the 1940s, American industries would use 4 million pounds of imported beeswax because American beekeepers could not produce enough to meet the demands of consumers.25

  By the time America entered World War I, beekeepers were in the midst of a major paradigm shift. The four major beekeeping inventions from the nineteenth century—the Langstroth hive, the Quinby smoker, the comb foundation maker, and the extractor—had fundamentally changed a cottage industry to a commercial one, but the ways in which these shifts would affect commercial beekeeping were still being streamlined. According to F. L. Aten at the 1911 Texas Beekeeper’s Association Progressive, “Bee culture has made a great many strides…. We have greater profits from the bees, more money per hive; less expense in handling them; neater package; better grading; advertising honey as a health food (which it is); holding off the market when it is glutted.”26

  World War I

  When World War I erupted in Europe, honey prices increased because sugar was more expensive and more difficult to obtain. Honey became the default sweetener, as often had been the case during wars. Physician Bodok Beck estimated that prewar prices for extracted honey cost five cents a pound, but during World War I, “honey sold in carlots from twenty to twenty-five cents a pound.”27 An article in a 1916 Bee Culture discusses the importance of honey in the European trenches: “The war lords in Europe, when it came to the matter of rations, soon discovered that honey, an energy producer, was much cheaper than sugar (also an energy producer), and consequently honey has been going into the trenches, and is going there still. Apparently, only medium grades are being used, because they furnish as much energy per pound as the finer and better-flavored table honeys that cost as much or more than sugar.”28 The world shortage of sugar had catastrophic effects for the bees in Germany and Austria. During the winter of 1918–1919, many of their bees starved while their keepers were serving in the trenches. According to G. H. Cale, one reason for the high prices of honey was that at the beginning of World War I, “we were exporting in the neighborhood of five million to ten million pounds of honey to Germany and other warring nations.”29 Furthermore, Russia was a big importer of beeswax for church purposes. When the war affected that market, the beeswax market dropped initially, only to increase in 1917 upon the United States’ entry to the war.

  World War I was the first modern war, and it differed from previous methods of warfare in at least two ways: the increase in facial wounds (the result of the nature of trench warfare), and the increase in victims of shell shock. The severity of these injuries was not just a physical problem but a social one as well. The British and American governments genuinely feared that veterans would not want to resume their careers when the war ended. Morale was a serious consideration, and both governments promoted cosmetic surgery as a way to help veterans recuperate their sense of confidence in addition to basic communication skills. Even though surgeons would make facial functions their first priority, according to scholar Beth Haiken, they were equally concerned about their patients’ appearance when they began to operate.30 In fact, the British government sponsored American cosmetic doctors’ travel and board while in England.

  But both governments shared a larger concern for those patients who would not recuperate quickly from shell shock or those veterans whose injuries were too severe to be easily masked by cosmetic surgery.31 Beekeeping was consider
ed a viable alternative career because a veteran could work alone, at a slower pace, and still contribute to society. Honey prices were also high, so the beekeeper could earn a good salary. In both countries, programs were established to help wounded veterans adapt to their injuries by teaching them beekeeping.

  In America, a group of seven extension workers was hired to teach better beekeeping methods—George Demuth, Dr. E. F. Phillips, Frank Pellett, Jay Smith, E. R. Root, and M. I. Mendelson.32 Walter Quick wrote a pamphlet in 1919 titled “Bee Keeping to the Disabled Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines to Aid Them in Choosing a Vocation.”33 Both the American Bee Journal and Bee Culture published articles that encouraged veterans to learn beekeeping. F. Eric Millen wrote a feature article in the American Bee Journal about Harvey Nicholls, an Iowa beekeeper who had lost both of his legs in a boiler explosion. The article assured veterans, especially those who had been wounded, that “you can [be a beekeeper] if you will.”34

  5.4. E. F. Phillips examines a frame with World War I veterans (1919). Courtesy of Bee Culture. As part of the government’s effort to train vets to become beekeepers, Phillips explains the complexities of the bees to soldiers.

  E. F. Phillips was the most ardent advocate of beekeeping programs for veterans. Although he readily admitted that he was reluctant to teach beekeeping to the average person because the failure rate was so high, he was excited about teaching soldiers returning from France. Phillips emphasized to his veteran students that “the most important part of a beekeeper is above the neck.” Indeed, in the pictures, one soldier had an amputated leg, one had a jaw shot off, and some were suffering from shell shock. Some of these men ran to the woods when the hives were opened, although Phillips does not explain, except to say that they had been through gas attacks in the war.

  5.5. E. F. Phillips teaching hive basics to World War I veterans. Courtesy of Bee Culture. Coaxing a bee to land on his hand, Phillips is surrounded by vets recuperating from war injuries. Their serious looks have changed to smiles. Most don’t wear veils.

  On the whole, Phillips was very positive about the U.S. government’s efforts to train soldiers to become beekeepers. He felt that good commercial beekeepers were needed, and if returning veterans were not able to continue their previous careers, “I, for one, shall be glad to see them take up the work.”35 Still, according to F. Eric Millen, “We cannot expect many of our disabled soldiers to take up beekeeping. It requires special tasks and aptitudes. No man who dislikes the work can succeed in keeping bees.”36

  The American Bee Journal was especially prominent during World War I because of the role Camille Pierre Dadant played in helping the Belgian and French beekeeping communities rebuild from the war damage. Because of his French connections (he was ten when his father immigrated to Illinois), C. P. Dadant coordinated relief efforts for beekeepers whose supplies and bees were destroyed by the war, sugar shortage, or harsh winters. In 1919, he reminded Americans, “We are deriving profit from high prices and those high prices are due in great part to the suffering of Europe.”37 Dadant also published a letter from Mr. Crepieux-Jamin, the former associate editor of Revue Internationale d’Apiculture, which read: “The disaster defies description…. Wherever things have been left standing after the bombardment, the Germans burned them or blew them up, cutting down the fruit trees and shrubbery. It is a desert…. Some beekeepers whom I know would be glad to begin over with a colony or two. The busy hum of the bees would undoubtedly encourage them. What they hope for is to be helped with a fresh start, the first few colonies.”38

  Donors, their letters, and dollar amounts were published in the American Bee Journal. In the 1920 volume, Dadant reprinted one letter from Noah Bordner: “Enclosed is 1.25, for which please send ABJ for one year to some beekeeper in France or Belgium, with instructions to pass it on from one beekeeper to another for I think they need good literature as much as supplies.”39 Dadant responded enthusiastically and offered to substitute a French edition of Lorenzo Langstroth’s book if French/ Belgian beekeepers couldn’t read English!

  Dadant also published pictures of European devastation. These pictures were just as powerful as the letters. The American Bee Journal featured a little town called Grand Pre, France, using before and after photos to highlight the damage done to towns and bee skeps. So involved was he that he personally traveled to Europe to help the Belgium beekeepers. For Dadant’s efforts, King Albert of Belgium awarded him Knight of the Order of the Crown.

  Gene Stratton-Porter’s The Keeper of the Bees (1925) is a young-adult novel about a World War I veteran. The novel’s protagonist, James Lewis McFarlane, returns to California, wounded in body and spirit. He suffers from the same malaise afflicting a generation whose Victorian ideals about women, community, and religion were destroyed by modern warfare: “I began with a gnawing fire in my breast and a bitter blackness in my heart and brain.” The Bee Master and a little girl called Scout teach Jamie beekeeping, until the Bee Master goes into the hospital. The beekeeping chores then fall on Jamie’s shoulders. The discipline needed to work with bees helps Jamie recover physically and spiritually. When approaching the Bee Master in his hospital room, Jamie describes the peace he feels while working with bees: “If [I] could earn money like that, if [I] had a garden of wonder to work in, if I could earn the Bee Master’s confidence, if I could daily make worthwhile friends, if I had a wife, if there were going to be a child to bear my name, what was the use in dying? There might be something very well worthwhile I could do in the world.” Before the Bee Master dies, he leaves his garden and bees to Jamie. By the end of the season, Jamie confronts black German bees with confidence and thus exorcises the ghosts of the German soldiers. His recuperation is twofold then: “He was so nearly a well man that he was beginning to use his left arm without realizing that he was using it…. Every day was a day of work that he loved in a location that he loved.”40 Finally, McFarland opens his heart to women and God again. But those steps take a long time and require the discipline and beauty of beekeeping.

  Although Jamie McFarland learned beekeeping after the war, many men left their colonies to be soldiers—H. F. Carrilton of Illinois, for example. During the two years Carrilton served in the army, his bees were neglected at home. Fortunately, he was released in the spring, so he had time to clean up his colonies before the nectar flow.41 Similarly, William W. Mitchell and Irvin Powers owned bees before serving in World War I. When both men returned from the European front, they became honey producers in Idaho.42 When the war ended in 1918, a young man named Charlie Heckman decided to go to California. While there, he met Nephi Miller, who “worked right along with us on the job,” Heckman wrote later. Their partnership was a good one: Heckman worked in the California, Utah, and Idaho branches.43 And serving in the Army Signal Corps was a young man from Michigan named Walter Kelley, who would commercialize the bee supply industry in the South, following in the steps of his predecessors A. I. Root and Charles Dadant.

  Arguably, the most revered war veteran was Reverend Francis Jager, who served as an interpreter for the Red Cross in the Balkans. Later he served as a chaplain in the Serbian army and then the United States relief commission. It was in that capacity that he met King Alexander I of Yugoslavia, who awarded Jager the Order of Sava in recognition of his service to the Serbian people.44 When Jager returned to the States, he took charge of the Division of Bee Culture at the University of Minnesota. He became a prominent spokesperson and teacher throughout the world, in part because he was fluent in so many languages.

  Commercial Honey Production

  Sweet clover (melilotus) had an indirect effect on honey production during this time, for this plant transformed the cattle and bee industries. Like the honey bee itself, sweet clover was imported into the United States, although how and when are not known.45 During the nineteenth century, many farmers and beekeepers initially furiously debated the use of clover; some states even passed laws to prosecute those farmers planting the “noxious weed.”46 But by the twent
ieth century, this debate had ended with the overwhelming successes associated with the plant, including those of Iowa farmer Frank Coverdale, who was able to reap a double windfall with fat cows and honey.

  Farther south, E. E. Barton introduced sweet clover, which transfers atmospheric nitrogen to the soil, to help replenish the soil in Kentucky. The poor soil had caused many tobacco farmers to go bankrupt, and when their farms were foreclosed, lawyer-beekeeper Barton would buy them and plant sweet clover. Sweet clover seed production became an agricultural staple in Falmouth, Kentucky. Pendleton County became known as the “home of sweet clover.” From 1916 to 1917, Pendleton County beekeepers produced 500,000 pounds of honey and sold queens.47

  But these farms were nothing compared to North Dakota, Texas, Washington, and California farms. Large citrus, apple, and almond orchards, to say nothing of clover, watermelon, cucumber, alfalfa, and squash crops, needed or were aided by pollination. In the Red River Valley, North Dakota, the sweet clover bonanza was one of the state’s first major industries. In 1922, there were “40,000 acres of sweet clover in one North Dakota county, Grand Forks.”48 The Red River Valley merges into the Missouri River Valley, which is legendary cattle range country. In addition to sweet clover, the bottomlands of the Missouri were excellent for growing alfalfa hay for the Herefords that populated the ranges. George Greig of Garrison, North Dakota, was a pioneer bee man of the Missouri Valley, and he set a good example for a long line of North Dakota beekeepers.