Bees in America Page 19
Black people were eating honey, but they were not limited to the stereotype featured in the honey industry ads. The Black Renaissance flowered in the 1920s in New York, attracting many southern black people who wanted better living conditions and higher wages. When they moved North, many blacks found comfort in the Black Muslim movement, which was beginning to establish strong urban communities. Black Muslims, using the writings of the prophet Mohammad as their guide, followed strict dietary laws, including using honey rather than sugar whenever possible.79
Honey labels also featured or appealed to children. In one advertisement from the 1930s, Hopalong Cassidy, the hero in a series of stories by Clarence Mulford, promoted spun honey, the letters being spelled by his lasso. Other advertisements featured idyllic scenes, suggesting that honey could indeed be one’s link to an earthly paradise. By focusing on the land or children, advertisers hoped that shoppers would be more likely to forget about their fears of bees. In fact, after he was well established in the bee business, Walter Kelley decided to use his own image to promote his products, figuring that people would buy products from a face they could identify with. His head was superimposed on a bee, which would make people laugh. According to Mary Kay Franklin, “His remark was ‘Make a fool of yourself and people will remember you.’”80 Much later, in reflecting on the importance of advertising, Kelley remembered back to his first business, Gulf Coast Apiaries: “As a beginner that sounded big and important to me but I soon found out that few people understood the meaning of the word and some asked if we kept apes.”81
5.7. Honey advertisement featuring black child, courtesy of Dadant Company. Children were especially popular images on honey labels because they suggested innocence and drew attention away from the stinging characteristics of honey bees. This honey label was standard at many bee supply companies and reflected many stereotypes of the early 1920s. Contemporary ads are more neutral and sensitive to race differences.
5.8. Honey advertisement featuring Hopalong Cassidy. Courtesy of Bee Culture. This character was wildly popular with children because it perpetuated the formulas of the Westerns. In a clever marketing idea, the lasso creates the letters, roping the buyer in for a sweet deal.
Writers of children’s literature were an important force in how bees were seen in American culture. Although much of early twentieth-century children’s literature was “considered a sugar coating around the bitter pill of education,” according to Eva-Maria Metcalf, it was an important and influential market.82 In Philip Mason’s bibliography, he provides a thorough list of children’s publications about bees.83 Children’s literature also appeared in the American Bee Journal and Bee Culture. In fact, women wrote many of the children’s sections in these magazines. These sections were not really concerned with rearing future generations of beekeepers as much as rearing civic-minded individuals.84 During the 1920s, mass publication opportunities arose, as did discretionary income for white parents. Children’s literature continued to be a solid—though marginalized—market in each decade after the 1920s, although the market fell just after the 1929 stock market crash.85 The most notable writers of children’s literature about bees are Maurice Maeterlinck, Margaret Warner Morley, and Mary Geisler Phillips.
Although the children’s literature and honey markets plummeted after the stock market crash, the beeswax candle market flourished. Before the 1929 crash, the A. I. Root Company expanded its focus from manufacturing beekeeping supplies to candles. The current CEO of the A. I. Root Company, John Root, told the following story about his great-uncle Huber: “Huber and the local Catholic priest loved to play tennis. While they were out on the new courts in Medina, the priest started complaining about a new shipment of candles. He suspected that the candles were not made of beeswax. He asked Huber if the company would want to make some candles for the local church.”86 Although the church had been buying beeswax candles, the local priest wasn’t satisfied with the quality.
In a summary in The Catholic Encyclopedia (1907), Dr. Bodog Beck explained the importance of beeswax to the Catholic Church: “No Mass could be sung without pure beeswax candles. Wax, extracted by the bees from flowers, symbolized the pure flesh of Christ which He had received from his Virgin Mother; the wick signified the soul of Christ and the flame, His Divinity.”87 The Paschal (Passover) candle at Easter time has been associated with the Resurrection of Christ since at least A.D. 384. St. Augustine, who was influenced by the patron saint of bees St. Ambrose, wrote in De civitate dei, “Among bees there is neither male nor female…. The wax of the candle produced by the virgin bee from the flowers of the earth is as a symbol of the Redeemer born of a Virgin Mother.”88 Suffice to say that beeswax matters in the Catholic Church. So when the Medina, Ohio, priest wasn’t happy, Huber Root decided that the company should redefine its role in the beeswax business “in spite of the fact that it was launched during the Great Depression.”89
5.9. Women on the assembly line at A.I. Root candle factory. Courtesy of Bee Culture. Even before the Depression, women were employed as candle makers at Root and Dadant companies. Their hands were smaller and could finesse the wax easier. All women wore dresses and kept their hair up.
The Root company beeswax candles had several advantages over other candles. Their candles were hand-rolled before they were dipped into beeswax, and thus, they would rarely break. Because of this construction, if the candles arrived warped, church officials could remold them into shape. The Root Company also offered different sizes, which were priced for the poorer immigrant families from central Europe. Because churches had been sponsored by state taxes in their home countries, many immigrants were not accustomed to paying for candles. So Huber Root fashioned the tiny votive candles, priced at a penny, so poorer families could participate in the service and provide a small donation to their church.90
The candle market did not drop during the Depression, as did honey. “Beekeeping does better during hard times than other industries,” according to the current editor of the American Bee Journal, Joe Graham. “People go back to church, and churches need candles.”91
5.10. Women sewing bee suits at A.I. Root Bee Supply company. Courtesy of Bee Culture. Women were also employed as seamstresses, making bee veils and suits.
Having come in with a bang, the Roaring Twenties ended with a whimper—or seemingly so. But political developments occurred during this time period that would continue to affect America during the 1980s and 1990s: the federal laws meant that honey bees would not develop resistance to global diseases and beekeepers would have to keep in touch with the new industrial changes taking place in order to meet with federal inspections.
Honey bees were finally taken into Alaska, that last outpost of the American wilderness, in 1924. J. N. McCain brought the first hives into Alaska, although the bees did not make it through the winter. By 1927, McCain successfully overwintered seven colonies. He lived close to Anchorage and the Alaska Railroad. Although beekeeping didn’t become an immediately successful enterprise, McCain’s efforts were important. Honey could supplement the northern diets with a high-energy food. Plus, Alaska enjoyed long summer days, flowers, and a hospitable summer climate. With this territory, the country’s westward migration ended.
Overwintering was no longer a mystery to beekeepers by the time McCain had taken his bees to Alaska, although he had a difficult time keeping his bees alive. Packing the hives can be a necessary chore in the North, although it wasn’t until the 1980s that the American Bee Journal reported that Evan Sugden’s experiments with overwintering in Minnesota “found no significant difference between overwintering with light or heavy insulation.”92 However, wrapping is still necessary in most of Canada and the northen United States.
Overwintering success relies on two basic conditions: the bees are healthy and the hive has a strong queen. Bees also need plenty of honey to eat during the winter. According to Tibor and Daniel Szabo, “Weight losses during the winter are related to colony populations. Larger colonies use more foo
d, were more populated in the spring, and produced more honey.” Thus, Szabo and Szabo state: “It is essential to know the maximum possible weight loss of colonies during the winter months. Using the maximum possible weight loss one can estimate colony carbohydrate consumption and establish the optimal weight of the colonies prior to winter.”93 For those interested in commercial honey production, these factors make a difference in terms of profit and loss margins and costs of replacing colonies.
Finally, bees need access to the outside. They are exceptionally clean and will suffer from disease if they are not allowed to carry their refuse outside the hive. Diseases such as nosema and AFB can occur in the winter. One last word of advice about overwintering from Mary and Bill Weaver: “The precise temperature used in overwintering bees indoors is less important than keeping the interior of the bee storage area completely dark, so that the bees do not try to fly.”94 There are more factors to overwintering success, but it is no longer such a mystery.
The beekeepers’ successes in the hive paralleled the country’s successes and growing confidence in the early twentieth century. In fact, when downtown Chicago had to be rebuilt after the 1871 fire, city planners commissioned architects to create a unique style for the area, one that would mark the city as a symbol of progress and technology and also allude to its proud past. The Continental National Insurance Company commissioned Graham, Anderson, Probst, and White to create a building that would embody these values. The result: a skyscraper with a beehive supported by four buffalo. The beehive symbolized the industry of Chicago’s people along with the many industries that had located to the heartland city. The building, erected in 1924, has become known as the Encyclopedia Britannica building because it was sold to the company soon after. Since its creation, the Britannica Beehive has been a reminder to its citizens about the value of hard work, seeing them through many difficult stretches in the twentieth century.
The Great Depression
After establishing himself as a humanitarian during the 1927 Mississippi flood, Herbert Hoover dismissed the Great Depression as a “crisis of confidence.” But the crisis was more serious than that. The Great Depression involved unwise economic and agricultural policies, and beekeepers did not escape the debilitating effects that these had on honey bees and honey prices.
The Depression affected beekeepers in several ways. First, droughts occurred across the country. In Appalachia, the 1930 drought had more disastrous effects than the 1929 Wall Street crash.95 Combined with the effects of strip mining and deforestation, the drought affected the bees’ foraging materials. In Iowa, droughts caused many orchards to wither and die. In North Dakota, the dust bowl conditions were so bad that bees could not survive, much less make honey.96 After so much careless land use and drought, many Midwest farmers changed from clover crops to better-paying grains.
Financial shortfalls took their toll on beekeepers. According to a 1933 American Bee Journal article, many Iowa orchard farmers were unable to pay for proper spraying, and thus, many orchards were chopped down. Just as the orchard growers neglected their trees, beekeepers neglected their hives. “Many boxes went without paint and repair. Some of the honeycombs were eaten up by moth and mice. Many colonies just plain starved and died,” according to Woodrow Miller.97 The federal farm policies did little to help small farmers, who did not have huge farms or much capital. Many beekeepers had to become a “self-reliant lot,” who had to “muddle through” the Depression, in the words of one editorialist for the American Bee Journal. When he was in his eighties, Glenn Gibson remembered the low prices that honey bought to a beekeeper: “In the thirties, good quality honey moved in carlots for under 3 cents a pound. Producer-packers delivered honey in 5 pound pails at 25 cents. Small side-line and hobby producers consigned honey to local grocery stores and received pay in groceries. Some producers dickered with hard-nosed chain store buyers…. In simple terms: It was a buyers’ market.”98 In fact, Roger Morse remembered one Florida beekeeper who claimed to have dumped his honey in the Everglades so that he could at least use the containers again.99
5.11. George Arnold exhibits a super of honey, Chaffee County, Colorado (1939). Courtesy of the Library of Congress, photo by Arthur Rothstein. Federal loans were given to farmers who could prove significant damage either because of neglect or poor growing conditions during the Depression. Note the optimism and pride Arnold displays in spite of his circumstances.
Finally, the Farm Security Administration began to offer loans to beekeepers, but it wanted the agricultural damage documented. In Virginia, for instance, most of the honey bees had died from poison sprays, so pollination had to be provided by out-of-state bees. In 1939, photographers Arthur Rothstein and Russell Lee captured on film the difficulties beekeepers were facing. In Chaffee County, Colorado, George Arnold had suffered significant bee colony damage, all of which was documented by Arthur Rothstein in a series of photographs. Rothstein also went to Cache County, Utah, to photograph Donald Gill’s beehives, most of which had been damaged.100 These beekeepers were called “rehabilitation clients” and were approved for loans to pay for sugar, equipment, and bees. In San Antonio, Russell Lee captured a shot of a honey peddler, reading a newspaper, his cart stacked with jars. All of these photos were effective at convincing the Farm Security Administration that federal funds should be approved to help beekeepers, especially because by this time it seemed that America’s involvement in World War II was imminent.
5.12. Oakley Idaho Welfare Farm. Courtesy of Utah State Folklife Archives, Utah Arts Council. The beehive was used frequently during the 1930s to assure Latter-day Saints families that they would not starve in the midst of the Depression. Welfare Farms were set up in which people could work in exchange for food.
The Depression forced many people to reestablish social ties and policies. In Utah, the Mormon Church created welfare farms in order to provide a cooperative for families, according to Utah Folk Arts Council spokesperson Carol Edison.101 The icon for the welfare farms, displayed on huge signs, was a big comforting beehive, which emphasized society, industry, and church.
At the N. E. Miller & Sons Honey Company, Nephi Miller, who was paying his workers $125 per month, had to call his workers together for the bad news. “He said the salaries would have to be cut in half; he would try and hold the business together and make it go. All the helpers stayed with him except one.”102
The Civilian Conservation Corps was one of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s social programs that put young men to work on projects across America. The program would pay them a minimum wage, feed them, and train them in some type of engineering program. William Rowley ran away from home at the age of fifteen to work for the CCC to send money back to his parents. He credited the training he received through the CCC with helping him become an engineer, which he then used in World War II and with the Bureau of Reclamation Service. He became interested in bees after he returned from the war, fascinated by the orderly parallels between engineering and bees.
E. C. Honl was a hobbyist beekeeper before he joined the CCC. He went to bakery school, then used his hobby to help with his bakery. Finally, he became a full-time beekeeper after the war.103
One teenager, Clarence Dean in Myton, Utah, bartered honey for tuition at Westminster College. The college students ate the honey throughout the year.104 On the opposite end of the social ladder from the college students were the “shellers,” a group of people living on the Mississippi River. They raked up oyster shells (hence their nickname) to sell to button factories. The shellers depended on bee trees and log hives to supplement their diet, but bee inspectors would have to issue them citations if they did not hide their log hives in time.105
It is no surprise, then, that John Lockard’s Bee Hunting: A Book of Valuable Information for Bee Hunters was so popular. Although it was originally printed in 1908, it was reprinted in 1932, 1936, and 1956. Lockard’s preface clearly states that beekeeping was not his intention: “In the preparation of this work, it has been my aim
to instruct the beginner in the art of bee hunting, rather than offer suggestions to those who have served an apprenticeship at the fascinating pastime.”106 Lockard appeals to people interested in lining bees, not buying equipment, land, or even working with a producer.
Although blacks were not highly visible beekeepers, the best twentieth-century writer to incorporate the honey bee image in American literature is Zora Neale Hurston. Hurston, a Florida native, moved to New York in the 1920s and worked closely with the noted anthropologist Franz Boas at Columbia University. In her fieldwork with turpentine workers in the Florida pine camps, Hurston learned valuable folk arts, songs, and aphorisms. Later, when she collected songs for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), she had occasion to learn how blacks used the honey bee in the blues. The result: Their Eyes Were Watching God, a novel in which the honey bee best describes the development of a young lady into a woman made powerful by love.
Hurston wrote this pastoral love story in 1935. The novel was based on her own tumultuous love affair with a man of West Indian parentage in 1931. Although she walked away from the relationship, Hurston admitted, “I tried to embalm all the tenderness of my passion for him in Their Eyes Were Watching God.”107