Bees in America Read online

  Entomologists and researchers branched out in different ways to try to find and breed new strains of honey bees in which good traits, such as disease resistance, ability to winter well, or gentle temperaments, could be defensive mechanisms. In that way, beekeepers could get away from using chemicals. Beginning in the 1990s, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) researchers John Harbo and Jeffrey Harris have been working on a trait called suppressed mite reproduction, which stops the mite from reproducing. “Finding natural resistance has been our goal since the mite moved into the global population of honey bees,” explained Harbo.94 However, because honey bees were not showing resistance, Harbo and Harris tried to find factors that bees use to control the mite damage. One of those was nonreproducing mites, in which mites enter the brood cells to reproduce, but do not. Harbo says it remains a mystery why the mites don’t lay eggs in these honey bee colonies, but he figured there was a genetic component within the honey bees that prevented, or rather suppressed, such reproductive action taking place in their cells.

  A technique among bee breeders is called single-drone insemination. Erin Peabody explains: “Using a special instrument, the scientists inseminate a queen with the genetically identical sperm of one drone. Her progeny are then very closely related and are more likely to express genetic uniformity at the colony level.”95 So when Harbo selected drones from colonies that showed resistance to varroa and mated them with a queen who was also resistant, he increased his chances of having colonies that would show resistance once the queen would lay her eggs. His expectation at the beginning of the tests in 1995 was that there would be incremental resistance to varroa mites. However, he was surprised at the “almost total resistance” he was able to detect after a couple of tests. “With single-drone insemination, 1 in 10 colonies had very low levels of mite reproduction. With natural mating, I estimate that this level of resistance would be seen in 1 of 1,000 colonies.”96 Harbo’s study is ongoing.

  Another development in genetic breeding was hygienic behavior. Although most honey bees can detect diseases within their colonies, Minnesota researcher Marla Spivak distinguishes between two types of bees: hygienic bees and nonhygienic bees. Nonhygienic bees tend to be the honey bees that react very slowly to a disease such as chalkbrood. The nonhygienic bees will wait until the chalkbrood becomes infectious and only then attempt to carry the infected material out of the hive. However, by this time, the disease is infectious and the bees inadvertently spread the disease throughout the hive.

  Hygienic bees, on the other hand, detect diseased larvae before they become infectious, and quickly remove the affected area before the hive suffers. Good hygiene is a trait that can be passed on genetically. By selecting drones from hives that show good hygienic traits, Spivak artificially inseminates queens and then provides these queens (carrying the drone semen) to commercial queen producers. The commercial beekeepers can then raise additional queens from these “breeder queens.” These queens will raise worker bees with this hygenic behavior.

  The most recent threat to honey bees was in 1998 when four states were confirmed with the small hive beetle—Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Small hive beetles are a different kind of threat because it is extremely adaptive. An adult beetle enters a hive and lays eggs. When the eggs hatch, the larvae can destroy a hive by tunneling through wax comb, eating anything in its path—bees, wax, and bee larvae. As if this destruction were not enough, as the beetle larvae tunnels through the hive, it will also leave behind a lubricant that adds moisture to the inside of the hive and creates conditions for a “violent ooze,” to use Kim Flottum’s words. If the hive is not destroyed, the beetle can completely demoralize the hive so that the bees will abscond. The beetle larvae, when mature, can leave the hive and pupate in the soil, or it can live for a long time in the hive without being prompted to lay eggs. However, when the hive is threatened by something stressful (heat, drought, mites, an inspection, or even a harvest), the beetle will lay eggs. If necessary, the beetles can form a protoswarm and take flight to look for another hive to take residence in.

  These threats—small hive beetle, trachael and varroa mites, and African honey bees—have forced many people to reconsider the Honey Bee Restriction Act of 1922. In Waiting for Aphrodite, Sue Hubbell interviews a scientist who still struggles with the consequences of the Honey Bee Restriction Act. Scientist Suzanne Batra would like to import pollen bees to help address the pollination need in the wake of the honey bee devastation caused by these invaders, but she cannot. She makes the link between the 1922 restrictions and social conditions: “Some people have a prejudice against exotics…. It is an anti-immigrant feeling. But after all, most of our crops, livestock, and we ourselves are exotics.”97

  Sue Cobey also has great difficulties with the 1922 Honey Bee Restriction Act. She would love to import the carnica race, but only the USDA can import different races. “It is unfortunate that in Europe, even small-time hobbyists enjoy specialized lines of honey bees, some with pedigrees going back to 1948,” states Cobey. “In America, by contrast, bees are primarily part of a mass industry.”98 In 2004, the USDA recended much of the 1922 Honey Bee Restriction Act.

  Fortunately, the bee charmer was alive and well in literature, films, and music during the 1990s. On the music scene, Florida rock ‘n’ roller Tom Petty extended a tradition started with Slim Harpo. Although Petty grew up an Elvis Presley fan, which influenced his early rockabilly days, he went through a serious blues craze in the early 1990s. On his Wild-flowers release, the “Honey Bee” is all about forbidden sex in the Promised Land. The protagonist, a king bee, begs his queen: “Give me some sugar, little honey bee”:99

  Look here now, peace in the valley

  Peace in the valley with my honey bee

  Don’t say a word, ‘bout what we’re doin’

  Don’t say nothin’ little honey bee

  This album represented a shift for Petty, who left his band The Heart-breakers to record Wildflowers by himself and marked his return to acoustic blues and rural images. Petty, reaping the benefits of MTV’s popularity, was better known in the 1980s for sci-fi videos in which parachute-clad models drove space-age cars. But in Wildflowers, and with “Honey Bee” specifically, Petty strips all the space-age façades away and acknowledges Florida, the powerful bee image, and its effect on the Florida landscape in his music.

  Who would have guessed that disco queen Gloria Gaynor would quit singing “I Will Survive” long enough to sing her own version of “Honey Bee”? Gaynor, from New Jersey, sings from the perspective of the queen bee, although there doesn’t seem to be a power struggle in this song as we’ve seen in the others. The queen bee affirms that “love is where you are / There’s where I want to be.” In other words, this song is not so much about forbidden love as it is about mutual love. There is no fear in this song, no bitterness, and no self-righteousness. Gaynor delivers a simple but powerful affirmation of the goodness in mutual attraction in “Honey Bee.”100

  Southern writer Lee Smith used the bee charmer in Fair and Tender Ladies to help a woman negotiate a midlife crisis. The novel is a series of letters written by Ivy Rowe, an Appalachian woman growing up in the early twentieth century. During the 1940s, Ivy begins a descent into un-happiness. Outright rebellion is not the name for Rowe’s unhappiness, but dissatisfaction with the state of the world comes close. The 1940s bring incredible changes. According to critic Tanya Long Bennett, capitalism changes the region “to a place where work is not to be found and one must look after oneself since the community is not made up of mountain folk anymore but mountain folk mixed with people who have found that the mountain country is a good place to ‘make a buck.’”101

  Ivy Rowe leaves her husband to follow a beekeeper named Honey Breeding. He is everything that the old-time Appalachian men used to be; self-sufficient and solitary, he follows his own time schedule. Honey Breeding, a World War I veteran who suffers from psychological wounds too deep for any traditional institution to h
eal, provides a good balance to the technological changes taking place in the region. On a mountaintop, Honey and Ivy culminate their attraction for one another, each finding in the other a balm for the anxiety that the new times bring to their old roles. Honey declares Ivy a monarch in the shifting cultural setting: “You will be a Queen,” he says, placing a laurel crown on her head. Then Honey feeds her stories the same way that a queen is fed royal jelly. After admitting she’s starved for such tenderness, Ivy says, “It seemed like years since I had heard a good story.”102

  Ivy finally realizes that the difficulties of being a wife and mother leave her exhausted: “I’m tuckered out with lovin,” she says finally. “There’s so much love in the world, I’m fairly tuckered out with love.” But after her sojourn with Honey Breeding, Ivy returns to her husband a new queen. She is a better mother and wife.

  Honey Breeding shines in this novel as much as Ivy: he is an Appalachian Aristeaus, the Greek god of beekeeping. Both Aristeaus and Honey grow up without parents but were adopted by families who taught them beekeeping. Their skills afford them special places in the communities. Both balance the social order of the bees with the solitude of the wilderness. Both disappear without a trace.

  Because this book began by discussing the importance of Greek mythology and Aristeaus, I think it is appropriate to end with a discussion of the sublime film Ulee’s Gold (1997). The screenplay is based on the Greek myth of the war hero Ulysses as he makes his way home after twenty years of wandering. In the Greek myth, his wife Penelope has been courted by many suitors in his absence, but she has stayed true to Ulysses. Thus, although the myth is assuredly about heroism and courage, it also emphasizes the importance of home, fidelity, and the difficulties of maintaining those in the everyday world.

  Independent Florida filmmaker Victor Nunez carefully creates a parallel situation with a Vietnam vet named Ulee.103 Having resettled into his beekeeping business in a small town in Florida, Ulee struggles to make his way back into the unfamiliar territory of the home, and ultimately the heart. His granddaughter, Penny, is the constant reminder of why he needs to stay consistent in his values. But he finds himself tested when his daughter-in-law Helen gets in trouble with drug addiction.

  Ulee would prefer not to deal with his daughter-in-law. He is in the middle of the tupelo season, the best commercial honey he has to offer. He has decided that if his son and his wife have chosen drugs to cure their problems, he will write them off. When he gets the call from his son, who is in jail, that his wife is in trouble, Ulee hesitates to go pick her up. He does not want Helen, his daughter-in-law, in his home. “Ulee is bad in the sense that he is someone who does not forgive mistakes,” explains Peter Fonda, who played the role of Ulee. “He is bad in the way that a Baptist preacher can turn bad.”104

  Thus, although this movie is about beekeeping, therapy, and war veterans, it is also just as assuredly about requeening a broken home. Ulee’s beloved wife is dead; his daughter-in-law Helen is a drug addict. Although Ulee would prefer to take care of his family’s problems by himself, he finds himself forced to accept the help of his next-door neighbor, Connie, who happens to be a nurse. Patricia Richardson, who played Connie Hope, explains the purpose of the three women: “Ulee is sort of beset by these women in the movie. He is trying to raise his son’s daughters, he’s got this volatile daughter-in-law to deal with, and this nurse who suddenly comes into his life. These women, in their own ways, force him to cope, to come back to life.”105

  The bees provide the subtle background metaphor for the larger human family. When asked how his bees are doing, Ulee responds: “The mites getting them. The bears getting them. Pesticides getting them. They’re doing fine.” His answer is perfect for the postmodern family as well, threatened by all sorts of outside dangers. Although it is dangerous to carry metaphors to an extreme, Ulee’s answer applies equally well to the contemporary family as it struggles to stay together in the midst of difficult times.

  When his family is threatened by two ne’er-do-well criminals intent on evening a past score, Ulee very carefully draws the threat away from the women and manages to trick his opponents in subtle ways in the dark Florida swamps. But the more difficult challenge is not in the swamps but in his heart. The movie’s resolution shows how difficult and complex the process of healing and forgiveness can be, but also how very profound, especially when grandchildren are involved.

  I too have been a granddaughter working with a beekeeper, finding refuge among his bee colonies. In June 2000, my grandfather’s World War II buddies gathered in his honey room. They were old, shoulders gently sloping to the floor, eyes brilliantly bright. They talked in measured sentences of being eastern Kentucky boys, sent to Australia, where they ate shrimp and got into good-natured fights in bars.

  While in Guam, these men formed a medical team, and in their company, my grandfather became the man they knew then—relaxed, friendly, profoundly peaceful. They had returned to the States, to their girlfriends, and to the GI Bill, which paid their way through college and taught them progressive farming techniques. But these men were never content to be just farmers; they were teachers first and foremost.

  During that summer, they taught me. They talked honey, bees, and pollination. They shuffled to the barn to collect their jars of honey as payment for letting my grandfather keep his bees on their places, but it was a grand occasion nonetheless. He milked every minute of their friendship, showing off his apple trees, his granddaughter, and, of course, the honey we had bottled. He knew it was his last summer, and they did too. They invited him to a World War II veterans’ reunion; his eyes burned blue at the thought of it. He did not make it.

  For a week after my grandfather had died, I worked the bees alone. I did it mechanically, hearing his slow voice control my actions: “Easy now, open the super gently, a little more smoke.” The bees tolerated my awkwardness with the smoker, the hive tools, and the bee brush. One week passed before I told the bees their keeper had gone. I did not drape the mourning clothes over the hives when my grandfather died. I finally learned that Old World European customs associated with bees remain important in this country because the emotional needs have remained the same. Regardless of how technological our society becomes, our participation in this culture will have both sweetness and sorrow. No other insect best expresses the price of being a member of society. No better provides a cure.

  6.4. In the key of bee, courtesy of Bee Culture. Entomology professor Norm Gary plays for an attentive audience. This picture was taken during a rehearsal for his performance at the Orange County Fair, the theme being “How Sweet It Is.”

  The Old World traditions—telling the bees, moving the hives an inch, and leaving jars of honey—still had a place in the twentieth century, for they were about movement within those trying to move on as much as for those who have gone on. With the repetition of the exercise in the dying day, I finally acknowledged the Bee Master would no longer stand beside the hives, nor would he stand beside me.

  Throughout the twentieth century, American bee culture underwent radical changes in short bursts. Whereas the first half was associated with industrialization and isolation, the second half was about technology and globalization. All of our efforts to control bees have taught us remarkable lessons, with one consistent outcome being that bees have never been completely controlled. As bees gradually developed resistance to chemicals and mites, genetic research led to new ways of beekeeping.

  Society changed too. If the 1950s seemed to be about order and conformity, the 1990s seemed to be the exact opposite. Or were the two decades so different? The arts from this time period used the image of the honey bee to convey a variety of ideas: sex, freedom, power, therapy, salvation, sports and play, love, and finally even home. But through this image, the inarticulate longings of people in transition were quite similar to people in different centuries trying to find form and comfort.

  EPILOGUE

  I am fascinated by the interactions between bees.
I am fascinated by the interactions between beekeepers.

  —Marla Spivak

  In Hawaii, Michael Kliks, owner of the Manoa Honey Company, and his assistant Keoki Espíritu have invited me to see their hives on Oahu. We don bee veils and jackets, the garments setting each of us in relief against the smoky cloud-covered mountain. The pink jasmine vines threaten to overtake us. Tall banana trees shade the hives, a colorful combination of mainland and Molokai boxes. Yellow ginger punctuates the green setting like confetti. Together, we clear out the brush to create more space for Kliks’s hives. The false pakaki (fake jasmine) vines need to be cut back, so we work for a couple of hours. When we finish, there’s an orderly little bee yard in the midst of this Hawaiian jungle. We watch the body surfers at Wanamaeigo, munching on Keoki’s bologna sandwiches, credit going to his wife.

  California. John Miller, a fourth-generation beekeeper descending from N. E. Miller. Ever the native migrant, he’s been making the trek from Blackfoot, Idaho, to California since he was fourteen. Add Gackle, North Dakota, to his tour, and, well, there is one of America’s last real cowboys—to use Douglas Whynott’s phrase—alive and well in the twenty-first century.1

  Driving down the Sacramento Valley, we see the industrial countryside has indeed thrived: there are almond orchards on one side, being planted in new diamond-shaped patterns as opposed to the 1950s grid square because the new research suggests that diamond patterns allow for two more rows of trees, thus increasing the almond yields. Thus, the traditional pollination formula has been revised in California, so that a grower needs two or three hives for approximately 130 trees. Furthermore, trees are now uprooted at the end of a thirty-year cycle. New planting patterns make life easier for the beekeeper, who must pull the hives in and out of fields. There is more room between the rows to back in and out, a detail most orchard growers don’t think about.