Bees in America: A Beeline

I. Hiving Off: Bees and New World Colonialism during the Seventeenth Century

1603 Queen Elizabeth I dies, marking the end of her successful reign in England. Coincidentally, a series of weather-related events promote famine, overpopulation, poverty and starvation. The monarchies of King James and King Charles stand in stark contrast to Elizabeth I: colonization in North America seems an easy answer to the social problems at home.

1609 Charles Butler, beekeeper to Queen Elizabeth I, publishes The Feminine Monarch in England. He theorizes that hives are ruled by queen bees, not king bees. In doing so, he rightly determines that the males are drones, which really have no function in the hive except to reproduce with the queen, and thus his findings are used as a metaphor by many politicians to shame unemployed men and the poor.

1621 Virginia Company sends bees to Jamestown.

1622 Francis Bacon defines large masses as swarms, and thus the word begins to have negative connotations.

1624 William Blackstone importes apple trees and then bees to the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

1655 Samuel Hartlib advises England to use honey only from English beekeepers and thus avoid the political and moral problems associated with the sugar and slave industry in the Caribbean. He is ignored. Isaac Watts publishes an English hymn, “How doth the Busy Bee,” which becomes very popular in the colonies and further reinforces the moral association between bees and industry.

1664 New Netherlands cedes to English. By now, quilting “bees” have begun among Dutch women, and the term is quickly adopted to describe social gatherings.

1670 Bees begin to show signs of suffering American foulbrood, which is still contagious in America.

1681 William Penn offers religious tolerance to Europeans and Francis Pastorius starts the Bee Hive bibliography, a listing of Quaker materials in the colonies.

II. Eighteenth Century: Establishing a New Colony

1740s Records show plantations such as George Washington’s Mount Vernon producing bee hives and beeswax candles. Middleton Plantation records show that slaves are candle makers.

1770 Honey bees are in Georgia, Mississippi and North Carolina, and Spanish Florida and Louisiana.

1775-1783 American Revolution

--Continental Congress adopts a bee hive with thirteen rings, symbolizing the colonies, for its currency in 1779.

--Jean Crevecoeur publishes Letters from an American Farmer, in which America is described as a “fruitful hive, sending out industrious swarms and not having useless drones” in 1781. He is later exiled for being loyal to King George III.

1785 Thomas Jefferson publishes Notes on the State of Virginia, in which he records the Native American impression of the honey bee as “the white man’s fly.”

1790s The Freemasons use the bee image to imprint upon the newly-emerging American leaders such values as industry, efficiency, and political stability. They use the drone as a metaphor for the ills of Europe, which tends to have unemployment problems or lazy and ineffective monarchies.

III. Swarming West During the Nineteenth Century

Before Bee Space

1806 Washington Irving publishes Knickerbocker’s History of New York, in which he describes the how the Dutch used bees in the 1600s. He later writes A Tour on the Prairie, in which he describes the bee hunter living among the Osage Indians in the Oklahoma Territory.

1827 James Fenimore Cooper publishes The Leatherstocking Tales, which popularizes the bee hunter stereotype as a savage independent man living on the margins and refutes the image of the quiet monk or clergyman beekeeper.

1838 Joseph Smith emblazons the honey bee image on Mormon mindset. It becomes the official icon of the Church of the Latter-day Saints.

1839-40 The Honey War occurs between Missouri and Iowa—starts when a bee hunter chops down a tree in disputed boundary area.

1847 Brigham Young establishes the Latterday Saints in the Utah territory, initially called Deseret, the Mormon word for honey bee.

1848 Mexico: Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo deeds California, Nevada, Colorado, Utah, and parts of New Mexico and Arizona to the United States. All of these states become major beekeeping states.

1851 Lorenzo Langstroth discovers the concept of bee space, the 3/8 inch needed between frames for bees to build comb. The Langstroth hive is the first and most important invention in creating a commercial beekeeping industry.

1854 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow borrows Iroquois sources to write the The Song of Hiawatha, in which bees represent colonial expansion. Bees are taken to Oregon.

1857 Johannes Mehring invents the wax comb foundation maker—the second invention needed for a commercial beekeeping industry. This machine imprints a hexagon shape on sheets of beeswax on which bees build comb to store honey.

1859 Langstroth imports the Italian honey bee, which becomes the standard bee used by American beekeepers.

After Bee Space

1861-65 Civil War

--Charles Dadant immigrates from France to Hamilton, Illinois. He publishes Langstroth’s The Hive and the Honey Bee, sets up a bee supply factory and edites the American Bee Journal (which is still in existence).

1865 Honey extractor is invented by Fransesco de Hruschka. This is the third commerical invention, needed for a commercial beekeeping industry because it made getting honey from comb easier by using centrifugal force to pull honey from cells once the wax seal had been cut away.

1869 A.I. Root standardizes the Langstroth hive, thus making a commercial industry possible. Root sets up a bee supply factory in Medina, Ohio, and eventually starts a magazine called Gleanings in Bee Culture (still in existence).

1873 Moses Quinby invents the bellows smoker, the fourth and last invention needed for a commercial honey industry.

1874 Ellen Tupper publishes a beekeeping magazine, Mrs. Tupper’s Journal, and teaches beekeeping at Iowa State College. Many women are becoming commercial beekeepers, especially in the Reconstruction South.

1883 Emily Dickinson starts writing poems using bees as a symbol of freedom. Frank Stockton publishes The Bee-Man of Orn.

IV. Requeening a Global Hive in the Twentieth Century

I. Early Twentieth Century

--Migratory Beekeeping becomes the norm for commercial beekeepers who use railroads, cars, and improved highways.

--Mrs. Margaret Murray Washington teaches beekeeping to Tuskegee women.

--Pure Food Act, initiated by beekeepers, is passed by Congress in 1906.

--First pollination rental fee is charged in New Jersey in 1909.

1916-18 World War I

--America needs beekeepers for the war effort because of military use of beeswax and honey.

--A sex education program emphasizing the “birds and bees” becomes part of the military’s effort to teach young soldiers about hygiene.

--The U.S. federal government sets up training workshops so handicapped veterans can become beekeepers.

--Gene Stratton-Porter publishes The Keeper of the Bees, a novel in which a WWI vet finds peace through beekeeping.

1922 Honey Bee Act bans beekeepers from importing bees from other countries; it is finally repealed in 2004.

1923 Congress approves federal inspections of bee hives.

1927 Mississippi Flood prompts the need for Henry Laidlaw Jr.’s studies in bee breeding and queen mating in Louisiana; J. McCain overwinters bees in Alaska.

1930s The Great Depression

--Laidlaw invents instruments necessary to control artificial insemination.

--The Civilian Conservation Corps and Farm Security Administration document and/or train beekeeper in agriculture.

--Zora Neale Hurston publishes Their Eyes Were Watching God, using the bee as a symbol of sexuality.

1939-45 World War II

--Although many beekeepers enter military service, they can avoid service by staying home to keep bees.

--Karl von Frisch publishes his findings on bee dances in 1944.

1949 Congress passes the Honey Support Program.

II. Late Twentieth Century

1950 Pollination industry begins to be an important way for beekeepers to make money. The California almond industry begins to work closely with the beekeeping industry and research universities studying pollinatio as it begins to dominate the world almond market.

1951 Muddy Waters records “Honey Bee,” and helps established a tradition of using the bee as a symbol of sex in Blues and Rock-and-Roll music.

1957 African bees escape from their hives in Brazil. Their swarms appear in Texas in 1990.

1959-75 Vietnam War

--Van Morrison releases “Tupelo Honey” in 1971.

--Sweet Honey in the Rock promotes peace, justice, and civil rights through urban and world gospel music.

1977-78 Penncap-M pesticide causes massive bee kills, especially among commercial beekeepers using their hives for pollination.

1978 Irwin Allen’s The Swarm is released, playing to people’s fears about African honey bees.

1980s

--Hal Cannon organizes The Grand Beehive exhibit in Utah in 1980. The Smithsonian features it in the Renwick traveling exhibit.

--Richard Avedon publishes The New West in which Ronald Fischer appeared wearing a bee beard in 1985.

--Varroa Mites appear in 1987; Canada subsequently closes its borders to commercial U.S. beekeepers.

--Sue Hubell writes A Book of Bees in 1988; Lee Smith writes Fair and Tender Ladies; Fannie Flagg writes Fried Green Tomatoes.

--Roxanne Quimby starts Burt’s Bees in Maine in 1989.

1990s

--African honey bee appears in Hidalgo, Texas on Oct. 15, 1990.

--Integrated Pest Management becomes a way to help promote resistance. American Honey Producers lobby for tariffs.

--Ulee’s Gold is released in 1997. Small hive beetle appears in four states.

III. Epilogue

2002 The military uses bees to detect chemicals used at military sites; Jerry Bromenshank explores the use of electronic-aided bee hives. Sue Monk Kidd publishes The Secret Life of Bees.

2003 Honey Bee Genome Project is completed at Baylor University under the direction of Gene Robinson.

2004 Honey Bee Restriction Act of 1922 is finally relaxed so that beekeepers may import different types of honey bees.

Tammy Horn teaches at Berea College. She learned beekeeping from her grandfather, who grew up hunting bee trees in eastern Kentucky.

Bees in America:

How the Honey Bee Shaped a Nation

Tammy Horn

Publication Date: March 11, 2005

$27.50 cloth, ISBN 0-8131-2350-X

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Leila Salisbury, Marketing Director, 859/257-8442