Bees in America

by Tammy Horn

  Antoine Le Page du Pratz was not the only Frenchman observing bees on his Louisiana plantation. The most charming honey hunter in America, in my mind, was a Frenchman living in Nantucket. St. John de Crèvecoeur was fiercely loyal to King George III but passionately in love with America. Written from the viewpoint of Farmer James, Letters from an American Farmer (1781) links the honey bee with efficiency, economy, and egalitarianism in America.

  Crèvecoeur, trained in manners and sensibility, embraced the customs of rural life with sensitivity and gusto. He preferred the locust bee trees to the “polished mahogany hives” found in Europe. In fact, Crèvecoeur provides one of the best descriptive passages about how to hunt for honey. “I make a small fire on some flat stones, in a convenient place; on the fire I put some wax; close by this fire, on another stone, I drop honey in distinct drops, which I surround with small quantities of vermilion, laid on the stone; and then I retire carefully to watch whether any bees appear.”46

  Crèvecoeur also describes the legalities concerning bee trees: “If we find anywhere in the woods (no matter on whose land) what is called a ‘bee-tree,’ we must mark it; in the fall of the year when we propose to cut it down, our duty is to inform the proprietor of the land, who is entitled to half the contents; if this is not complied with we are exposed to an action of trespass, as well as he who should go and cut down a beetree which he had neither found out nor marked.”47 This pastoral, then, privileges an orderly, law-abiding frontier. In this new classless society (which Crèvecoeur called the “perfect society”), every farmer had a chance to participate in owning land, and there were laws to protect his property.

  Crèvecoeur gently parodies the stereotypes of hunters and their game by poking fun at himself and his chase of the “harmless bees”: “I cannot boast that this chase is so noble, or so famous among men, but I find it less fatiguing, and full as profitable; and the last consideration is the only one that moves me.” This man wants none of the glory of hunting big game. He cares not for boasting rights. In fact, he admits that the first bees he found were by accident! In many ways, Crèvecoeur extends the seventeenth-century English metaphors of the New World as a new hive. Ever the optimist, Crèvecoeur equates New England with a bee colony, calling Nantucket a “fruitful hive constantly [sending] out swarms, as industrious as themselves, yet it always remains full without having any useless drones.”48

  Yet America was not the perfect society, as Crèvecoeur well knew. Crèvecoeur provides one of the most scathing portraits of slavery in Charleston, South Carolina. Furthermore, the Revolution would force him to return to France, never to return to America or his family. But his pastoral was immensely popular in Europe. Thus, in linking Nantucket with bees, he perpetuates a metaphor of America as an ideal beehive while at the same time suggesting that this paradise needed to examine the institution of slavery.

  The American Revolution was the formative moment of the eighteenth century, and writers funneled their energies into political treatises, tracts, and poems. More precisely, writers used the drone bee image to change how American colonists perceived British tax collectors. In order to enforce the Stamp Act and the Townsend Acts, England sent tax collectors and administrators to the colonies. According to Ann Withington, “Americans labeled the officials ‘drones’ who ‘did no work of their own, but lived off the work of others’ (a not unreasonable assessment given the exorbitant fines that officials pocketed for trivial, technical, often unavoidable violations of the acts).” The officials were drones in part because they did not do anything except attempt to collect taxes levied by King George III.49 The Stamp and Townsend Acts infuriated the colonists; they wanted no part of another English war with France or to be taxed without representation in Parliament.

  When the American colonists decided to revolt, they wanted to forge a new identity, and establishing a new currency was an important mark of independence. The Continental Congress of Philadelphia (1779) adopted the bee skep to put on its currency. Even though Continental Congress bills were considered worthless, the skep was important for the young nation trying to imagine itself as an independent country. Given the high illiteracy rates and unstable state-sponsored banking systems, colonists needed to have an image that would offer stability. Robert Garson explains the importance of the early banknotes: “Money was an artefact as well as a trading device…. They were visual reminders of the connection between finance, stability, and national authority. In both function and design money promotes specific political preferences.”50

  Although used only briefly, the bee skep with thirteen rings promoted political stability during uncertain times. The 1779 Continental currency was marked by a red wax seal, which showed that it was an official bill. The wax seal was used to undermine British efforts to counterfeit the Continental currency. A British sloop christened the Phoenix was anchored in the Philadelphia harbor throughout the early years of the Revolutionary War. On board was a team of British counterfeiters determined to drive up inflation. Even though they succeeded in their efforts to increase inflation, colonists continued to trade, barter, and work together to defeat the British and claim independence.51

  2.1. Continental currency from 1779, courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution, NNC, Richard Doty. The Continental Congress endorsed the bee hive as a sign of political stability. The skep has thirteen rings, each symbolizing a colony. A red wax watermark, which was Benjamin Franklin’s method of foiling the British counterfeiters, is visible. In fact, the phrase “not worth a continental” developed during this period.

  The bees also served their country during the Revolution. The story goes like this: The British army under the leadership of General Cornwallis had been planning an attack on the ragged Revolutionaries, but no one knew when the attack would take place. One day, while walking down a lane, a young Quaker girl named Charity Crabtree saw a wounded soldier coming her way. The soldier gave Charity this message: Cornwallis’s army will attack on Monday. The soldier asked the girl to take the message to General George Washington and then collapsed before the oncoming British soldiers. The girl mounted the horse and began to gallop away, but she quickly realized that her chances of outrunning the Redcoats were slim. Thinking quickly, Charity upset her bee skeps; the bees immediately attacked the soldiers. She galloped off to General Washington, who credited her with saving the country. “It was the cackling geese that saved Rome,” he is supposed to have said. “But it is the bees that saved America.”52 It’s a fun story for several reasons. It juxtaposes a simple Quaker girl with a sophisticated general, and it shows that women are just as capable of strategy as the military leaders. Most importantly, the bees are given credit for being the protectors of home and hearth.

  After the American Revolution, many social clubs emerged to take advantage of freedoms and new advances in the sciences. Manufacturers, merchants, and farmers had cards engraved with the beehive to symbolize industry. According to Ann Withington, “In post-revolutionary America … a hive symbolized a society working together for the good of the whole, whatever the nature of the whole might be.”53 These engravings depict women carrying bee skeps and suggest that in the New Eden women would be an integral and affirmative part of the new democratic order. The women stare from the drawing, strong, relaxed, and as comfortable with a skep as they are with a shield.54 In other engravings, hives imply social order. Often, the hive dominates the center of the page. If the hive is off to the side, it is balanced by another image. In keeping with Enlightenment principles, American engravers maintained order and balance in their artwork, even though the new states were hardly organized into a cohesive country.

  The most famous of these societies was the Freemasons. As a secret society, it was a way for men to network and to advance in the fledgling republic. Many prominent men were members, including George Washington, Paul Revere, and John Adams. In many speeches given by the Freemasons, honey bees were used to encourage industry and thrift, a tradition that continued until the twentieth cent
ury. In his 1920s farewell address, for example, Grand Master O. D. Street incorporated bees: “Look well, my Brethren, to the traditions of our operative Masons of old, that in their loyal observance of the lessons taught by the Bee Hive, we may find inspiration for a new and continuing devotion to the ideal of work.”55

  Street left his brethren with a wish that someone would discover “a remedy for the ‘drone-evil.’” If a brother could find such a cure, “He would place the whole Fraternity under everlasting indebtedness to his genius. The bees kill their drones, but that would be an unhappy manner of disposing of ours. How to destroy ‘dronishness’ without killing the drones, as Hamlet would say, ‘that is the question.’”56

  2.2. Certificate of membership for the Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, Arts, & Manufacturers (New York). Courtesy of Winterthur Museum. This association was started immediately after the Revolutionary War and reflected a commitment to order, moderation, and knowledge. The hive’s central location on the certificate pulls together the various elements of society: shipping, timber, agriculture, sciences, law, and the arts.

  Even though Street was writing in the twentieth century, he was borrowing from eighteenth-century images, values, and sermons held dear by the Freemasons. Arnold and Connie Krochmal show a skep on a Masonic document engraved in 1772 in Newburyport, Massachusetts.57 Grand Master O. D. Street provides the clearest reason why the emblem was perfect for a new fraternal society: “In all Nature there is nothing more constantly busy than the bee,” he says. “It has been the emblem of diligence since antiquity. No symbol of labor could be more appropriate than the bee hive, the abode of great industry. Masonry signifies labor. Toil is noble. Idleness is dishonor.”

  2.3. Certificate of membership for the Salem Charitable Mechanic Association. Courtesy of Peabody Essex Museum. This association’s motto, “Let Prudence Govern, Fear Not,” emphasized moderation and control as the country was in transition. Overseeing the developments is Archimedes, generally regarded as one of the greatest mathematicians of all time. The bee skep is featured next to the coin, emphasizing commerce. The shipping and printing industry are also featured in this scene, stressing the balance and confidence of the new nation.

  When the Revolution ended, printing presses were able to print information about beekeeping in America. Until the Revolution had ended, the first books in America were British books that had little familiarity with American soils, plants, or trees. “The texts began their Americanization by being printed in the colonies,” states Philip Mason, “not by being written by colonials.”58 In fact, American beekeepers do not profit from local publications until “after the censorship of pre-Revolutionary War was lifted and the rapid spread of printing presses after the American Revolution allowed for the publication of information on topics of interest to the citizens of a new and agrarian nation.”59

  In his 1998 dissertation, Philip Mason credits George Cooke for writing the first book about bees and beekeeping in America. In his book The Complete English Farmer: Or Husbandry made perfectly easy in All Its Useful Branches. Containing what Every Farmer Ought to Know and Practice (1772), Cooke devotes an entire chapter to beekeeping. Cooke’s chapter records the English peasant customs that formed part of the early American beekeeping rituals: “It is general custom, when the swarm is risen, to make a noise with a pan, kettle, mortar, and c. but some reckon it an insignificant ceremony, and others esteem it prejudicial.”60

  This old European custom, also known as tanging, actually began by an English king’s decree, according to Roger and Kathy Hultgren: “In England, the King declared by law, whenever a swarm of bees emerged, the beekeeper would drum on tin pans or ring a bell. This signaled that the bees that were in flight were his and he was the only one able to claim them.”61 Gradually, as the custom was passed down through the years, it took on a new significance. People believed that the noise caused the queen to become confused and her bees to cluster around her. When English and German beekeepers immigrated to the colonies, they brought tanging with them; this tradition lasted well into the nineteenth century.

  George Cooke also advised eighteenth-century readers to wash their hands and face with beer when swarming hives, although the reason is not discussed.62 This book was later published under another title, The New Complete English Farmer, or, The Whole Body of Husbandry Made Perfectly Easy. Containing what every farmer ought to know and practise, in All The Various Useful Branches of Husbandry. The two books are similar in substance and syntax. With these exceptions, according to Mason, many agricultural books were not adapted to the American landscape but were merely extensions of British agriculture.

  Mason thus corrects a common misperception that Isaiah Thomas had written the first bee book, A Complete Guide for the Management of Bees, Throughout the Year. Although the manuscript was indeed printed in Worcester, Massachusetts, in 1782, it was plagiarized from Daniel Wildman’s book published in Britain in 1773. Clearly, by the eighteenth century, people were wanting to educate themselves about honey bees, even if they had to rely on English books.

  Americans continued to use the term bee to describe joyous occasions for fellowship and work, something they had done since colonial days. The Boston Gazette officially recognized its usage on October 16, 1769: “People had gathered for a social function, which people in the Countrie called a bee.”63 However, Irving speculated that it began with the Dutch in New Amsterdam in the late 1600s.

  Even “The Poet of the American Revolution,” Philip Morin Freneau, wrote about honey bees. Although his poem “To a Honey Bee Who Hath Drunk Too Much Wine and Drowned” (1806) has often been considered a parody of the lofty metaphysical conceits and sad elegies common during the eighteenth century, I think it also serves as a warning to Americans intoxicated with political freedom for the first time. The poem begins with a speaker’s address to a honey bee circling his glass of wine. In a series of rhetorical questions, the speaker ponders the reasons behind such a visit:

  Thou born to sip the lake or spring,

  Or quaff the waters of the stream,

  Why hither come on vagrant wing?—

  Does Bacchus tempting seem—

  Did he, for you, the glass prepare?—

  Will I admit you to a share?

  Did storms harass or foes perplex,

  Did wasps or king-birds bring dismay—

  Did wars distress, or labours vex,

  Or did you miss your way?—

  A better seat you could not take

  Than on the margin of this lake.

  The speaker considers a range of reasons—from Greek gods to natural calamities to poor direction—that would entice the honey bee to the glass of wine. He finally concludes that the “lake” in the wineglass is as suitable as any found in nature.

  The speaker then issues an invitation, and a brief warning to the honey bee, who is not accustomed to the merits of wine:

  Welcome!—I hail you to my glass:

  All welcome, here, you find;

  Here let the cloud of trouble pass,

  Here, be all care resigned.—

  This fluid never fails to please,

  And drown the griefs of men or bees.

  The cautionary tone urging the honey bee to show some restraint with this unfamiliar liquid is subtle but true. The speaker gives examples of people (that is, “bigger bees”) whose love of wine caused them misery.

  Yet take not oh! too deep a drink,

  And in the ocean die;

  Here bigger bees than you might sink,

  Even bees full six feet high.

  Like Pharaoh, then, you would be said

  To perish in a sea of red.

  Finally, when it is clear that the honey bee intends to drink too much wine, the author renounces any responsibility for the honey bee’s actions, and even provides a proper farewell by sending him to the other world.

  Do as you please, your will is mine;

  Enjoy it without fear—

  And your
grave will be this glass of wine,

  Your epitaph—a tear—

  Go, take your seat in Charon’s boat,

  We’ll tell the hive, you died afloat.

  The speaker carefully paces the actions so that the reader imagines the honey bee sipping too much wine, until it finally falls into the glass, too inebriated to save itself. Although written during the nineteenth century, Freneau’s poem belongs in this discussion of the Enlightenment because it emphasizes moderation. The irony is that while his poetry reflects conventional themes of balance, Freneau’s political writings suggest radical changes in government and political thinking. The marvel of his poem, then, is that Freneau uses a honey bee to show moderation, when normally bees show industry and perhaps even an excessive devotion to work.

  Thus, during the eighteenth century, the honey bee was not restricted to one region, one community, or even one value. As the colonies banded together to form a united social front, the beehive image symbolized a stable society in many engravings. Just as interesting, too, is who was not in the engravings. Blacks and Native Americans established trade and food routes as the colonists migrated west, but these ethnic groups were not included in social organizations. Still, Indians and blacks were honey hunters, cooks, candle makers, farmers, and gardeners who participated in the complex frontier barter system, even as larger social forces were marginalizing them.

  Finally, American writers used the honey bee in markedly different ways than did their literary predecessors. The literature of the time did not promote adherence to a monarch or a divine being. In fact, Crèvecoeur, Jefferson, Zeisberger, and Freneau suggested literary independence from England. (These writers were not European.) In their writings, honey bees were stripped of their ancient associations with Olympian gods or Christian saints. Enlightenment principles of moderation and industry were exemplified in the honey bee, although the drone image still carried negative connotations. These writers provided an important foundation, then, for the bee-hunter stereotype in nineteenth-century literature.