Bees in America

by Tammy Horn

  Social Reforms

  While farms and agriculture benefited from progressive land policies, cities adopted progressive social reforms aimed at children and teenagers. Institutions such as schools and community centers promoted beekeeping as a disciplinary measure. The YMCA taught beekeeping courses as early as 1917.49 The juvenile court system also used beekeeping as a social reform. When a “shiftless” and “incorrigible” Boston youth appeared before the Children’s Court, he would be sent to “the Farm.” He was the despair of the authorities until he was sent to bring a colony of bees back to the Farm. “Mac” was stung so many times he decided that he would have to learn about beekeeping. Of course, Mac fell in love with the bees, and he left the Massachusetts corrective facility a well-respected individual.50

  Sex education was also important during this period. According to Julian Carter, “Between 1910 and 1940, sex educators faced the problem of how to teach young people about sex without encouraging licentiousness—in other words, how to educate them in a way that would guarantee premarital chastity and marital monogamy.”51 Thus, for many educators, images of birds and bees were appropriate for young audiences because pollination was less overtly sexual than many animals they would have seen. Although pollination is the movement of pollen between plant parts, bees act as the mediator of the pollen as they collect nectar. And birds tend to be nesting creatures. Thus, both birds and bees were used to promote “safe” sex without anybody having to address potentially embarrassing topics. According to Carter, the good intentions of the progressive reformers were also hampered by ambivalence: “For fear of encouraging licentiousness by giving people too much information about sex, educators frequently sacrificed the ‘scientific truth’ in favor of whatever kind of information or teaching strategy was most likely to encourage premarital chastity and marital monogamy.”52

  Photographers were important participants in the progressive period, for often they recorded exploitation in pictures that could be used as powerfully as written speeches or letters. The famous child labor photographer Lewis Hine was able to get a few pictures of Vermont beekeeper John Spargo with his twelve-year-old son in a 1914 series titled “Work that Educates.” Hine traveled around the United States in order to channel his social concerns through photography. In this series, Spargo’s son weeds the garden, tends the chickens, and watches over his father as Spargo checks the bees. After having worked for the National Child Labor Committee for ten years, Hines surely must have enjoyed taking these pictures in which a child was not working long, dangerous hours in a factory.

  5.6. Vermont farmer John Spargo checking the hives with his son. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, photo by Lewis Hine (1914). A sociologist by training, Lewis Hine used photography to teach Americans nontraditional education methods, such as the outdoor classroom.

  Speaking of social issues, beekeepers were not immune to the racial problems affecting the South specifically and America as a whole. On a trip through Mississippi and Alabama, Frank C. Pellett did not mince words when describing the racial differences in the South: “In most of the southeastern States, the white people live in the towns, while the colored population tills the soil.”53 Although he was greatly impressed with the vast unused fields of white and sweet clover, Pellett still cautioned the northern beekeeper about relocating to the South: “The northern man who goes south, expecting to show those who have lived there for years a better way of doing things, is not likely to succeed very far. The southern people have problems different from ours, and they know better how to approach local conditions than a stranger does.”54 One such problem was the low wages for labor-intensive work. When he visited in 1917, Pellett writes, “The price of cotton was so low it hardly paid expenses.”55

  Two years later, when the price of cotton increased because of World War I, Pellett would revise his opinion of blacks in Mississippi. The tenant farmers improved their standard of living so that they were no longer a “dejected looking lot.”56 Pellett mentioned black beekeepers at the Greenville beekeepers’ meeting. When he drove out to Richard Grant’s apiary, Pellett was impressed at how neat it was and that black women were involved in bottling the honey. In the photo caption, he states that there were some very good beekeepers among the “colored population.”57

  Perhaps because beekeepers and psychologists rarely cross paths, Pellett did not mention Charles Henry Turner, a black schoolteacher who published over seventy articles about honey bee research.58 Turner, who was one of the first scientists to prove that bees can perceive color and patterns, was recognized by well-known scientists for his numerous achievements. In 1910, while conducting research during his summers, he theorized that bees made “memory pictures.” In 1911, he published a second paper that extended his work on color vision. Although his peers in France accorded him great respect, Turner never achieved recognition in the United States. Nor did Karl von Frisch cite Turner, even though, according to Charles Abramson, “Professor Turner was probably better known in Europe than in the United States.”59 Abramson cites major scholars in animal behavior who admired Turner’s work: Margaret Washburn, E. L. Thorndike, T. C. Schneirla, and Eugene-Louis Bouvier. So von Frisch’s silence regarding his colleague is, as Abramson concludes, “perplexing.”60

  Nonetheless, African Americans were making inroads in the South via bees. When Booker T. Washington opened the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, beekeeping was part of the curriculum. A. I. Root donated materials and bees to Tuskegee. When Washington died, Root wrote a fine tribute to the man and his mission in Bee Culture.61 And at least in Washington, D.C., blacks had begun to congregate in a place called “The Bee.” The building was featured as part of an exhibit titled “The American Negro” for the 1900 Paris Exposition.

  Both Bee Culture and the American Bee Journal provided good articles about Asian American beekeepers. In one Bee Culture article, feature writer Louis Wahl chanced upon a laundry owned by a Chinese American in Colorado. Leung Chung had bees in the walls of his laundry, so Wahl helped him transfer the bees to a hive.

  When Leung Chung invited Wahl to his ranch, the two men developed an easy rapport. The conversation turned to Chinese laundries. Using his own experience as an example, Leung Chung explained the need for better labor laws in the United States: “I come here, I hire for cook for 50.00 a month. I work one month all right, so the next month, boss say, I can’t pay this month; you work a month more; then I pay you both, or else you go. See? Then I work another month, an no mon’; then I find out he got none…. I then start wash. First week I make 7 or 8 dol; then if some don’t pay, I don’t lose all.”62 In the midst of World War I and industrialization, beekeepers (and bees) flourished in the first part of the twentieth century, and beekeepers themselves showed more progressive attitudes in both the bee yards and toward women and minorities.

  The Roaring Twenties

  When World War I ended, there were a number of side effects that affected American beekeepers. Most immediately, honey prices dropped because sugar was again readily available. Women, the primary grocery shoppers, tended to buy sugar instead of honey. Beekeepers felt betrayed at the sudden reversal in the nation’s tastes. In fact, Dr. Bodog Beck groused, “The modern housewife uses ‘honey’ only … as a word, when she is anxious to have a new fur coat, an automobile, or jewelry.”63 Consequently, a few producers lost the financial incentive to maintain their hives. Foulbrood became a primary concern for state politicians trying to protect the domestic honey industry.

  Furthermore, the interwar years were marked by isolationism as America withdrew from global politics and markets. Beekeepers were affected by this political move. Before the war, beekeepers had enjoyed great freedom in importing different varieties of bees: German black (although these imports were few), Egyptian, Cyprian, Syrian, Carniolan, and the already popular Italian bee.

  But importation of foreign bees came to an abrupt end when the 1922 Honey Bee Act was passed by Congress with little opposition.64 This act was consid
ered a proactive measure to stop the spread of the Isle of Wight disease, which had begun in Britain. The Atlantic Ocean would be a barrier. The 1922 Honey Bee Act was fueled by fear of diseases, immigrants, and contamination.65

  Another federal law requiring all hives be inspected and outlawing bee gums followed on July 1, 1923. Bee inspectors were authorized to have hives that showed signs of American foulbrood (AFB) or European foulbrood burned; beekeepers with bee gums had to buy modern hives. The law stated, to quote bee inspector Eugene Shoemaker, “It shall be unlawful for any person to keep or maintain honey bees in any hive other than a modern, movable-frame hive which permits thorough examination of every comb to determine the presence of bee disease.”66

  These political actions meant that the United States bees would not be exposed to foreign bee diseases or pests. The Honey Bee Restriction Act also eliminated keepers from importing other strains of honey bees.

  The Queen-rearing Industry

  An indirect result of World War I was the queen-rearing industry. Given the world shortages in sugar and honey, beekeepers needed to be able to rear queens in order to increase their colonies. Improved transportation meant bees could survive shipping. Pellett states: “The business of queen breeding developed slowly, but steadily, until the time of the great expansion that came with the World War and the spread of sweet clover over the Plains Region. Since that time the growth has kept pace with the development of the package business, which has expanded so rapidly. Much of the present day prosperity of the queen breeder is due to the popularity of sweet clover as a farm crop.”67 Sweet clover had been planted in the large states such as North Dakota, and beekeepers could count on good honey crops if they placed their hives in these fields. As a practice, it is advantageous for the beekeeper to use commercially produced queens with known traits for several reasons: it can help breed resistance and it can help a beekeeper produce profitable colony dividers.

  Queen rearing is a relatively simple process. In any hive, a queen will lay many eggs, from which new queens can develop. While these queens-to-be are in larval stage, they are fed royal jelly, an extra nutritious food, and are tended to in special cells by nurse bees. This process allows for the queens’ ovaries to fully develop.

  In an isolated region such as Hawaii, beekeepers needed to be able to produce their own queens. Apiaries were divided among the cattle ranches. And when queens were quarantined as early as 1908, island beekeepers were forced to work with their existing supplies. Hawaiian beekeepers experimented with rearing queens that produced AFB-resistant offspring. Because AFB continued to plague mainland beekeepers, the hope was that Hawaii would be the best place to experiment with queens.

  Because of the earlier seasons in the South, southern beekeepers quickly cornered the queen-rearing market because they could produce queens earlier as a result of favorable weather.68 Warmer temperatures meant orchards and crops would bloom earlier, providing both pollen and nectar for bees. A young man named Harry Hyde Laidlaw Jr. grew up working with his beekeeper grandfather, Charles Quinn, in Texas. They had a method of queen insemination known as the Quinn-Laidlaw hand mating system. The drone would be held behind the queen until it was stimulated to act. However, many times the offspring were not quite what Laidlaw was hoping for. The hand system was also incredibly inefficient. The 1927 Mississippi flood acted as a catalyst that would promote Laidlaw’s studies with bee insemination.

  The 1927 Mississippi flood wasn’t just any flood. According to historian John Barry, “From Cairo, Illinois, to the Gulf of Mexico and from New Orleans to Washington, D.C., all across the floodplain of the Mississippi River and beyond, the 1927 flood left a watermark.”69 When the waters had receded back within their banks, the remaining vestiges of King Cotton and the plantation South literally washed down the river—and took many beehives with it. In fact, a magazine published by E. G. LeStourgeon called The Beekeepers Item broadcast the extent of the damage. In the June 1927 issue, Jes Dalton wrote the following: “Flood water may not be a beekeeping question direct, but in the marketing of package bees, it may be of more importance than at first thought. If a northern buyer sends his money south, and the apiarist has all his holdings swept away, or even holds his apiaries intact, but all his train service is shut off, or those which are shipped are detoured beyond the endurance of shipments, it becomes a problem of interest to at least those two persons.” In the same article, Dalton said proudly that beekeepers would not “pass around any hat or sit on a corner with tin pans extended,”70 yet he did request that people write their politicians to pass funding that would bring the entire levee system of the Mississippi River under the federal government’s jurisdiction.

  In the meantime, Louisiana state entomologist and apiary inspector W. E. Anderson made an appeal to the beekeepers in other states to send money, materials, and bees, specifically queens. In writing of the damage, Henry Stabe wrote to The Beekeepers Item: “Not only have they suffered losses of the crops, often all of their livestock, not to mention their bee hives and less valuable movables about their farms, but in many cases their homes; while in all cases, their fences, barns, bridges, automobiles, and in fact, everything that could not be loaded into a small lifeboat has been taken away from them…. Nine-tenths of the commercial beekeeping of Louisiana was done in this flooded territory.”71 Respond, beekeepers did. LeStourgeon provided a detailed list of accomplishments that only beekeepers could appreciate. Harry Wilson commandeered boats and barges to rescue hives and equipment before they were washed out to sea. The American Railway Express donated free transport of materials: “Here came box hives, log gums, bees in every style of hive or package that one had ever seen, hundreds and hundreds of them.”72 Furthermore, a “Great Camp just a few miles from New Orleans was established where bees, and queens and all those things needed to rebuild beekeeping was gathered together.” LeStourgeon finished his article with an incredulous tone: “Beekeepers who six months ago saw their businesses swept away, no means of employment left, even their homes gone, today have their apiaries ready for spring.”73

  In short, if Steven Stoll’s thesis about the network of factors between farmers and government can be reconsidered, the Great Flood of 1927 tested the industrial countryside and how it would respond to a natural disaster. Louisiana rose to the challenge in part, to summarize LeStourgeon, because there were four factors in place: Louisiana already had had a strong beekeepers association before the flood; Louisiana had a thriving entomology program at Tulane University and Louisiana State University; technological resources such as the American Railway Express and queen rearing speeded the process; and Louisiana had a labor force of people willing to help.

  Even before the Great Flood, the United States Department of Agriculture had set in place plans to establish a laboratory specializing in genetic testing of honey bees in Louisiana with the full endorsement of the southern states. The Beekeepers Item published a doctrine from the Texas State Beekeepers Association requesting that “if such a laboratory is to be established in the Gulf Coast region, it be located in Louisiana for the purpose of studying the genetics of the honey bee, the selection and breeding of queens, and the problems of bee production.”74 The rationale was that the Gulf Coast bee breeders have “peculiar phases and complexities that have never been scientifically worked out.”

  Harry Laidlaw Jr. moved to Louisiana immediately to raise queens for the state. By 1929, he began trying to figure out why artificial insemination was so difficult for queen bees. While working on his master’s degree, “Harry discovered the ‘valve fold,’ a tonguelike structure in the median oviduct of the queen that was preventing the proper placement of the semen-filled syringe during insemination,” explained Robert Page Jr.75 Once this crucial fold was discovered, queen rearers had more control of breeding.

  A beneficiary of both the scientific advances and the people left without equipment was Walter Kelley, who had moved to Louisiana and opened a bee package and bee supply company in 1924. By the
time Jes Dalton had visited him in 1928, Kelley had opened the bee supply factory. Cypress lumber made wonderful hives because cypress was less prone to water damage, and the warm weather benefited his bee package industry.

  Although federal legislation and science was affecting beekeeping in complex ways, honey marketers promoted the product by using images of children and other races suggesting a simpler time. The Sioux Bee Indian princess is a prime example of a successful campaign. In 1921, the Sioux Bee Honey Association developed in Iowa when five men—Edward Brown, Clarence Kautz, M.G. Engle, Charles Engle, and Noah Williamson—banded together with $500 in capital and three thousand pounds of honey. The Indian princess was chosen as the company icon to reflect the company’s location, Sioux Falls, Iowa. Many beekeepers have profited by belonging to this organization.

  However, the Indian princess could be construed as a direct extension of nineteenth-century marketing techniques that, in the words of scholar Jeffrey Steele, “fixed the Indian in the past.”76 And to extend Jeffrey’s Steele’s argument, the tendency with such an advertising campaign is to suggest that all Indians were considered the same. Sioux Indians were not known for their beekeeping skills; in fact, they were nomadic raiders. The Sioux bee honey princess was an effective campaign, but one that was effective because it promoted Indian women in a glamorized fashion.77

  The Cherokee, who maintained a strong agricultural history, were better situated to become beekeepers. In his 1920s study, anthropologist James Mooney had this to say about the Cherokee: “Bees are kept by many of the Cherokee, in addition to the wild bees which are hunted in the woods. Although they are said to have come originally from whites, the Cherokee have no tradition of a time when they did not know them; there seems, however, to be no folklore connected with them.”78 Similar to the Sioux Bee Indian princess, a popular honey label printed by bee companies “fixed” the black child in the past, to borrow Steele’s phrase. The ad featured a black child ready to eat honey on pancakes. The black child has one tooth missing, and the image reflects a time period when stereotypes about rural blacks were accepted.