Bees in America

by Tammy Horn

  Having just entered puberty, the sixteen-year-old protagonist Janie grapples with her newly awakening sexuality: “While lying under a pear tree, she questions the complex roles of Nature taking place in the tree, the How? Why?” “Soaking in the alto chant of the visiting bees,” she has a flash of insight. “The inaudible voice of it all came to her. She saw a dust bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister calyxes arch to meet the love embrace and the ecstatic shiver of the tree from root to tiniest branch creaming in every blossom and frothing with delight. So this was marriage!”108

  Unfortunately, Janie does not experience these sensual qualities of marriage until she meets her third lover. Her first husband, Logan Killicks, is little more than a “vision … desecrating the pear tree.” When Killicks decides to put a yoke on Janie and make her plow his field, she realizes the harsh inequities that can exist in a marriage. Janie promptly runs away with the man who would become her second husband, Joe Starks. Joe offers a new life, but dashes Janie’s hope that he will become a “bee for her bloom.” Joe is concerned about money and class status, not romance. Both of these husbands leave Janie wanting more from a relationship.

  Only sweet-talking, long-legged Tea Cake Woods manages to tease out Janie’s sexuality after years of a loveless marriage: “He could be a bee to a blossom—a pear tree blossom in the spring.” Tea Cake, a younger man, entices the thirtysomething Janie to leave the all-black town of Eatonville and be his lover. When she returns to Eatonville, she is as regal as a queen.

  Black writers found Hurston’s book offensive because it did not do enough to promote social causes and fight racism. According to Richard Wright, Hurston’s “characters eat and laugh and cry and work and kill; they swing like the pendulum eternally in that safe and narrow orbit America likes to see the Negro live: between laughter and tears.”109 However, this novel links black women with positive natural images in the American South. The power and sexuality that had always been associated with queen bees finds a creative outlet in a black female character.

  Meanwhile, about the time that Hurston was finishing her book, Harry Laidlaw Jr. was busy unlocking an easy way to inseminate queen bees. While working on his doctoral dissertation, he made the process of artificial insemination easier by anesthetization of the queen. During his work on the queen’s genitalia, he discovered the valve fold, a previously unknown part of the queen’s anatomy, which acted as a “gate” to semen, and often, if the gate did not open, certain experiments with bee genetics would fail. Thus, Laidlaw redesigned the instruments used access the queen’s sperm-atheca. Finally, the semen syringe was reconfigured to prevent backflow during the process.110

  Then Otto Mackensen, whom honey bee geneticist John Harbo described as a “master with a metal lathe,” improved the insemination devices to the point that some are still being used today. These devices would help inseminators bypass the valve fold, allowing semen to be injected into the oviduct. These practical developments in insemination during the 1930s and 1940s paved the way for the more complicated genetics work that would develop later in the century.

  In the meantime, AFB continued to wreak havoc on bee colonies in the United States. It arrived on the Hawaiian Islands in the 1930s and decimated the declining industry on the Islands. The downhill trend in Hawaii had begun in the 1920s, when prices for honey dropped to pre-World War I prices. But mismanagement on the ranches left the bees in weakened conditions and thus susceptible to the disease. Fortunately, the two AFB-free islands—Lanai and Niihau—had been notified beforehand that AFB had been brought to the other islands and taken proper precautions. These islands remained safe from foulbrood.

  A number of research institutions, most significantly Iowa Agriculture, had been devoting time and energy to finding a cure for AFB. O. W. Park had been committed to developing foulbrood-resistant bees until a sulfa drug was invented in the 1940s. Once this sulfa drug was patented, most experiments with disease-resistant bees subsided.111

  Efforts to contain foulbrood were still being funded at state levels. The bee inspector generally followed the cattle inspector, which could be unpleasant for both farmer and inspector alike. Eugene Shoemaker was hired in the 1930s to inspect hives, to require that bees be kept in moveable hives, and to destroy any hives with AFB. Shoemaker put it mildly when he states that among any group of farmers, there were “those with hot tempers who spoke without too much thought.”112

  John Bruce was more specific about his adventures as an inspector: he got in fights with beekeepers, federal ration boards, and, of course, the bees themselves. Bruce said, describing one old man, “He held a double-barreled shotgun with both barrels cocked. He was so close that the barrels almost touched me as he held it aimed at my middle.” Bruce was not an easily intimidated man. He also had to confront a German immigrant who had AFB in his hives with the following warning: “Mister, the state doesn’t pay me to fight, nor does it condone it, but if you want to go out on the public road, off of your property, I’ll take off my star and put it in the car.”113

  As if to counter the state inspector stories, Mary Louise Coleman offers a conventional feminine narrative in Bees in the Garden and Honey in the Larder (1939). When talking about the bee suit, Coleman cautions, “One would never take a prize in a beauty contest clad in that suit of heavy drill.” Coleman reminds beekeepers that bees do not need the same amount of affection as other animals need: “It was a severe jolt to my ego that my precious bees never showed any recognition of my personality nor any acknowledgment of my being their keeper.” In Coleman’s view, bees helped her achieve the three Cs of cooking, cosmetics, and care of the house. In her book, the 1930s woman is one who has a foot in both camps of domesticity and agriculture. Coleman even extends hope that women may be able to find the cure to AFB: “Women have made their influence felt in beautifying the countryside throughout our land. May we all join forces to exterminate this American foulbrood.”114

  The radio provided relief through the dust bowls, droughts, bankruptcies, and poverty. The airwaves were free, and in the early days, radio stations offered time slots to a great diversity of music shows. Cultural historian George Douglas places the importance of the radio in context: “The Depression was the making of the radio in more ways than one. Smaller incomes, recession, deflation, meant that more Americans had to watch their pocketbooks and spend more evenings at home before the fireplace. They would sit before the radio…. these little boxes became not only household utilities … they become a solace and comfort in the nation’s darkest hour.”115 The radio was a powerful marketing tool, even more so than were the movies. Gospel music, which appealed to both black and white listeners, was an especially profitable product aired on radio. One of the most powerful cases in point is the Carter Family’s Honey in the Rock, issued in 1937. This collection, which harkened back to the biblical promises of salvation in the midst of hard times, was so popular that it was reissued before the decade ended.

  5.13. San Antonio Honey Peddler, 1939. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, photo by Russell Lee. The full honey wagon, the availability of tin, the new hat—all these details suggest that World War II has not started yet. Plus, there is a nice contrast between the honey man, in his corduroy pants, boots, and leather jacket, and the elegant woman pictured in the newspaper.

  5.14. Busy Bee Home Social Club, Louisiana, 1940. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, photo by Marion Post. Nurse Marguerite White making plans for the next meeting with Rosie Patterson, assistant secretary of the Busy Bee Homeworkers Club on La Delta Project, Thomaston. A Red Cross pin pulls White’s collar together.

  Too, there’s the sublime moment in George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess. “Here Comes De Honey Man” is a short vignette, but in this tragic work about love on the wrong side of town, the interlude acts as the “calm before the storm.” The honey man was a conventional character in many towns and markets. In San Antonio, for example, Farm Security Administration photographer Russell Lee
captured the scene of a neatly dressed man reading the paper, his honey stacked in orderly rows. Under the direction of Roy Stryker, the FSA photographers educated people about poverty and documented the changing agrarian lifestyles.

  As has been the case since colonial times, women formed their social bees, especially during the darker days of the 1930s. The Busy Bees Social Club in Mitchell, Nebraska, was formed in the 1920s, but they stayed together until 1988. According to scholar Carolyn O’Bagy Davis, “their minutes reveal how these clubs functioned as a vehicle for rural women to serve the local charitable needs, as well as respond to national events, such as the Depression and World War II.”116 The Busy Bees were quilters, but its real star was a woman named Fannie Schumacher, who not only organized the group, but kept the records and passed them on to her granddaughter, Arlene Buffington. These records give us a powerful insight into how the “bee” responded with optimism, a collective social conscious, and creativity to the nation as it defined itself in the twentieth century. The rules: everyone took a turn at hosting the club, even those who lived in sod houses. The hostess had to serve a lunch consisting of “two eats, drink, and pickles.”117 The Busy Bees even had a dress code: “Any member who comes dressed in anything but their house dress will be fined.”118

  5.15. Busy Bee Home Social Club, Louisiana, 1940. Courtesy of the Library of Congress, photo by Marion Post. Nurse White writes down an agenda, smiling in anticipation of another meeting.

  The Busy Bees charged a dollar for dues, but that amount was reduced to fifty cents in 1938, and women could take the entire year to pay. Davis is also careful to mention that no record exists that a woman was dropped for failure to pay the dues. In 1932, the group had a Hard Time Party, where they agreed to work on a quilt that would be given to a family in need.

  Farm Security Administration photographer Marion Post recorded the intimacy and camaraderie that existed among the Busy Bee Home Social Club in Thomaston, Louisiana. Nurse Marguerite White just happened to be making plans with Rosie Patterson, assistant secretary, when Post strolled by, taking pictures for Roy Stryker’s Louisiana Delta project. Post’s photographs illustrate the social cohesion that formed in the midst of crisis.

  The 1940s: World War II

  By the 1940s, Americans had emerged from the Great Depression and were producing as much honey and beeswax as possible for the war effort. World War II provided a major catalyst in large-scale honey and beeswax production. As in previous wars, military forces needed beeswax to waterproof canvas tents, belts, and metal casings of bullets. But beeswax made life more comfortable in the service in little ways as well. Writer Mary Kay Franklin explains: “Beeswax was used in adhesive tape. It was used as waterproofing and protective coating for shells, belts, coils and machinery, especially in warm climates where grease would run off. Beeswax did not mildew and was preferred over paraffin for waterproofing canvas. Large quantities were used in work plants for waxing cables and pulleys. Soldiers and sailors needed it for their dental work. Beeswax in skin protective sun creams and camouflage makeup for commandos was essential to the war effort. Airplanes waxed smooth with beeswax saved thousands of gallons of valuable fuel.”119

  In a 1942 article written by G. H. Cale, then editor of American Bee Journal, he quoted an official in the Office of Price Administration who calculated that beeswax had approximately 350 uses in the army and navy, and that there were 150 uses in the pharmaceutical fields.120 In the article, Cale also explains that the normal imports from Brazil were suspended because the supply ships had been sunk. Thus, given that there would be beeswax shortages, Cale gave hints to beekeepers so they could increase their beeswax production. One simple trick was to remove a frame from a super, thus forcing the bees to build bigger, fatter combs on the frames. He also exhorted beekeepers to save every bit of beeswax, for “producing more beeswax—saving more beeswax—is a patriotic effort. It is part of the campaign for VICTORY. And more than that, it is your duty.”121

  The winter of 1942–1943 had been very cold, and because many beekeepers had taken so much honey the previous autumn, their bees died. So beeswax was even more valued in 1943. According to a Newsweek article, “War Food Administration urged beekeepers to conserve every ounce of beeswax, pointing out that more than a million pounds were needed this year for use in war products.”122

  Beekeepers served in the military in massive numbers and in a variety of ways. The future editor of Bee Culture, Larry Goltz, kept bee colonies until he was activated. When he came back, the colonies were gone!123 Russell Mitchell, who carried on his father’s beekeeping business, served in the navy. William Rowley Jones came home from his service with the 507th Engineering Battalion, stationed in Alaska and Okinawa, to run his own bee business in Utah.124 One of the Hispanic beekeepers, Felipe Garcia, served not only in World War II, but then again in the Korean War.125

  The air force contained quite a few men important to the beekeeping industry. Eugene Killion was managing more than a thousand hives when he enlisted in the air force in 1941.126 Floyd Moeller served as a navigator in the Army Air Corps, finally leaving as a lieutenant colonel before he returned to the bees.127 Moeller later taught apiculture at the University of Wisconsin and was a researcher for the USDA. Harry Rodenberg of Wolf Point, Montana, served as a bombardier, achieving the rank of lieutenant before heading back to his commercial beekeeping business. Two Miller brothers—Fremont and Larry—volunteered for the air force and the army, respectively. Fremont was shot down and spent three days in the English Channel before being rescued. Keeping bees probably didn’t seem like such a bad profession after that experience.

  Norman Sharp decided to use his enlistment as a form of professional development. While serving three years in the air force, Norman decided to hive the Giant Bee in India. In order to place Sharp’s experiment in proper perspective, we must read Wyatt Mangum, who wrote in the American Bee Journal as recently as 2004: “Imagine a honey bee much larger than ours, whose worker bees look like our queen bees…. Imagine a colony of these bees living on one large comb, about half as big as a door, built in the open air and suspended from a large tree branch. In addition to foraging during the day, imagine these bees foraging at night. And now, to really strain the imagination, imagine these bees so defensive that they make Africanized bees, the so-called ‘killer bees’ seem mild by comparison.”128 The result at Sharp’s air force base is easy to imagine: “The bees scattered all over and drove everyone out of the hangar,” wrote Moffett, censoring the soldiers’ language that must have been used in such an experiment. Moffett concludes: “One hanger had five swarms.”129 Even Harry Laidlaw served as an army entomologist, and one soldier refused to leave the bees behind. The First Battalion proudly welcomed all bees to its “Bee Platoon.” There was even a water dish.

  5.16. World War II bees. Courtesy of Bee Culture. This soldier shows off the headquarters for some of the war’s busiest recruits. The military continues to use bees to gather information about chemical weapons.

  Some beekeepers chose to stay stateside. According to Franklin, “In 1942, the Selective Service System included beekeeping as an essential agricultural activity allowing local draft boards to grant deferments to individuals whom they felt contributed more to the effort through their beekeeping activities.”130 The Honey Industry Council persuaded the federal government to exempt wood, sugar, and metal from rationing for beekeepers because beekeepers supplied beeswax and honey to the government. Sugar was needed to feed the bees, and lumber was needed to make hives. Anything was done to ensure a steady supply of beeswax. In fact, at the government’s request, Leon Winegar quit his job working at a Detroit auto plant in order to buy more colonies to produce beeswax.131 In his 1941 catalog, Walter Kelley advised his customers of the following: “Every beekeeper is going to be called on to produce a maximum crop. To do this, you should melt up those old drone combs and replace every old queen…. Give each colony a weekly inspection … and above all give them plenty of room and
practice swarm prevention.”132 And Kelley was not finished. He attached a string to the catalog and gave his customers strict instructions to hang the catalog on a nail by the wall because a new one would not be published during the war.

  Sugar was rationed during World War II, so a beekeeper was an important person in many communities. Serving as a conscientious objector was beekeeper Oliver Petty, who spent summers smoke jumping in Missoula, Montana, and hiving swarms near Glenora, California.133 Bonnie Sparks, a volunteer at the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers museum, could recall her mother sending her down to get honey from the local beekeeper during the war. “We would stand from a-way back,” she said, eyes twinkling, “and watch the bees buzzing around him. We’d eat that honey right off the plate. Comb too.”134

  Perhaps because beekeeping was so important during the war, beekeeping magazines were not suspended as they had been during the Civil War. In fact, the normally frugal Walter Kelley took over publishing the regional The Beekeepers Item in 1944. Perhaps because of publishing restrictions, he wrote that the magazine, now to be called Modern Beekeeping, “combined with Beekeeper’s Review, Domestic Beekeeper, Dixie Beekeeper, Southern Bees, Western Honey Bee, and Bees and Honey and superseding The Beekeepers Item.”

  But the War Procurement Board, which rationed sugar and lumber, could be a formidable foe. Occasionally, a War Procurement Board member would disagree with a bee inspector, who had even more responsibility to ensure hives stayed healthy during the war. In one story, inspector John Bruce had given a beekeeper permission to buy sugar to feed his bees, but the War Procurement Board secretary vetoed the beekeeper’s request. As a result, the bees were starving.

  The War Board woman was not sympathetic to the beekeeper, asking him: “Who do you think you are, trying to get sugar for his bees when I can’t get sugar for my coffee?”135 When the beekeeper returned with John Bruce in tow, the woman relented under threat of a federal lawsuit. The beekeeper finally was able to feed his bees, but most of his profit that year literally died with his bees.