Honey - In The United States

Honey - In The United States


In the United States, the honeybees spread very rapidly. The American Indians looked upon them as the harbingers of misfortune. It seems as though they were right, and the prophecy was well-grounded. Longfellow referred to it in "Hiawatha":

"Wheresoe'er they move, before them Swarms the stinging fly, the Ahmo, Swarms the Bee, the honey-maker; Wheresoe'er they tread, beneath them Springs a flower unknown among us, Springs the White Man's Foot in blossom."

The Indians called the bees the "white man's flies" or "English flies." They were the heralds of American civilization, and when the Indians perceived a swarm in the forest they shouted: "The pale-faced intruders are coming, they will soon be here!" The bees swiftly covered the West. Washington Irving remarked that in the proportion that the bees advanced, the Indians and the buffaloes retired. (Tour in the Prairies.)

The bees spread in swarms from the Atlantic Coast toward the Pacific. The old settlers recorded the time when bees first crossed the Mississippi. The West was a real paradise for these nectar-seeking insects, another veritable land of promise. William Cullen Bryant vividly described the seething activity of the bee in the new country, where she -

"Fills the Savannahs with her murmurings, And hides her sweets, as in the golden age, Within the hollow oak. I listen long To her domestic hum, and think I hear The sound of that advancing multitude, Which soon shall fill the deserts."

The first honeybees were taken to California in March, 1853. They flourished in the Santa Clara valley, sending off as many as three swarms during the first season. How highly valued they were is best proven by the fact that during the settlement of the estate of a land owner, named Shelton, who had been killed, two colonies of bees were sold at auction for $105 and $110, respectively. It is recorded that four swarms were imported to California from the East Coast in 1859. The hives were placed in the rear of covered wagons. The pioneers occasionally stopped to allow the bees to hover about the flower-pastures within their reach, until darkness, when the hives were again closed.

The West, especially California, as described by Muir, was one sweet bee garden, from the snowy Sierras to the ocean, where the "bee-flowers" bloomed in lavish abundance. Plows and sheep made a sad havoc of these glorious pastures, destroying like wild-fire tens of thousands of flowery acres, and banishing many species of the best honey plants, for which loss cultivation so far has given no adequate compensation. The rich primeval soil of the United States was covered with thick forests, profuse vegetation and wild flowers. The settlers, however, lumbered the forests, slaughtered wild animals, tilled the soil, destroyed the surface moisture and created droughts by offsetting the equilibrium of Nature's forces.

They worked the land for all it was worth and planted, instead of soil-building, soil-depleting crops. The recent formation of the Western, so-called dust-bowl, seems to be a "vendetta" of the bees.

The bees preferred the woods to comfortable hives. Forests provided them with shelter, food and good protection against the elements, the cold of winter and the heat of summer; against rains and storms and, besides, kept their treasures concealed. They made a nest in any suitable place. Muir told how a friend of his, hunting in the San Joaquin valley, sat down on a coon-trap to rest, but soon was surrounded by an angry crowd of bees. He discovered that he had been sitting upon their hive which contained over two hundred pounds of honey.

Contemporary newspapers related how bees also made their nests in abandoned houses. When the old Hawes homestead in Yarmouth, Mass., which had sheltered many generations of Cape Cod people, was doomed to be torn down, the workmen could not approach the ruins because the bees resented their intrusion and the demolishing had to be postponed until cold weather set in. The walls of the building were found to be solidly packed with honeycombs and hundreds of pounds of honey were removed.

Bees have always suffered from drought. During the famine of the dry year 1877, it is said that the fate of the bees was the saddest of all. In Los Angeles and San Diego counties, one-half to three-fourths of the bees perished from sheer starvation. Not less than eighteen thousand colonies were lost in these two counties alone, and in others the loss was equally as great. The latest disastrous droughts and floods in the United States played havoc among the bees.

Next to successive droughts and floods there is a new danger brought on by civilization, which lurks behind apiculture, namely, the indiscriminate use of poisonous dust and liquid sprays which commercial airplanes broadcast to protect the orchards and other plantations from injurious insects. This practice is daily increasing in the West and in some Eastern States. In one county of California alone there were seventeen pilots licensed in 1936 to engage in pest control.

The arsenical sprays drift to large areas, partly spread by the propellers of the airplanes, partly by the velocity of air currents. The destructive poisons often drift three to five miles from the places over which they are applied. This is dangerous not only to the bees but also to livestock and to public health. If the poison does not kill older bees, the tainted pollen which they carry into the hives will destroy the brood. This high-pressure application of sprays and dusters (3000 to 5000 pounds at a time) is a dangerous practice. The benefits which are derived from this procedure may be outweighed by the loss of the pollinating services of bees, besides a great decrease in honey production. It is note-worthy that so far not a single instance has been found of any of the arsenic getting into the honey.

Among the Southern States, Texas was another "land flowing with milk and honey." To quote J. Taylor Allen (Early Pioneer Days of Texas), "Honey Grove (Texas) derived its name from the immense number of bee trees of richest honey; deposited in every hollow tree, and sometimes in the tangled down weeds and grass. David Crockett and my father W. B. Allen and his pioneer comrades found here honey in abundance in the early days of Texas. Oh, what happy, indescribable times we would have if we could find such country again, but gone forever. . . . Honey Grove —let the name perpetuate the meaning that its name implies; a grove where industry, economy, enterprise and perseverance shall be perpetuated. It is said that Davy Crockett and his men, those illustrious Texan heroes, camped here a week on their way to that world-famed Alamo, and fed on the honey that gave them the joy of Service and Zeal for their country's cause. . . . I cannot refrain from paying tribute to the industrious bees. How diligently they gather and economically store during the season of labor that they may have plenty in the storehouses in the winter. What a lesson to us the bees give, teaching us the need for industry, thrift and economy, using our God-given talent while it is day and laying in store for the day when our work is done. . . . Nor shall I forget the nectar of the gods, the honey furnished us by the industrious honey bee, the most wonderful insect in God's creation, flitting from flower to flower, extracting here a little and there a little and gathering the sweetest of all sweets. If there is anything I like better than honey it is . . . more honey."

During the Civil War, soldiers carried off beehives. (Plate VI.)