Bees in America: How the Honey Bee Shaped a Nation [Hardcover]

Tammy Horn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 11, 2005

" Honey bees--and the qualities associated with them--have quietly influenced American values for four centuries. During every major period in the country's history, bees and beekeepers have represented order and stability in a country without a national religion, political party, or language. Bees in America is an enlightening cultural history of bees and beekeeping in the United States. Tammy Horn, herself a beekeeper, offers a varied social and technological history from the colonial period, when the British first introduced bees to the New World, to the present, when bees are being used by the American military to detect bombs. Early European colonists introduced bees to the New World as part of an agrarian philosophy borrowed from the Greeks and Romans. Their legacy was intended to provide sustenance and a livelihood for immigrants in search of new opportunities, and the honey bee became a sign of colonization, alerting Native Americans to settlers' westward advance. Colonists imagined their own endeavors in terms of bees' hallmark traits of industry and thrift and the image of the busy and growing hive soon shaped American ideals about work, family, community, and leisure. The image of the hive continued to be popular in the eighteenth century, symbolizing a society working together for the common good and reflecting Enlightenment principles of order and balance. Less than a half-century later, Mormons settling Utah (where the bee is the state symbol) adopted the hive as a metaphor for their protected and close-knit culture that revolved around industry, harmony, frugality, and cooperation. In the Great Depression, beehives provided food and bartering goods for many farm families, and during World War II, the War Food Administration urged beekeepers to conserve every ounce of beeswax their bees provided, as more than a million pounds a year were being used in the manufacture of war products ranging from waterproofing products to tape. The bee remains a bellwether in modern America. Like so many other insects and animals, the bee population was decimated by the growing use of chemical pesticides in the 1970s. Nevertheless, beekeeping has experienced a revival as natural products containing honey and beeswax have increased the visibility and desirability of the honey bee. Still a powerful representation of success, the industrious honey bee continues to serve both as a source of income and a metaphor for globalization as America emerges as a leader in the Information Age.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The honeybee isn't native to the U.S., but it's hard to imagine the country without it. Like cattle, another imported species, the honeybee helped transform what European settlers saw as a vast wilderness into a land of milk and honey. First-time author Horn, who learned beekeeping from her grandfather, provides a wealth of worthy material about bees in America, from the use of the hive metaphor to justify colonization in the 1500s and 1600s, to bees' role in pollinating the prairies and orchards that we now take for granted. She discusses the attitudes of native peoples toward the insects; the beekeeping practices of African Americans, women and new immigrants; advances in beekeeping technology; the role of honey and beeswax in the U.S. economy; and the use of bee imagery in the arts. While Horn's affection for her subject is always evident, her efforts to tie beekeeping to every aspect of American life are sometimes strained—as when she writes that "because major social rifts [in the 1950s] were threatening to tear apart the 'good life,' this country's arts environment used the honey bee to negotiate difficult power struggles between races, between spouses, between political parties, between generations, [and] between legal rulings." Horn's thesis is better served without such overreaching and unconvincing claims. B&w illus. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

Historian and beekeeper Horn examines the arrival of the honey bee into North America and traces the influence of this valuable insect. When European colonists first settled on the East Coast, bee colonies in traditional straw skeps were considered to be essential equipment. Bees, through swarming, settled the country in advance of white settlers, and the Indians began to refer to them as the white man's fly. Beekeeping in America provided two essentials for colonists--wax for candles and honey for sweetening. Bee culture, beekeepers, and the moral values presented by the life of the bees in the hive all had major influence on how societies viewed themselves. The parallel story of the development of modern beekeeping and the effects of war, pesticides, and urbanization on the keeping of bees serves as a metaphor for the changes in human society. This excellent example of the effects agriculture has on history will be a welcome addition to the farming collection. Nancy Bent
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky (March 11, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 081312350X
• ISBN-13: 978-0813123509
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,504,434 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bees for Americans, and Americans for Bees, February 22, 2005

By 

R. Hardy "Rob Hardy" (Columbus, Mississippi USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Bees in America: How the Honey Bee Shaped a Nation (Hardcover)

America owes its liberty to the honeybee. That was the opinion of no other than George Washington. The story, recounted in _Bees in America: How the Honey Bee Shaped a Nation_ (University Press of Kentucky) by Tammy Horn, is only one aspect of bee folklore, science, and history recounted in a delightful book full of anecdotes and facts which will spark admiration for this sometimes overlooked part of our nation's agriculture. The way the bees won the American Revolution is that a Quaker girl was given a message to deliver to Washington concerning an imminent attack by Cornwallis. The resourceful messenger realized she was being pursued by Redcoats, but as she galloped, she was able to overturn beehives in her path. The bees went after the Redcoats, Washington got his intelligence, and, well, the rest is history. Americans have always loved the honey bee not only for its delicious product (and the wax), but also because the hive is a symbol for a perfectly run society. Paradoxically, it is not a good symbol for our society. We are loosely organized, everyone joins in the pursuit of happiness in an idiosyncratic way, and we have no official religion, political party, or even family structure. Bees are little robots, and their regimented roles are fine for them, but not an example for our human ways. Their industry, however, we like; it is an admirable trait to be "as busy as a bee." We like that the bees make a home for themselves, and that they work hard to ensure that the home will be able to last the winter; they are thrifty, efficient animals. Americans are quite likely to think that if someone is poor, he ought to take a lesson from the bee.

Bees were transported, with great difficulty and much bee mortality, to the earliest of American colonies. They took to the new land as readily as the human immigrants, going wild and providing sustenance and employment for bee hunters (as opposed to beekeepers). Many Indians learned to value bees and their products, but one settler wrote that the Osage Indians in 1836 had held a day of mourning because they had found a swarm of bees; it was a sign that the Osage ways were doomed. Railroad men were horrified at the initial idea of hauling bees, and the man who convinced them to do so in 1907 had to ride along with his hives. _The American Bee Journal_ editorialized in 1903 that automobiles had a distinct advantage compared to horse-drawn wagons for carrying bees, because autos "...will never get frightened, run away and break things by being attacked by cross bees." The benefits to agriculture from bee pollination are so great that in California, especially with its almond orchards, beekeepers make more money by renting out bees for pollination than they do selling honey or wax.

Horn examines such topics as the rehabilitation of returning shell-shocked veterans by beekeeping, the tall tales that surround bees and bee hunters, the use of the bee example by sex educators (who used birds as well), the military use of bees to detect chemicals and explosives, bees in American literature and (disastrously) in movies like _The Swarm_, and the use of electronic tags on hives to deter bee rustlers. In an up-to-date discussion of current bee problems, ranging from bacteria to mites, beetles, El Ninõ, and cheap imported honey, Horn (a beekeeper herself) reflects that the American beekeeping community is decreasing and bees are dying in record numbers. There are scientists working on solutions, like breeding hives of bees that will take punctilious and timely care to keep infections low before they can spread; there may also be genetic studies that will lead to more resistant bees. Horn winds up with the classic reflection that by trying to control bees all these centuries, we have learned many valuable lessons, but none so important as that bees (and nature in general) will never be completely controlled.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Bees In America: How The Honey Bee Shaped A Nation, July 19, 2005

By 

T. F. Downham II, MD - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Bees in America: How the Honey Bee Shaped a Nation (Hardcover)

Excellent review of history of bees-beekeeping in America from a historical, cultural and global perspective. It is not a technically laden text. This would be a great book for extra credit reading - discussion for an American History college/university course. It is highly recommended for both general and scholarly readers.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Great Read !, June 11, 2005

By 

Andrew Lubin "author of Charlie Battery; A Ma... (Bucks County, Pa) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Bees in America: How the Honey Bee Shaped a Nation (Hardcover)

This is a very enjoyable book. The author has taken a relatively unknown topic ( unless you're a beekeeper ), and written a book that is simply very interesting. She's blended history, science, economics, and even religion into a book that is easy to read. How did that jar of honey get into your shop ?
Why are people as diverse as rocker Tom Petty, disco diva Gloria Gaynor, and actor Peter Fonda included in a book about bees ? Not only did I learn why, but I liked the way the author took us on a journey thru bee-land.