Bees in America: How the Honey Bee Shaped a Nation

Chapter 1: Bees and New World Colonialism

19
Bees and New World Colonialism
Chapter 1 BEES AND NEW WORLD COLONIALISM If the Lord delights in us, then He will bring us into this land . . . a land which flows with milk and honey. —Numbers 14:8 European settlers often quoted this biblical phrase to justify their colonization efforts. As long as settlers had cattle and bees, they could be assured of the basic essentials—food, wax, medicine, candles, and clothing . So powerful was the Bible verse that even though cattle and honey bees did not exist in North America, colonizers envisioned the New World as having them in the immediate future. But each European country handled its land acquisition in different ways. Whereas French and Spanish explorers conducted formal negotiations with Native Americans for land rights in the New World, the English settlers merely appropriated land that appeared unused. Summing up the English mind-set that land should be cultivated or else it was wasted, George Peckham states, “I doo verily think that God did create lande, to that end that it shold by Culture and husbandrie, yeeld things necessary for mans lyfe.”1 Because English settlers did not recognize or acknowledge Native American agri- 20
Bees in America
cultural patterns already in place, they fundamentally changed the landscape by bringing cows, bees, apple trees, and even, inadvertently, mice.2 But the successful migration of bees, cattle, and the colonists themselves was not a foregone conclusion. In fact, the first attempts by English colonists to send bees to North America ended up in the Bermudas when a storm blew the Sea Venture off course in 1609.3 America could become a land of milk and honey, if bees and cows could survive the transatlantic journey and if the colonists themselves could survive the illnesses, difficult weather, and Native Americans. The first two English settlements—Jamestown and Plymouth—were not chosen wisely. Jamestown was settled in the middle of powerful Algonquian chief Powhatan’s domain. And the Mayflower, the ship carrying the Pilgrims, was blown off course from its initial destination of Virginia to the cold, rocky Massachusetts coast. So even though the English had been going to the colonies since 1609, neither place was suitable for bees until 1621. The reality of frontier America hardly lived up to the biblical promises of plenty assured by those back home, some of whom had never seen the New World. Colonists in both Jamestown and Plymouth died at an alarming rate from a number of different causes. At the end of Jamestown’s first year, 1607 to 1608, only 38 of the original 108 settlers were alive. “The winter of 1609 was the notorious starving time in Virginia,” Kupperman writes, “when the population dropped from 500 to sixty in six months.”4 Similarly, almost 50 percent of the Pilgrims died during their first year in Massachusetts. Leaders used the beehive metaphor to rally colonists’ spirits. Depression was not recognized as a sickness during the seventeenth century . But many Jamestown colonists, separated from England and suffering from malnutrition, were sick and indifferent. Furthermore, the Jamestown colony was made up only of men. Rather than being treated with sympathy, they were labeled as lazy or “idle drones.” Thinking that the cause was primarily a lack of leadership, Robert Gray wrote in 1609, “The Magistrate must correct with al sharpenesse of discipline those unthriftie and unprofitable Drones, which live idly.”5 Lord de la Warr, sent to Virginia in 1610 to provide leadership, managed to excuse himself from being labeled a “drone” in his summation of scurvy, but he admits that “which though in others it be a sicknesse of slothfulnesse, 21
Bees and New World Colonialism
yet was in me an effect of weaknesse, which never left me, till I was upon the point to leave the world.”6 Oblivious to titles and ranks, Captain John Smith often used the term drone to refer to all colonists, correctly realizing that men needed structure and activity if they were going to survive. Smith forced the early colonists to revise their new roles in the New World. Immediate goals helped dispel the gloom and low morale that resulted from lack of good, clear leadership and disappointment with the reality of frontier life. Believing that regular activities would keep his men healthy, Smith campaigned for the men to build houses and forts, clear land, take care of the sick, and garden. By 1621, the...