With spring flowers popping up everywhere, and the use of honey in several recipes I’ve recently tried, I found myself thinking about honeybees.
Did you know honeybees are not native to North America? I didn’t.
European settlers brought them here in the 1620s. Prior to their arrival, other bees and insects, as well as some birds, bats, and animals, pollinated the local plants.
By 1800, honeybees flourished in Massachusetts and other eastern states. But by 1843, they still hadn’t made it west of Kansas. It took them well over 200 years to finally reach the West Coast.
Native Americans called honeybees “the white man’s flies” because soon after seeing them, European settlers would arrive.
“John Eliot, who in 1661 translated the New Testament into a Native American language and in 1663 completed the entire Bible, both of which he published in Massachusetts, found there was no Native American word for wax or honey and claimed that the Indians used the term ‘White Man’s fly’.”1
According to Brenda Kellar, who wrote, Honey Bees Across America, for the Los Angeles County Beekeepers Association’s website, “The creation of the United States can be found in the footsteps of the honey bee (Apis mellifera L.).” 1
She said honeybees, like humans, were slow to cross from the east to west coast because of disease, enemies, and the environment, both climate and landscape. They succeeded by helping each other. The honeybees provided settlers with honey and wax and pollinated the vegetation they planted. The settlers provided the honeybees with shelter, planted vegetation they liked, and helped them travel over natural boundaries, like mountains and areas that were treeless.
In other words, settlers and honeybees worked in tandem to settle our country. Who knew?
1https://www.losangelescountybeekeepers.com/history-of-honey-bees-in-ameri/
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