A Simple Life, Summer, 2011
The Native Americans called them “white man’s flies,” yet the humble honeybee in early America became a symbol of hard work. Settlers valued honey for its sweetness and used hive wax for candles, tanning hides, making furniture, and sewing. I’ve long been fascinated with honeybees and spent several years as a hobbyist beekeeper in Vermont and Oregon. This article follows the introduction of honeybees in the New World in the 1600s and their two-century migration from the Atlantic to the Pacific.