Beehives, Booze and Suffragettes: The “Sad Case” of Ellen S. Tupper (1822–1888), the “Bee Woman” and “Iowa Queen Bee”

ELLEN S. TUPPER was a 19th century expert bee-keeper who was most active during and shortly after the end of the American Civil War. A vigorous writer and apiarist, primarily focused on business interests and opportunities, she became the first female editor of an entomological journal in 1869. Joining the mid-western suffragettes, who at this time were also strongly linked to the temperance societies, she was soon presented as a role model of a successful businesswoman the early feminist movement. Together with ANNIE NOWLIN SAVERY (1831-1891), a leading American suffragette of her time, she established the "Italian Bee Company". For a short period, ELLEN S. TUPPER successfully imported and distributed Italian queens and bees to an interested American audience, while she actively promoted bee keeping as a suitable endeavour for women. Her reports on successful fertilization of bee queens that were held in confinement sparked a lively and controversial discussion among entomologists not only in America but also in Europe. At the height of her career she became the first female lecturer in apiology and the first woman elected to serve as an officer in a national entomological society. At the same meeting more than 30 other suffragettes joined the "North American Beekeepers' Society". This was a symbolic and perhaps even defining moment of female activity in science during the 19th century. Her activities soon earned her nicknames such as "Iowa Queen Bee" or the "Bee Woman". However, financial difficulties put an end to most of her business endeavours. Her career as an apiarist and editor came to a disgraceful end when she was incarcerated for the forgery of notes presented at several banks, subsequently acquitted on the ground of insanity. The forgery trial though has overshadowed ELLEN S. TUPPER's legacy in the history of women in science: As a farmer's wife in one of the frontier towns of the Wild West, in a county, which on her first arrival did not even possess a printing press, she was able to start a successful and impressive career as an editress. With her work she and a few like-minded supporters practically single-handedly recruited more women for entomological societies than all other European and American societies and institutions in the 19th century together. For nearly two and a half decades she went on a stubborn and effective crusade to convince women to become bee-keepers.