Ellen Smith Tupper (April 9, 1822 – March 12, 1888) was an American writer, expert beekeeper and the first female editor of an entomological journal.

[2] In 1871, she and Annie Savery started the Italian Bee Company, based in Des Moines, Iowa, to import and sell Italian honey bees in the American midwest.

[3] She attended the North American Bee-Keepers Convention in Cleveland in 1871,[5] and in Indianapolis in 1872,[6] and was quoted as a national expert on apiary management the following year.

[8] Tupper lost two hundred hives in a fire in 1873, a major blow to her work.

[4][11] Ellen Smith married Allen Tupper, a lumberman and aspiring Baptist minister, in 1843.