Lovely book that came into my hands at just the right moment- I could not put it down, the past few days. Thoughtful memoir by a novice beekeeper. After accompanying a friend on visits to tend hives he keeps around a city, the author decided she would like to keep one herself. Friends pitched in to buy her a colony as a surprise gift, and feeling uprepared she started reading up on the history of beekeeping. So the book is part memoir, part information about bees, honey production, and how knowledge of them was gained slowly over the past centuries. It’s all seamless woven together with musings on the nature of relationships, between friends, between humans and wild things (I thought of falconry), and touching a bit on the influences mankind is having on the Earth’s ecosystems. There’s also a love story in here- an unexpected one, that she wasn’t really looking for when asked to meet a friend of a friend she thought was a beekeeper (he wasn’t, but they found a connection). There’s visits to natural history museums, dinner parties with friends, quite moments sitting in the back garden watching the bees travel to and fro, wondering where they go. Hoping they’ll stay in her hive, find it a suitable home. The final harvest of golden honey and the friends she shares it with. This wasn’t a deep dive into all things beekeeping, it’s more a personal account of how the first year keeping bees touched this woman’s life. I liked the way she shared her thoughts, her words resonated with me and I want to turn back to them again.
Borrowed from the public library.
