Honeybee: Lessons From An Accidental Beekeeper (2009) - Plot & Excerpts
Nice. Nice, in that homey American way that I can't possibly say an ill word against, yet somehow makes me grit my teeth against its sticky sweetness. This is probably due to the fact that if I wrote a book on everything I learned about beekeeping, that it would probably sound a lot like this, but there's a certain greeting cardness about it that just gits me like a stinger I can't remove. I wish I knew why. One element that I can identify is the (admittedly) legitimate assertion that the various qualities that go into a vendage of wine--soil, climate, weather conditions, varieties & species, and so on--give honeys the same potential for high-end marketing. Fine, there will always be wine snobs, so why not add honey snobbery to the pot? It is decided. After reading Pollack's Third Culture Kids, Pollan's Botany of Desire, Vonnegut's Man Without a Country, and Marchese's Honeybee in quick succession, i am determined to create a refuge for l'abeille sauvage, with all the madly flowering fruits of the hills & hedgerows that i can cultivate for their pleasure and mine. I picked this up because I like memoirs about people doing interesting things, but it wasn't quite what I expected. Marchese did frame the book in terms of her own beginning beekeeping, but it was much more focused on the lessons. I learned about bees, bee parasites, the basics of beekeeping, honey, apitherapy (using honey as medicine), and more. Interesting, and I was definitely inspired to try a wider variety of honeys, and to look into apitherapy some more.
What do You think about Honeybee: Lessons From An Accidental Beekeeper (2009)?
Great quick read that is kind of a combination narrative/memoir and how-to with beekeeping.
—amysb
