I loved this book because it brought me back
to the time I started beekeeping on the roof of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Like Jukes, I was enthralled, enchanted, and curious. And 100 percent totally
freaked out. Could I keep these creatures alive? What if they swarmed to a
nearby office building or restaurant?
Jukes does her
homework before being gifted a colony of honey bees. Through many trips to
the library, she shares the ancient history, weird science, and mythological
admiration humankind has always had for Beekind. Jukes is going through a
difficult time in her life when she gets her bees, and her new hive ends up
helping her find purpose and recenter herself.
I love how her memoir delves into the
intelligence and wonder of bees yet also respects their wildness and how, as
beekeepers, we need to support the honey bees’ natural instincts rather than
force them to serve our will. She shows how psychically soothing bees can be.
'This book has found a special place in my heart. It's as strange, beautiful and unexpected, as precise and exquisite in its movings, as bees in a hive. I loved it' Helen Macdonald, author of H IS FOR HAWK 'Everyone should own A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings, which moved and delighted me more than a book about insects had any right to ... Jukes is a gloriously gifted writer and her book ought to become a key text of this bright moment in our history of nature writing' Alex Preston, Observer 'Finely written and insightful' Melissa Harrison, Guardian
This book blew my mind. Lars Chittka
is a bee researcher who zigs while everyone else zags. While many entomologists
study the “hivemind,” Chittka set out to prove that bees have individual smarts.
Chittka
and his colleagues trained bumble bees to roll a small ball into a hole
for a sugary reward, leading to a viral video of “bees playing soccer.” His experiments show that bees can recognize faces, they can count, use simple
tools, and display emotions.
This leads Chittka to conclude that
bees think and feel; they have a consciousness that puts them on par with dogs
and cats as sentient creatures. This is something I’ve always believed
intuitively by watching my honey bees; now I have scientific proof that my bees
are indeed wicked smart.
A rich and surprising exploration of the intelligence of bees
Most of us are aware of the hive mind-the power of bees as an amazing collective. But do we know how uniquely intelligent bees are as individuals? In The Mind of a Bee, Lars Chittka draws from decades of research, including his own pioneering work, to argue that bees have remarkable cognitive abilities. He shows that they are profoundly smart, have distinct personalities, can recognize flowers and human faces, exhibit basic emotions, count, use simple tools, solve problems, and learn by observing others. They may even possess consciousness.
I do read books
that aren’t about bees… and Demon Copperhead was the one I recommended all
year. I am in a book club of two – just me and my cousin – and this was our
hands-down favorite of 2023.
Barbara Kingsolver writes about Appalachia from
Appalachia, and her remake of Dickens’ David Copperfield, as told through the
life of a boy orphaned by the opioid crisis, is nothing sort of brilliant. Kingsolver
has this amazing ability to look at systems – historical racism, corporate
greed, and societal indifference – and show how they all come toppling down on
an innocent child.
She upholds the beauty and the resilience of an area of the
country that was specifically targeted by big pharma while showing that
Appalachia has been colonized and ridiculed throughout history by those making
a profit from its coal and timber, up to today’s orchestrated addiction. Brava,
Kingsolver – the Pulitzer Prize was well deserved.
Demon's story begins with his traumatic birth to a single mother in a single-wide trailer, looking 'like a little blue prizefighter.' For the life ahead of him he would need all of that fighting spirit, along with buckets of charm, a quick wit, and some unexpected talents, legal and otherwise.
In the southern Appalachian Mountains of Virginia, poverty isn't an idea, it's as natural as the grass grows. For a generation growing up in this world, at the heart of the modern opioid crisis, addiction isn't an abstraction, it's neighbours, parents, and friends. 'Family' could mean love, or reluctant foster…
Meredith May recalls the first time a honeybee
crawled on her arm. She was five years old, her parents had recently split, and
suddenly, she found herself in the care of her grandfather, an eccentric
beekeeper who made honey in a rusty old military bus in the yard.
That first
close encounter was at once terrifying and exhilarating for May. Everything she
needed to know about life and family was right before her eyes in the secret
world of bees.
May
turned to her grandfather and the art of beekeeping as an escape from her
troubled reality. The bees became a guiding force in May’s life, teaching her
about family and survival.
