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The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America
Unavailable
The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America
Unavailable
The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America
Ebook286 pages5 hours

The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

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About this ebook

“You’llnever think of bees, their keepers, or the fruits (and nuts) of their laborsthe same way again.” —Trevor Corson, author of The Secret Life of Lobsters

Award-winning journalist Hannah Nordhaus tells the remarkable story of John Miller, one of America’s foremost migratory beekeepers, and the myriad and mysterious epidemics threatening American honeybee populations. In luminous, razor-sharp prose, Nordhaus explores the vital role that honeybees play in American agribusiness, the maintenance of our food chain, and the very future of the nation. With an intimate focus and incisive reporting, in a book perfect for fans of Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire,and John McPhee’s Oranges, Nordhaus’s stunning exposé illuminates one the most critical issues facing the world today,offering insight, information, and, ultimately, hope.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperCollins
Release dateMay 24, 2011
ISBN9780062079428
Author

Hannah Nordhaus

Hannah Nordhaus is the author of the critically acclaimed national bestseller The Beekeeper’s Lament, which was a PEN Center USA Book Awards finalist, Colorado Book Awards finalist, and National Federation of Press Women Book Award winner. She has written for the Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, Outside magazine, the Times Literary Supplement, Village Voice, and many other publications.

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Reviews for The Beekeeper's Lament

Rating: 4.35 out of 5 stars
4.5/5

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Bees pollinate plants that produce about a third of America's food supply, and while once the bees mostly were wild "volunteers," the European honeybee, the most reliable pollinator in North America, is largely gone from the wild. Agriculture relies on professional, commercial beekeepers, who travel with their hives to the fields and orchards that need themIt's useful to remember that the honeybee was never native here anyway. It came with the Europeans. The single most profitable crop that it pollinates is California's almond crop, which is also not native to North America. It's native to the Middle East and southern Asia.The almond is booming in the US. The honeybee is in trouble, and both dependent on and threatened by the increasing dominance of the almond crop in its life cycle.John Miller, a beekeeper with a large and, by beekeeper standards, pretty successful business, from a family with four generations of beekeeping history, is the primary focus of this book, but not by any means the only beekeeper we learn about. We tend to think of beekeeping being about honey, but because of both imported honey, and a lack of any agreed or enforced standards for either purity or labeling, honey is not where beekeepers make their money. Profit in beekeeping comes from the migratory pollenization business--and increasingly primarily from almond pollenization. Pollenization of other other crops is increasingly marginal, with a primary benefit keeping the hives fed and healthy. In some cases, it produces good honey, but often the best honey comes from plants that are regarded as invasive weeds More useful crops may or may not produce honey that's good for anyone but the bees.Some very useful crops produce honey that even the bees don't want, if they can reach other plants than the ones they've been brought in to pollinate.And on top of all that, are all the bad things that can happen to bees and their hives. Colony Collapse Disorder made headlines a few years ago. The headlines have faded, but the cause hasn't been identified, and colony collapse still happens. In addition, there are a lot of parasites and diseases that can damage or completely wipe out hives. There is constant research to protect the bees, but often as one parasite or disease is defeated, another appears. Oh, and there are different varieties of bees, some better pollinators and some worse, some forming larger hives and some smaller, some Africanized honey bees. Or, as the Africanized bees are colloquially known, "killer bees."The Africanized bees are not as aggressive as their reputation, and may become less so as they continue to hybridize with the European varieties in North America, but they are sufficiently more aggressive that American beekeepers are not eager to adopt them. They are, though, good pollinators, and make good honey, and are more resistant to some threats than European honey bees.On the other hand, they are less cold hardy, which is a major problem in more northerly regions. They can't get through a northern winter in a protected cellar with a good supply of honey or corn syrup.Beekeepers are always hoping next year will be a good year.Beekeeping, its history in North America, and its realities today are fascinating and complex, and well worth a listen, or a read.Recommended.I bought this audiobook.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    More bees live their whole lives on the backs of flatbed trucks in transit. Find out why. And why you should care ... deeply.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I've been a beekeeper for 5+ years, taken a lot of extension classes, shadowed other beekeepers, and read a lot on the topic, but this book still gave me a lot of new insights into commercial beekeeping, recent research on bee genomics, and the honey/pollination markets as well. Well worth the read even if you don't like bugs and bees.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    First of all I am a beekeeper. I really enjoyed this book, I found it very educational about commercial beekeeping on a scale I didn't think existed, highly recommended especially if you are a beekeeper
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The current story of American bees—massive die-offs, along with massive replacement efforts and mobile units that go from one side of the country to the other, fertilizing multiple crops. Nordhous suggests that this very hyperproductivity may be making bees more vulnerable to die-offs, as these working colonies have very little time to rest. Beekeepers tend to be misanthropes, and so she gets a lot of color out of their stories. It’s an ultimately melancholy story of the way that even the least apparently automatable function of agriculture—pollination by bees, still better than any of the alternatives—can be turned into mass production.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    "Farmers depend on honey bees to pollinate ninety different fruits and vegetables, from almonds to lettuce to cranberries to blueberries to canola—nearly $15 billion worth of crops a year."

    This is a good read on the business of being a large migrating beekeeper as well as the science behind CCD, pollinating crops, and honey making.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    “Award-winning journalist Hannah Nordhaus tells the remarkable story of John Miller, one of America’s foremost migratory beekeepers, and the myriad and mysterious epidemics threatening American honeybee populations.”Make no mistake: John Miller is not a beekeeper; he is a big-business man. He moves his bees across the United States in climate-controlled tractor trailers, not in a pick-up truck. The honey he collects is blended and homogenized for the honey industry.Although this book was as well researched and written as Robbing the Bees, I enjoyed it less because of the big-business perspective, enlightening as that was.Read this if: you want an up-to-date picture of the health of North America’s honeybees (not good) and the impact of that on our ability to feed ourselves. 4 stars
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Great read about bees, honey, agriculture and people keeping bees.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Hannah Nordhaus has written an easily accessible and fascinating book about bees and their keepers. She discusses the connection between bees and food, chronicles the challenges modern farming presents for bees, and makes itort clear how fortunate we are that there are people willing to carry on the thankless and difficult task of bee keeping. This book made me want to keep bees, sort of. It's not really a good fit for me since bee allergies run in my family. But I will be ever more thoughtful about where my honey originated and about what I plant in my yard.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    While it would be easy to poke fun at this book - the breathless writing, the newspaper magazine article style - I really enjoyed it. The author uses an individual beekeeper to "star" in a tale of bees, beekeeping and agriculture in the US. It helps that her subject is eminently 'writeable' - a partially lapsed mormon with shades of Hunter S Thompson, who must be the most quotable beekeeper on the planet. There is plenty of factual information about bees and beekeeping, and the content is particularly good in providing an historical perspective. I might have liked a little more basic information about the bee - I was left wondering about the different roles of the nectar and pollen collected - but that sort of background is readily available elsewhere. The crucial role of bees in pollinating certain crops was well presented - no bees, no almond crop. It was particularly pleasing that the author proposes no overly simplistic solutions to the many problems posed by intensive beekeeping.It's hard to imagine a beekeeping book being a page turner, but this one hit the spot. Read Jan 2014.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is a highly enjoyable and informative look at modern-day beekeeping. The author tracks a migrant beekeeper, John Miller, as he follows the flowering crops across the western U.S. with literally millions of honeybees. She provides us with a sense of what life as a beekeeper is like, and information about bees themselves. Well written, accessible and fascinating.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    An engaging tale of the joys (but mostly trials and tribulations) of modern large-scale beekeeping and its relationship with our food supply, told through the eyes of John Miller, who, along with his beehives, splits his time between Central Valley, California (near almond groves where he gets paid for tree pollination on Valentine's Day), and Gackle, North Dakota (where the summer yields high-grade alfalfa honey).
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Most of us have a vague admiration for bees (as long as they don't sting us) and the hard work that they do producing honey and pollinating our food supply. We have heard that the bees are in danger, but we don't really understand how grave the danger is or the implications. Read this book and you will understand so much more about bees and the strange breed of men (and a few women) who keep them.Hannah Nordhaus embedded herself in the culture of beekeeping by following John Miller--who has one of the largest beekeeping operations in North America. As she relates her experiences, she also includes informatoin on the history of beekeeping, the inner workings of a beehive, and the modern day threats to the bee population. Stories such as that of a beekeeper who was also a drug runner (who would look for drugs in a beehive?) add a great deal of levity and human interest to the scientific information presented. Indeed, Nordhaus has giftedly interwoven the stories of people in with information that could be dull if presented in a more straightforward manner.I highly recommend this book to anyone who loves to learn about new topics, and if you have any sort of an interest in bees and/or beekeeping you must put it at the top of your reading list. 
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The Beekeeper's Lament explores the mysterious and deadly Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) through the eyes of one of the largest, and most charismatic commercial beekeepers in the US. It follows the history of this strange and mostly unprofitable profession from the first keepers who brought bees to North America all the way to the present day characters who battle mites and pesticides to keep their bees alive.You couldn't ask for a better person to introduce you to the magic of bees than John Miller. His quirky humor combined with a down-to-earth recognition of the facts and his vast knowledge of the beekeeping world keeps the reader entertained and informed at the same time. Through his story Hannah Nordhaus convinces the reader that bees are important, fascinating creatures and we should care about their fate. When the narrative strays from Miller into the historical parts it gets a bit dryer and harder to follow. As it flies into the future with the incredible, cutting edge research being done on bees, the pace quickens again. It's guaranteed that this book will change the way you look at bees and honey!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The age of mass production has not been kind to bees.Before humans intervened, before the days of agribusiness, bees left to their own devices had hard, short, and sometimes violent and vicious lives. Since we've started helping them, their lives are worse. And we owe them a huge debt of gratitude.This fascinating book looks at the lives of bees and at one cantankerous commercial beekeeper, John Miller. It is no small irony that someone who “isn't fond of death,” who takes it personally is involved in death everyday; it is part of the business.Like many, I had heard of CDC, Colony Collapse Disorder, that has wreaked havoc among bees and their keepers. What I didn't realize that CDC is only a part of the problem, that bees are susceptible to a whole host of fatal and really nasty diseases. And the solutions of dosing the bees with drugs, forcing them into unnaturally early springs, transporting them around the country, feeding them with cheap corn syrup instead of their own honey – these things are not making the situation better. Neither is monocropping.The politics of beekeeping is really eye-opening. Beekeepers are a dying breed, and agriculture as it is practiced today couldn't exist without them. You don't have to be especially interested in bees to find this book very informative. If you eat, their lives affect your life more than you probably know.There were a couple of places in the book where the writing seemed a touch dry to me. Statements like “in the wild, honey bees have disappeared entirely” made me wish for footnotes and a bibliography, although the statement was explained later in the book. As was “bees began bringing that nectar home to evaporate into honey....” Even in my ignorance, I knew that honey isn't just evaporated nectar, oh no, not anything that straightforward, burp.The next time you are spreading that big ol' glop of honey on your English muffin, give thanks for the dozen bees who together spent their whole lives making just a teaspoon of the stuff.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    I knew nothing about bees but I did hear Hannah interviewed on the radio and that grabbed my interest. The book is non-fiction, of course, but reads like a novel---hard to put down as you read about John Miller and about bees. Such a group of hardworking creatures---the beekeepers and bees alike---it's a fascinating, incredible story--more than worth reading. Hannah Nordhaus could probably handle any subject and make it a valuable experience to absorb--she just plain knows how to write.