A memoir of a life put back on track by beekeeping, and a hopeful study of bees in the wild
Early on in Helen Jukes’s A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings she ponders the increasing popularity of urban beekeeping, referring to the idea that “one possible psychological response to the apprehension of a threat is to begin producing idealised versions of the thing we perceive of as being at risk”. That’s also a good explanation for the current crop of bee books: not just A Honeybee Heart and Thor Hanson’s Buzz, but Kate Bradbury’s wonderful The Bumblebee Flies Anyway and Maja Lunde’s The History of Bees, among others. Books, like hives, are ways of capturing something and holding on to it: either helping to preserve it, or looking at it closely before it’s gone.
A Honeybee Heart is in the tradition of H Is for Hawk and other recent works that combine natural history with memoir. Some have felt rather stale and derivative, or have overplayed the author’s emotional link with the creature in question. Happily, Jukes avoids this: she’s interested in bees because, well, bees are interesting, and if anything the personal side is played down, particularly at the start of the book.
Related: I’m terrified of flying insects – could a twerking bee cure me?
Continue reading...