Description
Book SynopsisAn interdisciplinary exploration of responses to honeybee decline. Features the innovative projects of beekeepers, farmers, artists, entomologists, biologists, and ecologists in the movement to save the bees and work toward a more sustainable co-existence for all creatures.
Trade Review“Honeybees and humans are tightly linked, and the global demise of these keystone insects is both alarming and very bad news for the bees, humans, and numerous other nonhuman animals. Heather Swan's book—the compelling text and beautiful artwork—makes it clear that bees and humans will suffer immeasurably as we try to endure ‘the rage of inhumanity’ and political ecology that characterize the Anthropocene unless we change our behavior right now. Coexistence is mandatory and time is not on our side. Where Honeybees Thrive is a reading experience reminiscent of Rachel Carson's classic Silent Spring.”
—Marc Bekoff,co-author of The Animals’ Agenda: Freedom, Compassion, and Coexistence in the Human Age
“This book is pure gold. To understand the life around us is perhaps the most important thing we can do for our planet, and Where Honeybees Thrive is a huge step forward. We are too inclined to think that the tiny animals don’t matter, or that they’re dispensable because there seems to be so many of them. If you know people with that opinion, please give them this book because it can change their minds.”
—Elizabeth Marshall Thomas,author of The Hidden Life of Dogs
“Where Honeybees Thrive isn’t a book for people only interested in the practice of beekeeping, nor for left-brain theorists or right-brain dreamers. It is for readers who find themselves adrift in the middle space, never entirely here nor there, searching for tranquility amid the hum.”
—Joe Phillips Minding Nature
“A beautifully written and original approach to the crucially important and still underappreciated problem of bee decline in the modern world. With a lyrical, searching style that recalls the best of Annie Dillard, Swan argues eloquently and persuasively both for the urgent need to intervene in this global crisis and for the myriad ways in which mindfulness about bees can help human beings understand themselves more deeply.”
—Eric C. Brown,editor of Insect Poetics
“Anyone who likes honeybees, or is even afraid of honeybees, will find this book fascinating and infectious. The author carries us on a glorious journey into the lives of honeybees and the people who keep and cherish them. The story is woven with passion and a lively blend of prose, poetry, art, and philosophy—it is part love song, part lament, part quest, and entirely engaging. Just as Rachel Carson dramatized the plight of our environment in the face of modern chemicals, Heather Swan portrays the plight of bees in light of modern agricultural practices and insecticides. Where Honeybees Thrive is a must-read for lovers of nature, bees, and books.”
—Justin O. Schmidt,author of The Sting of the Wild
“A very special and encouraging book—a great gift for anyone with concern for bees.”
—Bees for Development Journal
“I suggest you kick back with a glass of mead as you savor the storytelling of master beekeeper and bee lover Heather Swan. This is a unique and worthwhile book, a new twist on honey bees that you are not likely to find anywhere else.”
—Stephen Buchmann The Quarterly Review of Biology
Table of ContentsContents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Bees as Indicator Species
1 Honey Business
Gallery 1 Child Mind: The Art of Sibylle Peretti
2 Searching for the Bees of Guangxi and Sichuan
Gallery 2 The Microscopic Sublime: The Art of Rose-Lynn Fisher
3 Bullroarers, Elephants, and Honeybees
Gallery 3Making Sense of Bees: The Art of Kim Gurney
4 Killing Bees to Save Them: The Heartbreak of Experimental Design
Gallery 4 Mourning the Dead: The Art of Sarah Hatton
5 The Farmer, the Blueberry, and the Bee: An Unusual Love Triangle
Gallery 5 Techno Bees: The Art of Elizabeth Goluch
6 For the Love of Lawns
Gallery 6 Trespass: The Art of Aganetha Dyck
7 Guard Bee: Storying Resilience
Gallery 7 The Art of Resistance: The Beehive Design Collective
8 A Different Kind of Buzz: Mirth as a Form of Resistance
Gallery 8 Bee Renaissance: The Art of Lea Bradovich
Afterword
Notes
Bibliography
Credits
