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My favorite books on bees

G. Leigh Wilkerson

Holly Bishop's Robbing the Bees (Nonfiction)

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Free Press (April 4, 2005)
• ISBN: 0743250214

Reading this wonderful book (thanks Blue Moon Bookstore!) is what originally inspired me to attend the beekeeping class at the Organic Growers School. It's also where I found the fascinating tidbit that it requires eight visits of a honeybee to produce one watermelon.

The book is a combination of the writer's interaction with Smiley, a Florida beekeeper who sounds like quite a character, plus tons of historic information about bees and beekeeping. Bishop downplays the whole mite situation, but I understand the mites are worse in some regions than in others.

One factoid of interest to WNC would-be beekeepers: if bees include too much rhododendron pollen it produces poisonous honey! Good thing I didn't try to keep bees on this mountainside covered with rhododdendron!

And, of course...

The Secret Life of Bees (Fiction) by Sue Monk Kidd

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Penguin
• ISBN: 0142001740

If you SOMEHOW haven't read this book yet, have you got a treat in store. I read about two novels a year because of extreme pickiness, I confess.

Luckily I live with a writer who is a voracious fiction reader and who will occasionally say, OK Leigh, this one you really need to read. So that's how I came to read a novel -- and it's only April. I pretty much didn't get up off the couch till I finished it.

(If you buy books, please support your local independent bookstore!)

Editorial Reviews: Amazon.com

In Sue Monk Kidd's The Secret Life of Bees, 14-year-old Lily Owen, neglected by her father and isolated on their Georgia peach farm, spends hours imagining a blissful infancy when she was loved and nurtured by her mother, Deborah, whom she barely remembers. These consoling fantasies are her heart's answer to the family story that as a child, in unclear circumstances, Lily accidentally shot and killed her mother. All Lily has left of Deborah is a strange image of a Black Madonna, with the words "Tiburon, South Carolina" scrawled on the back. The search for a mother, and the need to mother oneself, are crucial elements in this well-written coming-of-age story set in the early 1960s against a background of racial violence and unrest. When Lily's beloved nanny, Rosaleen, manages to insult a group of angry white men on her way to register to vote and has to skip town, Lily takes the opportunity to go with her, fleeing to the only place she can think of--Tiburon, South Carolina--determined to find out more about her dead mother. Although the plot threads are too neatly trimmed, The Secret Life of Bees is a carefully crafted novel with an inspired depiction of character. The legend of the Black Madonna and the brave, kind, peculiar women who perpetuate Lily's story dominate the second half of the book, placing Kidd's debut novel squarely in the honored tradition of the Southern Gothic. --Regina Marler --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Description:

Sue Monk Kidd's ravishing debut novel has stolen the hearts of reviewers and readers alike with its strong, assured voice. Set in South Carolina in 1964, The Secret Life of Bees tells the story of Lily Owens, whose life has been shaped around the blurred memory of the afternoon her mother was killed. When Lily's fierce-hearted "stand-in mother," Rosaleen, insults three of the town's fiercest racists, Lily decides they should both escape to Tiburon, South Carolina--a town that holds the secret to her mother's past. There they are taken in by an eccentric trio of black beekeeping sisters who introduce Lily to a mesmerizing world of bees, honey, and the Black Madonna who presides over their household. This is a remarkable story about divine female power and the transforming power of love--a story that women will share and pass on to their daughters for years to come.

Noah's Garden by Sara Stein

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin; Reissue edition (April 24, 1995)
• ISBN: 0395709407

On the subject of bees, birds, gardening, etc. One of my favorite books of all time is Noah's Garden by Sara Stein.

Stein tells the story of her becoming an "ungardener" and returning the majority of her farm to native plantings that support birds, bees, butterflies and creatures. She tells of buying an overgrown farm with families of pheasants, foxes, toads, chipmunks, and more. But after she and her husband landscaped the whole thing, most of the creatures disappeared. This loss led to her committment to change her land in such a way as to provide beauty and ease for herself, as well as habitat for all the creatures.

Small changes can make all the difference to the small beings who share your yard with you. Stein gives the example of using a dry-stack stone wall in her yard instead of a mortared one in order that the wall can be a homeplace to chipmunks and toads.

Stein is a great writer and I enjoyed the book so much the first time around I read it too fast and had to start over immediately and read it a second time to absorb more of the information. She explores the interconnected ecology of the homeplace and the heart.

I even learned to love the moles once I learned that their primary food is the grubs that grow up to be the japanese beetles that devour the roses!

It's also a book of hope. Stein explore the idea that if suburbs across the country began natural plantings for wildlife and birds, then if added up, it could go a long way in supplementing the land we've lost to development.

I liked this book so much I wrote the author to say thank you. Her son wrote back a letter that his mom was dying of cancer and hence he was writing for her. But she had dictated a short and kind note which he relayed to me. Here's to a great writer who has made a lovely contribution to the world with this book. Godspeed Sara.

Don't miss this wonderful book.
Leigh

From Kirkus Reviews:

A personal perspective on the growing movement toward more natural and ecologically sound gardens in which snakes are as welcome as butterflies. In chapters that loosely follow the course of a year-- beginning in the fall and ending the following Thanksgiving--Stein (My Weeds, 1988, etc.) describes how she came to change radically the way she gardened. The author, who lives with her husband on six acres in Pound Ridge, New York, began to question conventional practices--large lawns surrounded by neat beds of flowers and occasional specimen plantings--when, a few years ago, she noticed the absence of many creatures she could recall from childhood.

Creatures like orioles, bluebirds, box turtles, and Monarch butterflies, once common, were seen no more. Stein began reading books and consulting experts, and decided to try to reverse the trend by changing the way she maintained her land. To restore the delicate balance necessary for a native ecology to flourish, she planted not only shrubs and trees native to the region but ones that would encourage birds and beneficial insects to return. She deepened her pond so that fish and turtles could flourish in water purified by appropriate plant life; replaced most flower beds with plantings of native flowers and shrubs; restricted the lawns to a small patch; seeded the old lawns with native grasses; and began to restore woodland areas to their pristine state.

Stein still plants favorite foreign species, but argues forcefully that the old methods of gardening not only require inordinate amounts of labor and chemicals to keep unsuitable plants alive but are dangerously inhospitable to indigenous inhabitants. A persuasive and informed plea to change the way we garden, thoughtfully defying old wisdom and suggesting, without ever being didactic, just what can be achieved even on the smallest suburban lot. --

Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.