Reviews for A Book of Bees: And How to Keep Them

The average rating for A Book of Bees: And How to Keep Them based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-10-06 00:00:00 Marilyne Castillo I enjoyed this book. It's about the author, Sue Hubbell, who lives out in the country in Missouri and takes care of about 300 hives of bees that are stationed all over on land rented from farmers. Even though I was not familiar with all of the bee-keeping terms, Sue Hubbell explained how the hives worked and bee idiosyncrasies. She references other books of interest in here, which are now in my reading queue at the library. The part I thought was funny was where she took off her sundress out in the middle of nowhere while she dealt with the bees so they wouldn't fly up her skirt and get caught then sting her. So, she was out in the country naked tending bees. I grew up in the country and there were a few times where I ran out from the house naked to the clothesline to get some undies. Nobody cares. There's much more freedom out in the country than in town. Still, I do walk around in my undies in the apartment when it's warm in the summer and the windows are open. For the sake of my neighbors I'm not completely naked, but just about. I figure if they're going to be nosy toms then... *shrugs*.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-03-02 00:00:00 Gail Taylor This short book following the author's life and work as a beekeeper in the Ozarks in the late 1980s is a delight, sharply capturing the place and time and details of everyday life and the rhythms of the seasons with a smooth, easy to read narrative voice and clear explanations of the author's beekeeping process. There is an extensive glossary as well that took up nearly 40% of my ebook edition. A strength of the book was the awareness that things change too- the short afterword relates changes in the author's life after the year she recorded, and kept the book feeling very specific to a person in a place and time rather than some platonic ideal of beekeeping. I definitely want to check out some of Hubbell's other books, and am disappointed that only this and one other are currently available in ebook.