Description

A beautifully illustrated and thoroughly engaging cultural history of beekeeping – packed with anecdote, humour and enriching historical detail. The perfect gift.

“A charming look at the history of beekeeping, from myth and folklore to our practical relationship with bees” Gardens Illustrated

“An entertaining collation of bee trivia across the millennia” Daily Telegraph

* Sweden’s Gardening Book of the Year 2019 * Shortlisted for the August Prize 2019 * Winner of the Swedish Book Design Award for 2019

Beekeeper and garden historian Lotte Moeller explores the activities inside and outside the hive while charting the bees’ natural order and habits. With a light touch she uses her encyclopaedic knowledge of the subject to shed light on humanity’s understanding of bees and bee lore from antiquity to the present. A humorous debunking of the myths that have held for centuries is matched by a wry exploration of how and when they were replaced by fact.

In her travels Moeller encounters a trigger-happy Californian beekeeper raging against both killer bees and bee politics, warring beekeepers on the Danish island of Laeso, and Brother Adam of Buckfast Abbey, breeder of the Buckfast queen now popular throughout Europe and beyond, as well a host of others as passionate as she about the complex world of apiculture both past and present.

Translated from the Swedish by Frank Perry

Publisher Review

A fine balance of knowledge and humour on a high level . . . Like a diligent bee, Lotte Moeller travels through the ages . . . You do not want it to end, but all of a sudden it does, and you are left with a faint humming in your head * Weekendavisen * Bees and Their Keepers is an entertaining book - easy to love and learn from * Dagen * In her wonderful bee book, Lotte Moeller describes how humans and bees have accompanied each other throughout history, and tells us about her own bees (which initially she feared), honey frauds, hive models, bee sex, and today's complex bee world. Beautiful, readable and bee supportive. * Allt om Tradgard * Educational and entertaining, it adds insight to how humans throughout time have co-existed with bees and it also puts the present in relief against this history spanning several thousand years . . . The book becomes solace against escalating climate angst, the inability to act, and apathy - because from history's swarm of bee-keepers emerges a strong counter-movement: an embryo of hope for the future of mankind and the planet. * Vasterbottens-Kuriren * I begin to yearn for bees of my own while reading this . . . Moeller has done her research well and there is a swarm of quotes, character introductions, fact boxes and thematic strokes . . . The book is actually a history of ideas about bees, filled to the brim with thoughts and notions about man's best friend - on six legs. * Arbeterbladet *