The Beekeeper’s Lament
In August, I went to a friend’s house, and their roommate had bees. I got started asking questions because that is generally how I handle conversations with new people and then I became a bit obsessed with beekeeping. I want to get bees and keep them in my yard and get local honey and it’ll be amazing. This book was about beekeeping, on a scale much larger than one backyard hives – thousands of hives, which professional beekeepers take around the country, following the pollination seasons of crops like almonds and peaches. It was also about decline – declining beekeeping, how it’s an isolating job that is becoming harder and harder. My rust belt oriented, Jackson loving self was drawn to that – loving things that have experienced decline, loving things that are neither shiny nor new. It’s also about one specific, eccentric beekeeper.