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The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America
 
 

The Beekeeper's Lament: How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America [Kindle Edition]

Hannah Nordhaus
4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

Print List Price: £8.99
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Product Description

Review

""The Beekeeper's Lament" is at once science lesson, sociological study, and breezy read....A book about bees could easily descend into academe, but the author settles for nothing less than literature."--"Boston Globe"

Product Description

“You’llnever think of bees, their keepers, or the fruits (and nuts) of their laborsthe same way again.” —Trevor Corson, author of The Secret Life of Lobsters

Award-winning journalist Hannah Nordhaus tells the remarkable story of John Miller, one of America’s foremost migratory beekeepers, and the myriad and mysterious epidemics threatening American honeybee populations. In luminous, razor-sharp prose, Nordhaus explores the vital role that honeybees play in American agribusiness, the maintenance of our food chain, and the very future of the nation. With an intimate focus and incisive reporting, in a book perfect for fans of Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, Michael Pollan’s The Botany of Desire,and John McPhee’s Oranges, Nordhaus’s stunning exposé illuminates one the most critical issues facing the world today,offering insight, information, and, ultimately, hope.


Product details

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 858 KB
  • Print Length: 291 pages
  • Page Numbers Source ISBN: 006187325X
  • Publisher: HarperCollins e-books (24 May 2011)
  • Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
  • Language: English
  • ASIN: B004FEF6HO
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • X-Ray: Not Enabled
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #321,594 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Book Review 25 Sep 2011
Format:Paperback
As a UK beekeeper I found this fascinating and informative (if written in the particular style Americans use for such books)
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4.0 out of 5 stars The Beekeeper's Lament 18 Aug 2011
By Matt
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Good insights into the world of bees in a commercial environment. Draw your own conclusions on the demise of bee populations throughout the world. As someone interested in beekeeping, I now wonder whether it's something I should do. Intervene to do my bit in retaining bee populations around my garden, or let nature take its course?
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com: 4.4 out of 5 stars  30 reviews
39 of 39 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Faustian Bargain 27 May 2011
By Marla Spivak - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Throughout this book, I kept exclaiming, "Yes! That is how it is." Hannah Nordhaus has managed to capture the special relationship between bees and beekeepers and the stresses both are experiencing. In the end we come to understand that keeping bees alive and healthy is not easy. Some people are quick to point a finger at commercial beekeepers as the culprits behind bee losses. But all beekeepers care deeply for their bees. Norhaus clearly portrays how beekeepers face a deal with the devil when they move their bees into orchards and other crops for pollination. Everyone that eats almonds, fruits and vegetables needs to understand this vital and ironic situation.

Nordhaus walks us into the world of bees through the eyes and heart of John Miller, a commercial beekeeper who transports his 10,000 colonies of bees between North Dakota and California for honey production and almond pollination. John is wacky, inspired and earth-smart, and he is the perfect person to represent beekeepers in America. The book is hilarious, disturbing, and very accurate; it's the best book about beekeeping I've read in a very long time.
18 of 18 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book! 28 May 2011
By Joe Traynor - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
A timely and informative book suitable for a wide readership. It could be subtitled The Life and Times of John Miller, Commercial Beekeeper. Miller is a character and his presence breathes life throughout the pages of the book -- Nordhaus must have realized she had a gem in Miller, around which she could build a worthy and entertaining book. Miller is descended from a long line of beekeepers and struggles annually, as do all beekeepers, to keep his thousands of colonies healthy as they face drought, disease and pestilence on a number of fronts. Nordhaus expertly weaves the history of beekeeping into her book -- beekeeping has never been easy, and is far more difficult today than for past generations. All successful beekeepers are hard workers or they wouldn't survive and Miller is no exception. Miller is an atypical beekeeper in that he is gregarious, quirky, smart (both street-smart and book-smart), with an off-beat sense of humor that helps him survive the inevitable mishaps that occur in his profession.
Highly recommneded whether you know anything about bees or not.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars A great untold story about bees, their keepers, and American agriculture 31 May 2011
By Elisabeth Emily - Published on Amazon.com
Format:Paperback
The Beekeepers Lament is a fantastic and engaging story chronicling the life and times of American bees and their keepers. Hannah Nordhaus introduces us to the world of bee wrangling with humor, details, and effortless prose. She is truly a great story teller conveying complex concepts and huge amounts of detail on bee culture, the history of beekeeping in America, the anatomy of the hive, and the pests and calamities befall bees and their keepers with ease and flow. The portrait of John Miller's migratory world of bee keeping is a phenomenal new view into commercial agriculture and its symbiotic relationship with hundreds of millions of bees traversing the country every year. He is an unforgettable character and the reader is able to fully appreciate the life and culture of the commercial beekeeping community.

A great read and you will will never look at a buzzing bee the same way again!
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Popular Highlights

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Because of the varroa mite, wild honey bees are now, for all practical purposes, extinct in the United States. &quote;
Highlighted by 8 Kindle users
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To make a pound of it, the 50,000 or 80,000 bees who live together in a hive at the height of summer will travel a collective fifty-five thousand miles and visit more than two million flowers. &quote;
Highlighted by 6 Kindle users
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Every January, 1.5 million hives—somewhere in the vicinity of two thirds of the nation’s bees—are imported to California to fulfill the almond farmers’ pollination demands. &quote;
Highlighted by 6 Kindle users

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