It’s Bee Time!

A few months ago, I had high praise for Mark Winston’s latest book, Bee Time: Lessons from the Hive. Now I have heard that Winston’s book has been awarded the prestigious Canadian Science Writers Association recognition as 2014’s best “science and society” book. This is a great accolade: the 5 members of the short list were outstanding books. It was nice to see Winston’s Bee Time chosen from well-written books about such diverse subjects as memory and Alzheimer’s, the science of work hazards, and Canadian space-walking astronauts. If you have not yet read Bee Time, I encourage you to get a copy.

Bee Time is a personal story. I especially appreciated the last segment of the book, the Epilogue – Walking Out of the Apiary. But I will quote from the penultimate section, from Winston’s chapter called Lessons from the Hive. It’ll give you a bit of the flavour of the book:

“Bees can be the richest of guides to the most personal understandings about who we are and the consequences of the choices we make in inhabiting the environment around us. Conversations with beekeepers about how they are affected by their time in the bee yard show a remarkable consistency. Words like “calming,” “peaceful,” and “meditative” come up over and over again, and beekeepers visibly relax when talking about their bees.”     – Mark Winston, 2014