It’s Bee Time!

Well, this is the third time that I’ve written about Mark Winston’s latest book, Bee Time: Lessons from the Hive. I don’t usually do three reviews on the same book – so I am not going to review it at length this time – but something really great just happened to the book.

I mentioned Bee Time this spring when it won the Canadian Science Writer’s award for the best book of the year. I was at the award ceremony in Saskatoon when the prize was announced. It bested some great entries, but Bee Time is a very good book.  I also wrote a bit about Winston’s book last fall when I read it.

Today, my comments will be brief. The book is in the news again because last night it won Canada’s Governor-General’s Literary Award for the best non-fiction book released in the past 12 months. Congratulations to Mark Winston. I’ll just add a few words about the book and remind you that it’s available at Amazon for about $20. If you haven’t read it yet, it might be time to put the book on your holiday gift list.  Now, about time for  Bee Time: Lessons from the Hive…

It’s 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