Thus begins Susan Cormier’s seasoned advice to beekeeping wanna-bees. There are sufficient reasons to refrain from beekeeping, but I hadn’t thought of the communication gap – the bees’ foreign speech. We relish the knowledge (with a bit of pride) that a human among us was able to decipher the code, the language, of scout bees who tell forager bees the distance and direction to fly to visit a meadow of sweetly scented nectar-bearing flowers. That human, Karl von Frisch, sat at a glass-covered colony of honey bees and watched their strange little dances. A bow to the right and a quick wiggle to the left told the other bees to fly two kilometres at a right angle from the sun’s position. The human who interpreted this language was given a Nobel Prize by suitably impressed other humans.

But our communication ends there. It’s a one-way path, from bee to human, and coveys little news of interest to us. Of course, bees communicate other signals to each other (odours when annoyed, brisk movements when defensive) and an astute beekeeper learns to hear this language, too. But we have no real conversation with the bees.

We humans have a much more nuanced intraspecies vocabulary to convey our thoughts and feelings. The CBC Nonfiction award-winner, Ms Cormier, exemplifies this with her light treatise on the gulf between the bee and human species. And she has advice.

There is more to Susan Cormier’s story. Her lyrical style should be read for comfort, not for a beekeeper’s enlightenment. To enjoy more passages from her work, read this piece from CBC’s Literary Prize committee; To learn about Susan’s story, see this.