A Keeper of Bees

May 29, 2006
When she's talking bees, beekeeper and American studies professor Wallace rolls right along, her affection for the little buzzers quite apparent. In a chatty voice, she reflects on all things bee, from how their senses work to what the tendency to swarm is all about (to establish a new hive in response to overpopulation in the first hive) and how each bee serves the hive through various stages of life. She reveals how honey is made (spit is involved) and how the hive, itself an organism of sorts, functions. At times Wallace touches briefly, and sometimes all too glibly, on global environmental issues. Her narrative leaves traces of her personal involvement with bees, though the reader only really gains insight into her personality late in the book: In a section full of potential, she reveals that without the social link her ex-husband provided, she "could happily have holed up in the bottomland woods and gone slowly, ecstatically mad" and describes her tension with the hive of human society as a single woman in midlife. Still, Wallace leaves much unsaid, and this is as close as we get to understanding how the hive is linked to her own life.

June 1, 2006
Although most people have known the value of bees as a source of honey, Wallace admits her fascination with them was caused by their mixed nature: "gentle, sun-dappled handmaidens to the hive in one moment, fierce little murderous crazies the next--though only if you get seriously in their way." A Fulbright lecturer, she chronicles the work of honeybees, awed by their multichambered palace weighing a hundred pounds in wax, honey, pollen, and stored brood, and tells what first got her interested in keeping them. Combining natural history and memoir, Wallace relates how she left her husband, moved to Maine and then to Arkansas, and strived to make a new home for herself. She describes the honeybees' colony--a great majority of them are infertile females called worker bees that have various chores, all assigned according to the bee's degree of physiological development. Wallace explains that honeybee development appears to hasten or slow down as the colony's well-being demands. The author's love of these diminutive creatures shines through on every page.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2006, American Library Association.)