Honey and Venom

April 1, 2020

Cot� could possibly claim the title of Beekeeper to the Stars, having worked with Spike Lee and Michelle Obama, among others. These star encounters are sprinkled in among Cot�'s musings on a year in the life of an urban beekeeper. As founder of Bees Without Borders, an organization dedicated to promoting beekeeping as an antidote to poverty, Cot� also provides consultations to potential beekeepers on this ancient art. Readers travel with him to Uganda, Haiti, Ecuador, Iraq, and through all five boroughs of New York as he instructs on beekeeping best practices. Framed by the calendar year, the book shows the complete honey-making cycle, and introduces some of the eccentric characters that make up his New York beekeeping community. Cot� also shares his exploits as one of the best-known beekeepers in the community; he is routinely called in to consult on many interesting cases, and we, the lucky readers, get to hear some of them in this charming read. VERDICT Fascinating, not only for the beekeeping information, but also for the urban-wildlife interactions involving bees. A good companion for anyone contemplating apiculture.--Diana Hartle, Univ. of Georgia Science Lib., Athens

Copyright 2020 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 1, 2020
New York City's "premier beekeeper" has some stories to tell. Cot� structures his book around the beekeeping calendar, one chapter per month, weaving seasonally relevant facts about bees around stories that occurred during that month. In March, for instance, the author informs readers of the "cleansing flight," made when the weather is finally warm enough for pent-up bees to leave their hives and defecate, and the life cycle of the worker bee, as the hive ramps up its population in anticipation of spring blooms. He also documents the March 2010 debate on legalizing beekeeping in New York City and a mishap involving the relocation of several hives from western Pennsylvania to Brooklyn. This latter anecdote begins with a sneering and entirely gratuitous description of the trailer home and dilapidated equipment of the retiring Appalachian beekeeper, whom he snidely calls "the feller," from whom he purchased some 100 hives. It concludes with his mocking account of the efforts of the inept beekeepers he sold them to. Alas, it's scenes like this, in which Cot� freely expresses his superiority to so many of the other "beeks" he encounters both in NYC and around the world, that render him a less-than-charming companion. One or two such anecdotes might be funny; 12 months' worth grow old. So, too, do the author's frequent references to his appearances in the media. The freely dropped celebrity names also grate (10 within three paragraphs in the prologue alone); irritatingly, he refers to both Martha Stewart and Yoko Ono, whom he "bump[s]" into when keeping bees at MoMA, by their given names, a familiarity he does not assume with male celebrities such as Paul Newman or Bill Clinton (Spike Lee is an exception). Cot� has both a rambling, conversational style that can leave readers unmoored in his timeline and the bad habit of introducing beekeeping practices unlikely to be understood by general readers pages before he describes their purpose, often only elliptically. His obvious, oft-stated love for his father--his beekeeping mentor--and regard for those beekeepers he deems competent are warming, but it's not enough to remove the sour air of self-regard. Too much venom, not enough honey.

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April 13, 2020
In this delightful debut, New York City beekeeper Coté recounts a year of raising bees and the big adventures these tiny insects have brought to his life. In his 20s with a cushy professorship, Coté chucked it all to turn his honey-making hobby into his career. Following in the footsteps of his Quebecois father, a firefighter turned professional beekeeper, Coté becomes an expert apiarist in the Big Apple, placing and tending to bees all over the five boroughs and helping to get beekeeping legalized in New York City. Along the way, he starts Bees Without Borders, a nonprofit that promotes beekeeping in third world countries; helps create a bee sculpture for MoMA; works with the NYPD to capture swarms of bees; and travels to Iraq where he talks with religious Iraqi residents who take exception to the fact that a queen bee “copulates with many drones.” Throughout, he writes sweetly about the life cycle of the honey bee and praises his father, who “holds more information about bees in one hair of his white moustache than I will ever know.” Honey farmers and urban naturalists will be buzzing about this one.

May 1, 2020
Cot� is a celebrity beekeeper, counting Martha Stewart, Instagram influencer Eva Chen, and conceptual artist Pierre Huyghe as confidantes and clients. But Cot� is also an advocate. A fourth-generation beekeeper, he's amassed a treasure trove of wisdom, and doles it out as leader of the New York City Beekeepers Association and Bees without Borders (a nonprofit that trains underserved international communities to keep apiaries with the goal of alleviating poverty). In Honey and Venom, each chapter represents a month, and the anecdotes that make up the essays describe situations Cot� confronted during that month at some point during his notable career. His most charming stories bookend the text, and both take place in Africa. In January, Cot� describes language barriers and an angry swarm in Uganda; in December, he describes the hard work and humanity of a beekeeping program he developed in Kenya. While the text is sprinkled with some advice for novice beekeepers, Honey and Venom is best read as a memoir?and a sweet one at that.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)