Dimensions
135 x 203 x 16mm
The honeybee is a miracle. It is the cupid of the natural world. It pollinates crops, making plants bear fruit, and, in turn, helping farmers make money. But in this age of vast industrial agribusiness, never before has so much been asked of such a small wonder. Never before has the honeybee's future survival been so unclear.
In steps John Miller, a boundingly energetic and charismatic beekeeper, who tasks himself with the care and the sustainable keeping of honeybees. He is descended from America's first migratory beekeeper, N.E. Miller, who, at the beginning of the 20th century, transported thousands of hives from one crop to another, working the Idahoan clover in summer and the Californian almonds in winter. Back then beekeepers used to pay farmers to keep a few dozen hives on their land. But now farmers pay beekeepers millions of dollars to have their crops pollinated by upwards of ten thousand hives. With the rise of the monocrop and increasingly efficient pesticides, there are simply not enough natural pollinators to complete the massive task of sexing-up millions of acres of almond groves. With bees, an acre of almonds can produce two thousand pounds of nuts. Without bees, that same acre would produce no more than thirty pounds. The Californian almond industry, which currently produces 80% of the world's almond crop, may control most factors responsible for a booming crop, but it is still utterly dependent on the unpredictable honeybee.
As the stresses mount on bee populations, beekeepers like John Miller have been faced with devastating hive losses. Not only do they continue to face traditional, or at least expected, scourges like bears, wax moths, American foulbrood, tracheal mite, and the infamous varroa mite; but they now lose hives in the most mysterious ways. Whole colonies of bees simply fly away, abandoning their hives, an epidemic known by the media as Colony Collapse Disorder.
In a remarkable show of research, reporting, and storytelling, Nordhaus tells the complex and fascinating story of honeybees in America today, tracking their place in our lives from the first American beekeeping authority, Lorenzo Lorraine Langstroth, to the thousands of dedicated individuals who continue to care about honeybees despite all the reasons not to. THE BEEKEEPER'S LAMENT is an essential history of an unsung animal.
