Book Review: The Beekeeper’s Lament by Hannah Nordhaus ~ How One Man and a Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

I suppose I have always romanticized beekeeping and have never wondered how all those jars of honey arrive on our grocery store shelves. The Beekeeper’s Lament has taken the romance from me and shown the reader the extent to which bees and their keepers must work. Like any agricultural endeavour the successes are dependent on the weather, on the crops and, of course, the market. Hannah Nordhaus has travelled with John Miller, a dedicated beekeeper as he takes his beehives to almond orchards in California or North Dakota. He also takes his hives to other locations that grow alfalfa, oranges, apples, cherries and other crops that provide the nutrition for quality honey. They are the very crops that depend on the bees to pollinate them each year. He decries those of his colleagues that add water or corn syrup to the honey they receive from their bees. Because of his fascination and love of bees and beekeeping, he has delved into all the details of his fuzzy little charges. Cantankerous and a bit of a loner, one of his pleasures is hearing the buzzing of the bees in an almond orchard in spring. 

Beekeeping in the U.S. is big business. Bees are affected by temperature, infections (varroa mites, foul brood, and a host of other maladies), and one that is still a mystery. Colony Collapse Disorder or CCD happens when the bees just vanish leaving little trace. There are also bee thieves that steal pallets of beehives from trucks or beehives from fields.  The organization of a hive, the role of the queen, the drones and the workers is explained. Where the queen is located in the hive, what royal jelly is, the larvae and how she is impregnated and how many little bees she gives birth to….So much information in only 266 pages.

Hannah Nordhaus also discusses the history of beekeeping dating back to at least the 1600’s. She provides snippets of documentation from various bee sources over the centuries. Using today’s technology, research has gone into bee biology and the pathogens that attack the bees, helping the bee industry to maintain healthy herds. Bees also have different temperaments from mild to aggressive. For the beekeeping industry, the milder tempered bees are easier to work with, the aggressive ones are not favoured. In short, the honey bees providing the honey for our tea or toast have worked hard.

Beekeeping is not for the faint of heart, but I think I’d like to keep my romantic version. Just a couple of hives on a hobby farm. Enough honey for a Farmer’s Market and for my toast.

“To make a pound of it, the 50,000 or 80,000 bees who live together 

in a hive at the height of summer will travel a collective 

fifty-five thousand miles and visit more than two million flowers.

~ Hannah Nordhaus, The Beekeeper’s Lament: 

How One Man and Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

Title: The Beekeeper’s Lament by Hannah Nordhaus ~ 

How One Man and a Half a Billion Honey Bees Help Feed America

Author: Hannah Nordhaus

Copyright: 2010

Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

Type: Soft Cover

Format: Non-Fiction

ISBN - 978-0-06-187325

HB 06.01.2022

Authors side note: Canada produces 75 million pounds of honey annually.

                              U.S. honey production for 2022 was 125 million pounds