THE QUEEN MUST DIE
By William Longgood
Illustrations by Pamela Johnson
Norton, 1985
Category: Adult Nonfiction
THE QUEEN MUST DIE is an extraordinarily thorough look at the honeybee—from winter to fall, from inside the hive and out, from egg stage to working (or loafing, in the case of the “lazy, stupid, fat and greedy” drones) adult, from nurse bee to forager bee, from abdomen to antennae, from Aristotle to modern writers. Amazingly, the author manages this depth and breadth in entertaining and highly-readable prose. Well done!
Longgood admits in the Preface that he is prone to anthropomorphism, and he does attribute to his bees a surprising array of human-like thoughts and feelings. There was a time this would have bothered me. But that was before I dove into this book project, before I spent time working bees, before I enrolled in Bee School (seriously!), before I began dreaming of hives of my own. These experiences have made me more forgiving, and I find myself very open to Longgood’s wider message: there is mystery, even poetry, in the life of a honeybee … and we humans would do good to stop, ponder, and read about it every now and again.