FOLLOWING THE BLOOM
By Douglas Whynott
Stackpole Books, 1991
Category: Nonfiction for Grown-ups
I’m still neck-deep in bees … and will be for a while. THE HIVE DETECTIVES, my next “Scientists in the Field” book, won’t be published until Spring 2010. That’s right, dear blog reader, there are literally years of bee books ahead of us. Buckle up.
FOLLOWING THE BLOOM is a literary road trip: Across America with the Migratory Beekeepers. In it, Whynott introduces readers to a cadre of quirky and irresistible people—almost exclusively men—who spend their lives amongst bees. They keep bees in hives, truck them across state lines, rent them to commercial growers for pollination purposes, wax poetic about their indispensability, collect and sell their honey. The beekeepers I met in Whynott’s book, like those I have met in person, are passionate, fascinating, and a bit out there. Stepping into their world is thrilling; being a bit out there myself, I find I fit right in.