William Palmer
Summer In A Jar
The Hive: The Story of the Honeybee and Us
By Bee Wilson
John Murray 308pp £14.99 order from our bookshop
THE BEE HAS been held up as the model of the diligent, unselfish worker for many centuries and its image appears in everything from cave paintings to modern advertising. Ohio, that state of the industrious, has taken the beehive as its emblem; Antoni Gaudi, the architect, absorbed the parabolic arch of the natural honeycomb into his buildings. The busy bee’s chief product echoes in our language: honeymoon, honeydew, honey-traps, honeysuckle. Beeswax has provided polish, witches’ wax-dolls, and Madame Tussaud’s models. No other insect has found such a place in life or art. Ants, as Bee Wilson points out, may work as hard, ‘but, at the end of it all, what do they produce? An anthill.’
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