Kristen Treen
Voice of the Beehive
A Buzz in the Meadow
By Dave Goulson
Jonathan Cape 266pp £16.99
Bee Time: Lessons from the Hive
By Mark L Winston
Harvard University Press 283pp £18.95
There are few apiarian observances that appeal to the imagination like the practice of ‘telling the bees’. Making its way from Britain to the USA in the 19th century, the tradition held that on the occasion of death or marriage, tidings should be carried to the bees and their hives decorated appropriately. It’s not difficult to see the elegant expression of human dependence upon nature, and vice versa, contained in this quaintly Victorian ritual. Telling the bees is a poignant attempt to speak to nature in the hope that it might listen; it’s about the faith we place in the natural world to help us create order from the chaos of both the unknown and the inevitable. Mary Poppins’s creator and bee enthusiast, P L Travers, recorded just such an impulse in her great-aunt’s communication with the family hive:
‘I have to tell you,’ she said, formally, ‘that King George the Fifth is dead. You may be sorry, but I am not. He was not an interesting man. Besides,’ she added – as though the bees needed telling! – ‘everyone has to die.’
Contemporary beekeepers may speak to their colonies on occasion, but the wider world seems to be forgetting the importance of man’s ongoing conversation with bees and other insects. Since the outbreak of Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) in 2006, Dave Goulson and Mark L Winston have been among the many experts
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
‘I have to change’, Miles Davis once said. ‘It’s like a curse.’
@rwilliams1947 tells the story of how Davis made jazz cool.
Richard Williams - In Their Own Sweet Way
Richard Williams: In Their Own Sweet Way - 3 Shades of Blue: Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans and the Lo...
literaryreview.co.uk
The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act by Fredric Jameson - review by Terry Eagleton via @Lit_Review
for the new(ish) April issue of @Lit_Review I commissioned a number of pieces, including Deborah Levy on Bowie, Rosa Lyster on creative non-fiction, @JonSavage1966 on Pulp, @mjohnharrison on Oyamada, @rwilliams1947 on Kind of Blue, @chris_power on HGarner