The parallels of queen bees in a beehive and the real world don’t just stop at high school. Meredith May’s new book, The Honey Bus: A Memoir of Loss, Courage and a Girl Saved by Bees delves into the uncanny similarities between the inner workings of beehives and human society.
The secrets May learned as a fifth-generation beekeeper also helped her through sticky family situations. Her grandparents taught May the art of beekeeping in a converted World War II army bus called “The Honey Bus.” In this no-engine and rusted vehicle lay a magical world May compares to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory.
Her grandfather’s honey factory is vastly different from the commercialized beekeeping across America. The bees in those conglomerate colonies are put on trucks every month to go and pollinate a new monocrop. Bees pollinate one-third of the food grown on Earth. According to May, this monocrop pollination is comparable to a human eating a hotdog every day for a month, moving via truck, and then eating a hamburger every day for a month.
Her book discusses the moral and social structure of bees with their perfectly democratic society. May has learned that bees make decisions based on the betterment of the whole. Her book gives us a better understanding of what all the buzz is really about.
Guest Information:
- Meredith May, author of The Honey Bus: A Memoir of Loss, Courage and a Girl Saved by Bees.
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