The honey bee is a miracle. It is the cupid of the
natural world. It pollinates crops; making plants bear
fruit and helping farmers make money. But in this age of
vast industrial agribusiness, never before has so much
been asked of such a small wonder. And never before has
its survival been so unclear - and the future of our
food supply so acutely challenged. In steps John Miller,
or rather in he bounds. Miller tasks himself with the
care and safe transportation of billions of bees. He is
descended from N.E. Miller, America's first migratory
beekeeper, and trucks his hives from crop to crop,
working the North Dakotan clover in summer and the
Californian almonds in winter. He provides the crucial
buzz to farmers who are otherwise bereft of natural
pollinators, and does so for a price. But while there is
steady demand for Miller's miracle workers, especially
from the multi-billion-dollar almond industry (without
bees an acre of almonds produces no more than 30 lbs of
nuts; with bees, 2,000 lbs), he's faced with
ever-mounting hive losses.In addition to traditional
scourges like bears, wax moths, American foulbrood,
tracheal mite, varroa mite, Africanized bees, overturned
tractor trailers, bee thieves, PPB (piss-poor
beekeeping), etc., beekeepers now lose hives in the most
mysterious of ways, when whole colonies simply fly away,
abandoning their combs, in an epidemic known as Colony
Collapse Disorder. While bad news is in constant supply,
Miller forges ahead because he can't imagine doing
anything else. He copes and moves on. He works and
sometimes triumphs, all with an inspiring sense of
humor. ''The Beekeeper's Lament'' tells his story and
that of his bees, creating a complex, moving, and
unforgettable portrait of man in the new natural
world. |
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