Bees and Their Keepers

A beautifully illustrated and thoroughly engaging cultural history of beekeeping - packed with anecdote, humour and enriching historical detail. The perfect gift."e;A charming look at the history of beekeeping, from myth and folklore to our practical relationship with bees"e; Gardens Illustrated"e;An entertaining collation of bee trivia across the millennia"e; Daily Telegraph* Sweden's Gardening Book of the Year 2019 * Shortlisted for the August Prize 2019 * Winner of the Swedish Book Design Award for 2019Beekeeper and garden historian Lotte M ller explores the activities inside and outside the hive while charting the bees' natural order and habits. With a light touch she uses her encyclopaedic knowledge of the subject to shed light on humanity's understanding of bees and bee lore from antiquity to the present. A humorous debunking of the myths that have held for centuries is matched by a wry exploration of how and when they were replaced by fact. In her travels M ller encounters a trigger-happy Californian beekeeper raging against both killer bees and bee politics, warring beekeepers on the Danish island of L so, and Brother Adam of Buckfast Abbey, breeder of the Buckfast queen now popular throughout Europe and beyond, as well a host of others as passionate as she about the complex world of apiculture both past and present.Translated from the Swedish by Frank Perry