Following the Bloom

by Douglas Whynott

A updated edition of the classic portrait of America's migratory beekeepers chronicles their lives and relationships with the bees themselves as they and their bees follow the nectar flow across America. By the author of A Unit of Water, A Unit of Time. Original. 10,000 first printing.

Genres: Nonfiction

272 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

Reviews

[Liz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written, researched and thoughtfully compiled accounts of beekeepers - their lives and families. It took a little bit to get sucked in but once you’re immersed it’s a fascinating account of the ups and downs of this side of the agriculture business, the trials of pests like the tracheal mite (this is pre varroa mite era) and invading Africanized bees. And to those in my millennial group there’s a bit of nostalgia and comedy in imaging this lifestyle pre-cellphones, credit debit cards, etc that made everything just a bit more challenging!

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating!

[Bob Redmond · Rating 4 out of 5]

First published in 1991 (and re-published with a new preface and epilogue in 2004), this book primarily covers the year of 1985. 1985 was a watershed year for beekeeping: it was the year the tracheal mites hit, the year the Honey Subsidy Program got changed, and the year Africanized bees first landed in California. Within five more years, varroa mites would take hold, Africanized bees would cross the border in force, and revenue for honey as a crop would fall farther behind revenue from pollination contracts. In short, 1985 was the end of an era.

Whynott covers it all in taut prose, written with a beekeeper's knowledge (the author was state beekeeping inspector for Massachusetts, and keeps bees himself) but also with a journalist's gift for language (he subsequently became the director of the MFA program at Emerson College).

The main narrative follows commercial beekeepers as they cross the country, from Florida to Maine, from North Dakota to Louisiana, to Texas, California, and back. Woven along these main trails are stories of how commercial beekeeping developed in the last century--including the use of the bobcat forklift by the people who inaugurated it. Whynott also covers basic bee biology and includes several excellent chapters on Africanized bees (gripping), and bee dancing and communication (concise, readable, fascinating).

The beekeeper stories are first-hand, fraught with farmer angst and romance. Who could not be swayed by the thrill of hauling thousands of hives through the open skies of this country, ready to pollinate blueberries, oranges, clover, almonds? Where will the hives go? Will 800 beehives be noticed before the bees can gather the nectar? Whynott makes you smell the dirt and the honey and the wax, even feel the sting.

His description (p. 196) of an old beekeeper with "a voice like soft brushes" is just the thing that gives the book texture. Beekeeper Jim Owens senior says (p. 133), "Once you work bees it's like a disease. You get in with it and you can't get away from it, you like it so much." And you have to agree with it, if not from personal experience, then from desire to be among, as Whynott describes, them, the last cowboys: no fences, sometimes outlaw, following the bloom.

On the other hand, reading this book gives a glimpse into the industrial agriculture system of this country. It's like looking into a volcano: huge, volatile, unsustainable and ready to blow. What are the implications of these massive migrations of bees? Is there any causal relationship between bee disease and the stress of the system? Whynott avoids editorializing one way or the other, except on the stress to the beekeeper.

He might even be accused of glossing over some issues. For instance, he doesn't mention the ill-effects of feeding the bees corn syrup. Horace Bell, whose 30,000 hives made him one of the nation's biggest operators, boasts about how he was first to feed mass amounts of high fructose corn syrup in the early 80s (p. 98): Don't let them eat a drop of honey. Let them eat corn syrup. Whynott misses a chance to pose some questions here.

Incredibly, he describes this scene too without comment (p. 154): "They (beekeepers Jeff Kalmus and Dale Thompson) had dispensed antibiotics, too, tossing handfuls of tetracycline mix on the frames, leaving trails of powder in the air that made the two look like shamans throwing medicine dust." That exact practice would help generate the super-bugs that resist medication and continue to plague bees, not to mention cause problems for humans. Maybe there's a school of journalism that encourages pure description and lets the reader draw their own conclusions.

No matter what you think of the practices, you have to respect the hard work of the beekeepers, who epitomize the American romance of work and agriculture. Do we need new romances? Maybe--the romance of survival might be an interesting one, one that we still have to write. This romance is about what used to be.

*

WHY I READ THIS BOOK: I had seen this book in Powell's during a bee-book excursion, but passed it up, mostly because I had too many books already, and also because I didn't want to spend too much time learning about trucking bees all over the place. When meeting up with another beekeeper, however, and discussing our favorite bee books, he mentioned this one. I gave it another look.

[Suzanne · Rating 5 out of 5]

At first there was something about his sort of know it all attutude that bothered me, like so many new beekeepers I know. But, as I read on, I learned quite a bit. of detailed information about bee senses, communication, and behavior. The migatory beekeepers story keeps things moving, and is also good reading, though not as interesting as the bee facts chapters. A lot of what the anuthor reports the migratory beekeepers as doing with their bees is outdated, even in the revised 2008 version I read. But it's interesting to read what they were doing "way back then" before widespread varroa et al.

[Ruth · Rating 2 out of 5]

There is just way too much information about beekeeping here, and the writing ranges from quite engaging to seriously dry. I wanted to know more about beekeepers who truck their bees all over the country to wherever something is in flower and I did get that, but I should have just read an article-length selection. I guess since I learned about the effects of introduced honey bee populations on native pollinators from another recent book, this was an appropriate follow up, sort of the other side of the story. I still don't highly recommend it, though.

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I iked this book because I learned about a subject that I had never thought about before--the trucking of bees all over the count Iry to pollinate various crops. I was amazed by some of the trucking shenanigans and wondered if I had ever come across a bee truck on the interstate. I didn't like the efforts beekeepers made to avoid weigh stations and wondered about the agricultural subsidies for bee keepers. I wish the book had told me more about the lives of bees and had included a diagram or two of a hive.

[Lindsey · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book was originally written in 1991 and I'm sure back then this was a very relevant book about the challenges facing the bee-keeping industry. This updated addition does have the added sections at the beginning and the end of the book to address the current state of commercial beekeeping but I still felt that this read more like an historical text on apiaries and the husbandry of beekeeping. It was so dry and repetitive. Just ok.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is good for what it is --- an overview of commmercial beekeepers who migrate with their hives to pollinate large crops all over the country. Alternates more scientific information with profiles of the beekeepers themselves. Worth checking out from the library if you are interested in bees or agriculture.

[Kelly · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book will have you buying local...honey, beeswax, what have you. Whynott is a big proponent of large scale migratory beekeeping, but his honest assessment of the business has me running the other way. Really cool insight into the making of honey, the lives of bees.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

Three and a half stars, I guess, as if rating a book with stars is something one should do. Certainly had the scope you like as far as hitting on science and history and little tid bits of the industry, behind the scenes stuff, and personal narrative.

[Melissa · Rating 4 out of 5]

All the things you didn't know (and probably never need to know) about bees. But fascinating nonetheless. Written concisely, with great interludes into the history, physiology, ethics of bees/beekeeping.

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

all about migratory beekeepers. crazy stuff.

[Martha · Rating 4 out of 5]

The life of migratory beekeepers is fascinating.

[Michelle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was not the best writing, but if you are fascinated by bees, as I am, you will enjoy.

[Amanda]

Commercial honeybees are fed corn syrup so they won't eat the honey. I learned that. But the book kind of keeps going and going.

[Louise Chambers · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love bees! This book is packed full of bee lore. I highly recommend it.

[Kendra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting

[Kelly Diamond · Rating 5 out of 5]

A fascinating book about the intelligence of bees.