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Claire Preston’s Bee tells the busy story of our long, complex relationship with this industrious, much-admired insect. Moving from ancient political descriptions to Renaissance debates about monarchy, to the conversion of the virtuous and civil bee into the dangerous swarm of the Hollywood horror flick, and finally to the melancholy recognition that the modern decline of the bee is due to our use of harmful pesticides and destruction of the bee’s habitat, this timely new edition could not arrive at a moment of greater buzz. Lively, engaging, and containing many fascinating bee facts, anecdotes, fables, and images, Bee is a sweeping, highly illustrated natural and cultural history of this familiar visitor to our gardens and parks. From beekeepers to anyone with an interest in bees’ intricate, miniature societies, to all of us who enjoy honey on our toast, the appeal of Preston’s exploration of how bees have woven themselves into the fabric of our culture is as expansive as the range and importance of these tiny workaholics themselves.
224 pages, Paperback
First published February 20, 2006
9 people are currently reading
233 people want to read
About the author
Claire Preston
14 books2 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads data base.
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
May 5, 2018
Given how often I absolutely adore the Reaktion Animal Series books, I was rather deeply disappointed in this one.
I was wary rather immediately when I saw other reviewers point out some mistakes that the author had made in the biology section of the book. Further, it was mentioned in previous reviews how often the author relied upon narratives from the 1600s rather than talking about innovations in apian science and our understanding of bees in general. Only briefly was bee communication and dancing mentioned within the book, and very little attention was paid overall to any recent ethology studies on the insect. The bulk of the book was focused only upon honeybees and the symbolism thereof. Anthrpocentrism dominated the book, which was a bit sad as I was hoping for more information about actual bees, to learn more about bees that aren't honeybees, and in general broaden my apian horizons.
This was a decent introduction to how humans have thought of bees and how those thoughts have changed. It was a decent look at the political importance of bees as a symbol of idealized society, and later, the horrors of communism and bees representing the ultimate deindividuated person. So, all in all the book was interesting and I was able to learn from it, but I had hoped for something rather more detailed and enlightening.
Also - bear in mind this book doesn't address colony collapse at all, and I am uncertain if that was simply a mistake or if the book came out too early to really view that as an issue.
I was wary rather immediately when I saw other reviewers point out some mistakes that the author had made in the biology section of the book. Further, it was mentioned in previous reviews how often the author relied upon narratives from the 1600s rather than talking about innovations in apian science and our understanding of bees in general. Only briefly was bee communication and dancing mentioned within the book, and very little attention was paid overall to any recent ethology studies on the insect. The bulk of the book was focused only upon honeybees and the symbolism thereof. Anthrpocentrism dominated the book, which was a bit sad as I was hoping for more information about actual bees, to learn more about bees that aren't honeybees, and in general broaden my apian horizons.
This was a decent introduction to how humans have thought of bees and how those thoughts have changed. It was a decent look at the political importance of bees as a symbol of idealized society, and later, the horrors of communism and bees representing the ultimate deindividuated person. So, all in all the book was interesting and I was able to learn from it, but I had hoped for something rather more detailed and enlightening.
Also - bear in mind this book doesn't address colony collapse at all, and I am uncertain if that was simply a mistake or if the book came out too early to really view that as an issue.
August 20, 2025
3.5 stars
Review to follow.
Review to follow.
April 26, 2009
Okay, I love to read, I'm in love with my bees, and I started out with high hopes for this book. But reading this book was like slogging through a swimming pool filled with honey. I can't tell you how bored I was. Was it the overly pretentious compound-complex sentences? The excruciating detail paid to the 1600s in every chapter (even the Bee Movie chapter?)? The tiny pictures on the corners of the page that should have replaced text instead? Seriously, it's a miracle that this book is on my "read" shelf on not my "abandoned" shelf. It got two stars because she covered the 1970s killer bee movies, so I can now add them to my Netflix queue.
June 24, 2023
I bought this book in May 2009, around the time I really started getting into bees. I think I made one attempt to read it, but the density of information that I wanted to write down overwhelmed me. Fourteen years later, and I am better at reading nonfiction, I think. I took things in and thought more about overall arguments and less about individual facts. I enjoyed much of it, but I think what put me off in that initial read remains a problem with the book. There's a lot of stuff here, and while it is grouped vaguely by theme, it seems sometimes that the overall thrust is such that it might have been better arranged chronologically as the themes have a fair bit of crossover. The penultimate chapter, "Bee movie" illustrates this well because it deals with a change in the perception of bees through the twentieth century. It feels like one of few chapters that really has a point to make besides the presentation of Information. Tracing the cultural history of bees alongside changes in our knowledge about bees would have given more depth to these facts.
Many of the facts are extremely interesting, and some have stuck with me across the decade-plus since my first aborted read. The belief that wasps were the devil's attempt to make a bee is one such fact, which I love. But it also highlights another problem, which is ineffective referencing. No source is provided for this belief, and I haven't found anything else about it. In an area that I know a bit more about the references are inconsistent: the notes to chapter 4 give page numbers for translations of Hesiod's Works and Days and Vergil's Georgics, rather than book or line numbers; later references to the Georgics do give line numbers, but no book (the discussion of bees is entirely in book IV, if you're looking for it). As ever, errors in things I know about undermines my trust in the things I don't know - I'd have to second-source pretty much every fact in this book, but as mentioned, some don't even have references.
Thus, while I enjoyed a lot of what I read in this book, it was somewhat undermined by the problems elsewhere.
Many of the facts are extremely interesting, and some have stuck with me across the decade-plus since my first aborted read. The belief that wasps were the devil's attempt to make a bee is one such fact, which I love. But it also highlights another problem, which is ineffective referencing. No source is provided for this belief, and I haven't found anything else about it. In an area that I know a bit more about the references are inconsistent: the notes to chapter 4 give page numbers for translations of Hesiod's Works and Days and Vergil's Georgics, rather than book or line numbers; later references to the Georgics do give line numbers, but no book (the discussion of bees is entirely in book IV, if you're looking for it). As ever, errors in things I know about undermines my trust in the things I don't know - I'd have to second-source pretty much every fact in this book, but as mentioned, some don't even have references.
Thus, while I enjoyed a lot of what I read in this book, it was somewhat undermined by the problems elsewhere.
April 6, 2021
Humans have been interacting with, exploiting, & studying bees for tens of thousands of years. Preston gives a comprehensive, readable journey through how our perception of bees has changed over that time. She includes enough science & bee husbandry to elucidate how those perceptions have more to do with us than bees. A lot more. Preston relates these perceptions to the political & social themes of the times. An enjoyable & well researched book, sometimes tainted by Preston's disdain for certain cultural trends, but a book, nevertheless, to be recommended.
November 14, 2019
Who knew there was so much the learn about the humble bee. As there seems to be confusion over this, it is a social history of bees not to be mistaken for a general bee book.
However I did feel like the book didn't really follow the structure it layed out for itself which did make it drag on towards the end. The overly academic language probably didn't help either.
I still enjoyed it though and I feel people with an anthropology, history, or sociology background would enjoy it too.
However I did feel like the book didn't really follow the structure it layed out for itself which did make it drag on towards the end. The overly academic language probably didn't help either.
I still enjoyed it though and I feel people with an anthropology, history, or sociology background would enjoy it too.
January 6, 2018
Some pretty pictures, some glaring factual errors in the biology chapter and elsewhere, and the language was pretty turgid and the sections unstructured. If it had not been about bees I would have looked at the pictures and then abandoned it.
October 21, 2021
Disappointed. Hardly any facts, largely a book about bee folklore, myth, its appearance in movies, its influence on politics, art and architecture. Loads of quotes from mostly obscure authors and philosophers. Numbing …
June 7, 2023
delightful
June 18, 2023
I love bees but I didn't love this book. I got a bad gut feeling from the start when the author justified why the book was going to be Eurocentric (by which she meant northwestern Europe, mostly England by the way). I was really looking forward to learning about the cultural significance of bees from all over the world and not least from my own country (in South-Eastern Europe). I know the bee is such a massive part of my country's culture and folklore and I know it is in other places in the region too, so I found it extremely disappointing that there was no mention at all of any of these.
If the bee is thought to have originated from the Indian subcontinent, why was there so little content about bees in Indian culture? If the bee was introduced into the Americas by colonisers, why was the significance of bees in the US so widely discussed while there was very little discussion about bees in Central and South America?
In a few instances, it was mentioned that beekeeping practices in England differed by those in, say, Greece as the hives used were different and the honey extraction methods were different. In the case of honey extraction, bees had to be killed in English hives/skeps, but not necessarily in Greek ones. At some point, the English started to adapt a similar method for honey extraction, leading to the modern beehive. Even with this being the case, the focus was way too much on medieval England. The Greek practices were not discussed at all, except when mentioning that they played a role in the evolution of the western beehive.
Overall, I didn't think that the research is unavailable or, as the author suggests at the start of the book, that the west simply has a richer tradition to do with honey, but it seemed to me like the book was poorly researched instead. There is plenty of beautiful tradition around the world, but instead, the focus was almost solely on English and American practices.
I'm giving 2 stars because at least I learnt something through this book: that I hate the history that the English-speaking world has had with the bees. I hate how negatively the bee was portrayed in media for a long time, I hate the disgusting ways it was used as a political image and I hate some of the beekeeping practices that were way behind where some of the rest of the world was at at the time.
Coming from a country in whose tradition the bee is a sacred animal, where it is always treated and spoken about with respect, where its death is mourned, where bees are thought to be the reincarnated souls of people who had been good in their lifetimes... I was incredibly disappointed that this book covered none of the beautiful traditions of cultures like mine and instead lazily focused so much on grey, dark stories of medieval England and modern American agriculture - where the farming methods have an incredibly negative impact on bees and biodiversity in general.
I was hoping to see some more happy, bright, colourful, diverse bee lore. I was hoping to read myths as sweet as the honey produced by these creatures. Instead I was appalled at the historical disrespect towards bees in England. No wonder bees are in trouble when a country with such a history wields so much power in the world.
If the bee is thought to have originated from the Indian subcontinent, why was there so little content about bees in Indian culture? If the bee was introduced into the Americas by colonisers, why was the significance of bees in the US so widely discussed while there was very little discussion about bees in Central and South America?
In a few instances, it was mentioned that beekeeping practices in England differed by those in, say, Greece as the hives used were different and the honey extraction methods were different. In the case of honey extraction, bees had to be killed in English hives/skeps, but not necessarily in Greek ones. At some point, the English started to adapt a similar method for honey extraction, leading to the modern beehive. Even with this being the case, the focus was way too much on medieval England. The Greek practices were not discussed at all, except when mentioning that they played a role in the evolution of the western beehive.
Overall, I didn't think that the research is unavailable or, as the author suggests at the start of the book, that the west simply has a richer tradition to do with honey, but it seemed to me like the book was poorly researched instead. There is plenty of beautiful tradition around the world, but instead, the focus was almost solely on English and American practices.
I'm giving 2 stars because at least I learnt something through this book: that I hate the history that the English-speaking world has had with the bees. I hate how negatively the bee was portrayed in media for a long time, I hate the disgusting ways it was used as a political image and I hate some of the beekeeping practices that were way behind where some of the rest of the world was at at the time.
Coming from a country in whose tradition the bee is a sacred animal, where it is always treated and spoken about with respect, where its death is mourned, where bees are thought to be the reincarnated souls of people who had been good in their lifetimes... I was incredibly disappointed that this book covered none of the beautiful traditions of cultures like mine and instead lazily focused so much on grey, dark stories of medieval England and modern American agriculture - where the farming methods have an incredibly negative impact on bees and biodiversity in general.
I was hoping to see some more happy, bright, colourful, diverse bee lore. I was hoping to read myths as sweet as the honey produced by these creatures. Instead I was appalled at the historical disrespect towards bees in England. No wonder bees are in trouble when a country with such a history wields so much power in the world.
October 24, 2008
For anyone with a vague fascination with bees, this is an insightful, engaging, and accessible book. What are some things I learned from this book?
• honey can be used as a preservative (you could be embalmed in honey!)
• Joan of Arc was represented with a beehive
• Pythagoras and Democritus attributed their long lives to the consumption of honey
• witches were sometimes accused of taking the form of bees in Medieval Scotland
• Virgil claimed bees balanced themselves for flight with tiny stones carried in their two feet
• the Latin word for "deceit" is also the word for "drone"
Now does anyone else think it's funny that I used bullet points?
• honey can be used as a preservative (you could be embalmed in honey!)
• Joan of Arc was represented with a beehive
• Pythagoras and Democritus attributed their long lives to the consumption of honey
• witches were sometimes accused of taking the form of bees in Medieval Scotland
• Virgil claimed bees balanced themselves for flight with tiny stones carried in their two feet
• the Latin word for "deceit" is also the word for "drone"
Now does anyone else think it's funny that I used bullet points?
March 8, 2010
One of the best general bee overview books out there (of which there are several) that cover lore, legend and fact about bees. This one delves a bit more, and has many wonderful illustrations. Did you know St. Ambrose was the patron saint of beekeepers? Or there's an African bird that eats honey and leads people to bees' nest so the humans can harvest the honey and share it with the bird? Lots of fascinating tidbits.
August 15, 2008
I love this publisher/series. I need to pick up a more science-y bee book but this was a good overview/intro.
April 13, 2009
disappointing. more is said about what is said about bees rather than bees themselves. didn't finish.
September 1, 2010
This was a great book--it was just what I was looking for: a cultural overview of the bee and how it's been viewed through history and it's various cultural incarnations. Great!
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews