Et cetera : What We're Reading: A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings: A Year of Keeping Bees

My choice for this month's Adventures in Bookclubbing 'Harvest' theme was 'A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings: A Year of Keeping Bees' by Helen Jukes. This is a nonfiction book and reads like a year-long diary with interesting historical tidbits thrown in. Jukes is English and is first introduced to beekeeping through a friend in London. Life brings her to a new home in Oxford, where she starts keeping her own beehive. Throughout the course of a year she finds her new hobby has strengthened her powers of observation of the natural world around her. This is a pleasant, comfortable read, and it left me with an elevated understanding of beekeeping and the contributions of pollinators to our natural world. Additionally, it is a call for preservation of natural bee habitats, and sustainable and ethical honey harvesting practices.

The book currently has 3.73/5 stars on goodreads.com and is available for checkout in regular type at our library.

Happy reading,

Kelly Henkle, Library Director