Customer Reviews

Following the Bloom

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a new beekeeper - or rather, as someone who has a beehive on her property - I have tried this spring and summer to read everything I can about bees and beekeeping. Whynott's stories are fascinating, and the background information provided is helpful even to a hobbyist. High School biology teachers should put this on their students' summer reading list; I know the school I teach at will!

This book is fascinating, suffering only from being out of date in terms of the new crises in beekeeping. I wish Whynott or someone would revisit the subject of migratory beekeeping. These people drive semis loaded with beehives around the country! It is an adventurous life, to say the least. Whynott tells some wild stories. We owe the migratory beekeepers a lot. This is a quick read, but worth a try if you are at all interested in beekeeping.

Following the Bloom by Douglas Whynott, is a collection of amusing anecdotes of colorful migratory beekeepers and their truck-transported bee-cargo. Doug Whynott hitches a ride and applies his professor quality bee knowledge to the open road. Funny stories, told in a lyrical prose, plus expert information--a book to read and reread and treasure! New England readers may even envision on off-beat winter vacation in the South Carolina sun--as part of the crew.

I'm sorry to learn that this book is not available anymore. I learned about Following the Bloom when I read an article about beekeeping in southern California written by Whynott for a San Diego weekly. I read it, loved it, and then ordered several more copies and took them to beekeepers meetings. This book covers an important time in beekeeping, when tracheal mites arrived in this country and when the Africanized bees crossed from Mexico into Texas. It was a difficult time in commercial beekeeping. The author also covered some of the greats in the industry, people such as Horace Bell. But Whynott goes beyond reporting too, and gets into the mystery of the bees, nature's most interesting creature. The review on the back cover of this book has it right, that the author excites our wonder. Anyone interested in bees or the people who keep them for a living should read this fine book. If you can find it. I'm still looking for copies.

I must confess I enjoyed much of this book. But I felt it warranted two stars as I was really irritated by the portrayal of these migratory bee keepers as romantic cowboy types ( beeboys? ). Perhaps I love the bee too much but some things in this book I really had issues with, one is bees should never be fed corn syrup, it has certain sugars that are toxic to them, as well as absorbing the pesticides sprayed on the corn while it grew. Also migration really stresses them out and increases their chance of dying out. I was also appalled at some of their practices such as liberally dumping handfulls of antibiotics into the hives, illegal practices of running at night to avoid the quarrantines that were put in place to protect the bees and the industry ( and thus spreading diseases and pests ), avoiding weigh stations, parking trucks full of bees with no nets, and dropping hives off on farm land without any permission from the land owners what so ever.
In fairness many of the beekeepers portried in the book did not do all of the above, or at least no longer do some of them, you also have to really admire their drive and tenacity, but there is a reason that these beekeepers are the ones that suffer most from Colony collapse disorder and I have a hard time feeling any sympathy for them, the bees on the otherhand......

If you love bees and beekeeping then you will get a lot out of this book, but you might not like everything that you read.

The book has a lot of historical information which most people whould not know. It is fast reading. But for me it gets confusing after a while trying to remember who is who. Especially if you read just 3 or 4 chapters every night or so. Well worth the money.