Bee Club

This novel is written by local author Mea McNeil. Mea writes narrative nonfiction as well as fiction–her work is informed by life as a beekeeper and organic farmer.

Held together as step-kin to a bunch of insects, the club confronts the obstacles that are causing the loss of bees everywhere. Members include some who keep bees for their livelihood, some for their spirit, some for a few bucks and adventure, and some for the science–but most for fascination with creatures that communicate by dance and scent, and can even reverse age. Then there is Lilja, an anxious, bee-phobic teenager with nowhere else to go.

Navigating pests, pathogens, and poor forage, the members are also faced with their own irreconcilable ideologies. Whatever the opinions of those who tend their boxes, the bees are undomesticated, independent. They mingle their genes and their problems; among them thrives the lineage of a queen bee with a genetic advantage. Bee Club is as much about the bees as their hovering people.