Dead Bees Still Sting: Tales of Life at the Edge of Nature

Beekeeper and poet Cormier debuts with a poignant collection of essays on life on her Canadian farm, an enclave teeming with wild and domestic animals surrounded by encroaching development. Personal anecdotes inspire reflections on life, as when strong winds knock down the scarecrow next to her quail pen and Cormier muses, “Even a protector of small and soft things sometimes falls down and needs someone to pick him up.” After a neighbor moves away and leaves an armchair outside to deteriorate, she ponders cycles of neighborhood development and decline. Other essays reveal a deep respect for nature: a robin’s nest stops her from chopping down a decaying apple tree, and after finding a dead fawn near the road, her partner gently carries it to the forest. A major through line is Cormier’s love of bees. She explains how a colony visits millions of flowers and flies 50,000 miles to make a pound of honey, and notes that the taste of the honey her bees produce changes with the environment: after the forest behind her property was bulldozed, the previously “rich orange-gold” honey that was “sweetly sour as children’s candies” became “lemon yellow, the tart note reduced to a quiet zing.” Evocative and lyrical, this is a moving portrait of a life lived in tune with nature. (May)