Revery: A Year of Bees

By Jenna Butler

I hope you're okay in there, lovelies. I hope you're warm. After five years of working with bees on her farm in northern Alberta, Jenna Butler shares with the reader the rich experience of keeping hives. Starting with a rare bright day in late November as the bees are settling in for winter she takes us through a year in beekeeping on her small piece of the boreal forest. Weaving together her personal story with the practical aspects of running a farm, she takes us into the worlds of honeybees and wild bees. She considers the twinned development of the canola and honey industries in Alberta and the impact of crop sprays, debates the impact of introduced flowers versus native flowers, the effect of colony collapse disorder, and the protection of natural environments for wild bees. This is also the story of women and bees, and how beekeeping became Jenna Butler's personal survival story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wolsak and Wynn Publishers Ltd
• Release date: Mar 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9781989496251

Jenna Butler

Jenna Butler is a poet, professor, essayist, and organic farmer from northern Alberta. She teaches Creative Writing at Red Deer College. Her books include Seldom Seen Road, Magnetic North, Wells, Aphelion, and an award-winning collection of ecological essays, A Profession of Hope: Farming on the Edge of the Grizzly Trail. Her memoir, Revery: A Year of Bees, was a finalist for the 2021 Governor General's Literary Award for Non-fiction.