"We have chosen to ?ll our hives with honey and wax; thus
furnishing mankind with the two noblest of things, which are
sweetness and light." --Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
"Sweetness and Light is the fascinating story of bees and honey
from the Stone Age to the contemporary cutting edge; from Nepalese
honey hunters to urban hives on the rooftops of New York City.
Honey is nature in a pot, gathered in by bees from many different
environments--Zambian rain forests, Midwestern prairies, Scottish
moors, and thyme-covered Sicilian mountainsides, to name a few. But
honey is much more than just a food, and bees are more than mere
insects. The bee is the most studied creature on the planet next to
man, and it and its products have been harnessed by doctors,
philosophers, scientists, politicians, artists, writers, and
architects throughout the ages as both metaphor and material.
In colorful, mellifluous language that delights and excites on
every page, Hattie Ellis interweaves social history, popular
science, and traveler's tales into a buzzing chronological
narrative. She explores the mysterious ways of bees, such as how
they can make up to twenty-four thousand journeys to produce a
single pound of honey, and she takes the lid off the hive to reveal
as many as a hundred thousand bees living and working together in
total discipline.
Great thinkers throughout the centuries have been inspired by bees,
from Aristotle to Shakespeare to Charles Darwin to Frank Lloyd
Wright, echoing, at every stage, the wider scienti?c discoveries
and philosophical movements that have changed our understanding of
the world. The unfolding story of bees also transports us into
broader areas of historicalexperience: from the Egyptian pharaohs'
elaborate burial chambers in the pyramids, the medieval guilds, the
berserk drunken rituals of mead drinking, and the Mormons' epic
journey west to candlelight in churches, sealing wax, and feast and
famine.
The bee existed long before man; without bees, the planet and its
inhabitants would soon begin to die. This small insect, with a
collective significance so much greater than its individual size,
can carry us through past and present to tell us more about
ourselves than any other living creature.
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