Farmer fantasies are all the rage, especially amongst my white-collar, middle-class neighbors.  People with no farming background are searching out ways to get their hands dirty, striving to produce beautiful crops and taking well-earned credit for the results of their hard work.   When I was a kid, Burpee tomatoes and zucchini were sufficient to fulfill the fantasy, but modern times have upped the ante considerably, adding not only hundreds of heirloom plants, but livestock such as chickens, tilapia, llamas and honey bees to the list of suburban home farming options.

Susan Brackney - a writer from Bloomington, Indiana - initially wanted to raise chickens, but after running into legal obstacles in her municipality, she eventually took up beekeeping, hoping that it would help stimulate greater yields in her large garden.   Plan Bee tells the story of her apiarist adventures in nine busy chapters, starting with bee taxonomy and anatomy and ending with an impressive list of all the things that can be done with bee products.

In between she discusses the importance of bees for agriculture and the environment, the various diseases and other obstacles that threaten honey bee colonies and ways to make the world safer for bees.    Her intended audience is not just beekeepers, but also other nature enthusiasts and she even provides advice for those who want to help bees, but may not want to keep them. 

In my favorite section, Brackney reveals the honey bee's role in major historic events, telling how a 12 year-old girl and thousands of local honey bees helped General Washington defeat the Redcoats outside of Philadelphia.

"That wouldn't have been the first time honeybees were used in warfare.  Hives of bees have been dropped on and hurled at advancing forces just about everywhere, including Greece and Rome, across Europe, and in Africa, too.  During the Civil War, the South shot through some hives to beat back the North, and while the Vietnam War raged, Vietnamese guerillas fitted some beehives with trip wives that, when triggered, would disturb the bees along the oncoming Americans' path.  (Sadly, the honeybees have never had a say in their enlistment.)"

As a novice beekeeper, I've done a lot of reading about bees and I figured that there wouldn't be much new information for me in this slim 170 page volume, but it only took about five minutes for me to be drawn in by Brackney's entertaining style.   The book is peppered with fascinating bee facts and she adds plenty of personal anecdotes that I found both humorous and educational.   She even reveals the origins of Gordon Sumner's prickly nickname. 

The author makes it quite clear that her goal is to entertain and educate, not to provide a how-to manual and I think that she achieves this goal with obvious enthusiasm and style.
She includes plenty of black and white photographs and drawings that complement the text well.   

Plan Bee is a quick, fun read with plenty of current information about honey bees and beekeeping.    Given my ever expanding interest in all things honey bee, I found it thoroughly entertaining, but I also suspect that anyone with just a general interest in bees or farming fantasies of their own would also enjoy it. 

Recommended: Yes