The Beekeeper’s Lament Nordhaus, Hannah Nonfiction/Nature
	On Sale Date:	05/24/2011
	Imprint:	HarperPerennial
	Print Run:	100,000
	Format:	Trade Paperback
		336 pgs.
	Price:	$14.99
	ISBN:	006187325X
	ISBN 13:	9780061873256
	Other Formats
	Ebook	9780062079428

Award-winning journalist Hannah Nordhaus tells the remarkable story of John Miller, one of America’s foremost migratory beekeepers, who tasks himself with the care and safe transportation of billions of bees. He is descended from N.E. Miller, America’s first migratory beekeeper, and trucks his hives from crop to crop, working the North Dakotan clover in summer and the Californian almonds in winter. He provides the crucial buzz to farmers who are otherwise bereft of natural pollinators, and does so for a price. But while there is steady demand for Miller’s miracle workers, especially from the multi-billion-dollar almond industry (without bees an acre of almonds produces no more than 30 lbs of nuts; with bees, 2,000 lbs), he’s faced with ever-mounting hive losses. In addition to traditional scourges like bears, wax moths, American foulbrood, tracheal mite, varroa mite, Africanized bees, overturned tractor trailers, bee thieves, etc beekeepers now lose hives in the most mysterious of ways, when whole colonies simply fly away, abandoning their combs, in an epidemic known as Colony Collapse Disorder. While bad news is in constant supply, Miller forges ahead because he can’t imagine doing anything else. He copes and moves on. He works and sometimes triumphs, all with an inspiring sense of humor. The Beekeeper’s Lament tells his story and that of his bees, creating a complex, moving, and unforgettable portrait of man in the new natural world.