¶ Intro / Opening
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Hello, this is James Nochtie. Thank you very much for downloading this edition of Book Club from BBC Radio 4.
¶ Introduction to The History of Bees
Hello and welcome to Book Club. Our book this month couldn't be more appropriate for this moment. We're all thinking about climate and the natural world and the threats they may face.
So what better?
than to read Mayalunda's wholly original and gripping story, The History of Bees actually its three stories, linked across different continents and through time. William in Hertfordshire as a nineteenth century beekeeper, George in Ohio, in our own age, still uses traditional methods in his hives and Tao works in China a long way into the future, when the bees have all gone, so her job is to be a human pollinator, tending the fruit trees.
And the story of these three blend together in a dazzling portrait of this fascinating corner of the natural world, and it's a feat of the imagination. Bees are hypnotic creatures, and we all ask for Where would we be without them? Maya Lunda joins us from Oslo. Maya, welcome to Book Club.
Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here.
¶ Bee-Human Connection and Story Origin
My first question is a very obvious one. What is it that fascinated you about the connection between bees and humans as individuals and the way they go about their business?
Well, first of all, as you probably all know, we we need these pollinating insects, not only bees, but but all of the pollinating insects to to get what we what we eat. Most of it. Vegetables, fruit. That's that's the beginning of it. Our dependence on insects. But then for me, the fascination of the life inside the beehive: well, where to start?
I think that
What struck me the most was how they work together, how the the beehive is a super organism where everyone depends on everyone. and uh they all work for the same goal and they all take care of each other's children. And I think we could really learn something from that. To think of this this world as one big beehive where we should all cooperate.
And that's what makes this um literature and not science, in the sense that that stirs your imagination. It makes you have ideas about people and The way we interact, and that's what turns it into a story, rather than, you know, a piece of research.
Hm. Yes, maybe it is. And for me this story also started with the characters. I mean the idea is always connected to the characters. Uh for me, that's where it begins to get to know them, to be curious about them.
¶ Crafting the Main Characters
If you're not curious, it doesn't work. Well, Spirit is the first reader and listener joining us today. Spirit, what's your question?
Hello.
Um that's a hard question, you know. But for me actually the easiest one to write was George. Actually George uh was inspired by interviews of beekeepers in the United States in two thousand and seven and they were hit by colony collapse disorder. They lost all their their bees. And they were these strong men with very few words standing in front of their beehives devastated, and they had a hard time being Talking about it.
George is a beekeeper more or less in our time. He is I think in two thousand and seven and he is using methods which have been prescribed by a descendant of one of the other characters in the book, and that's one of the extraordinary connections.
That's correct. And he inspired me, I mean, to make that character I looked at these guys and I tried to be inside their heads and he came he came quite easily. I easily understood whom he who he was and I I felt sympathy for him. And then William, which I like know a lot of readers find a bit hard to like, and he is a bit hard to like because he's he's a stubborn guy, he's
not g a good father and he lives in another time. He's he's a man of his of the eighteen fifties. He was a bit harder to write and how the Chinese woman living in the future I mean I had a hard time stepping into that story because I never saw myself as an author writing from the future.
But then I realized she was a mother as me and she had a son the same age as my own boy, th my own uh youngest because I had three boys, and I realized that I had to go into the m motherhood of her story and to to take part of of her uh love and her her lust because she actually loses her son. throughout the story and and that was how I started to relate. Not to look at it as, you know, science fiction, but to look at it
as a story of the relationship between a mother and a child. And when that came, I actually I think maybe Tao was the one I related mostly to.
Spirit, let me come back to you for you which character stands out as you
Um I actually related most to Dow as well. I I generally find it quite a lot easier to relate to female characters anyway. Rydyn ni'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd
thing that enabled you to write the character of Tao. And I was just wondering what the other threads were that enabled you to be pulled closer to that of George and William.
Well, this is definitely a book about the relationship between children and parents. And I guess parenthood was uh the core of these two other stories as well as well. And I find it also very interesting to write about characters that are a bit hard to like. I want them to feel real and and I usually do this in my books. I I f I find characters that maybe not all readers can relate to. But both of them have
Strong traits that I really understand. Like William, he has this passion for science, this passion for insects, this passion for books. and I can really understand his passion and that was what made it easy for me to relate to him, even when he is a quite bad person. When it comes to George I think these interviews that I talked about made me sympathize with him because
I find it as, you know, an author. I work with words, but I find it really interesting to write about people who have a hard time talking and also writing. He has a hard time with words. And and I I just liked him from the beginning.
¶ Novel Structure and Bee Metaphors
Uh all the characters, of course, the principal characters, are beekeepers, naturally, and Neta, who is in Colchester, has sent us in this question.
Hi, I really did enjoy the history of beef. I thought that the structure of the novel, the way the characters' voices alternated was very similar to the way that the bees work in my garden. They flit from flower to flower, and they often revisit a bloom to make sure that they have gotten the very last bit of Before I began reading this novel, though, you could have put everything that I knew about bees on the head of a pig.
But then I started to do a bit of research and realized the clever ways in which you incorporated elements of B society into the lives and the relationships of the central characters. My question is, was this a deliberate choice? And what did you hope to bring to the reader's attention? Thank you.
Oh that's uh a beautiful thing she says about the book. Uh so thank you. When I write a lot happens in the story that aren't really, you know, it only comes from the texts. And when I look back at the books I've written, I find there are several messages you can read into them, and there are several meanings
grow out of the text so to speak. And it's always also up to the reader. I think it's up to the readers to find their message and that's also the boundary of fiction I think that there are as many versions of a novel as there are readers.
Uh one of the magical elements of this book, I think, is the way that the the lives of bee colonies, whether in uh Hertfordshire in the eighteen fifties, in the Midwest around now, there is a kind of mirroring of our own lives. in the lives of the bees and that's one of the ways that the book works.
Yes, and I love that I love that you you find that in the book. But you could also read it as a parent and children story only, but I mean nature mirrors nature. You find that everywhere. Our lives mirror the lives of bees. And we all I mean, we are all in this beehive together, aren't we?
It's William, I think, who says that he is a drone. That's who he is in the world.
He feels like a drone. He is useless. and he ends up being quite useless. At least that's what he thinks.
Well of course without the drones I speak as a beekeeper here. Without the drones, um the thing wouldn't work. But there we are, let's pass. I want to talk a little bit about um Tao.
¶ Tao's Future: Human Pollinators
We'd many questions about her. The story is set, her part of the story in China in twenty ninety eight, so just before the beginning of the next century. The bees have all died out. And she's now one of many people, um hundreds, thousands of people, who are having to pollinate the fruit trees physically. It's the job that the bees once did. Now here she is at work. It's a passage at the very start of the novel. and incidentally uh the original was translated into English by Diane Oatley.
The little plastic container was full of the gossamer gold, carefully weighed out. I tried to transfer invisible portions lightly out of the container and over into the trees. Each individual blossom was to be dusted with a tiny brush of hen feathers. From hens scientifically cultivated for precisely this purpose. No feathers of artificial fibers had proven nearly as effective. It had been tested, and then tested again, because we had had plenty of time.
In my district, the tradition of hand pollination was more than a hundred years old. The bees here had disappeared back in the nineteen eighties, long before the collapse. Pesticides had done away with them. A few years later, when the pesticides were no longer in use, the bees returned, but by then hand pollination had already been implemented.
The results were better, even though an incredible number of people, an incredible number of hands, were acquired. And so when the collapse came, my district had a competitive edge. We were a pioneer nation in pollution, and so we became a pioneer nation in pollination.
¶ Environmental Warnings and Hope
You clearly have a great deal of sympathy for her. Her love for her son d drives her through the story, but of course we also see her living in a a regime that is rather unforgiving and overwhelming.
I feel sympathy for the whole future part. Uh I guess that sympathy comes from The sympathy I also feel for my grandchildren and even for me as an elderly p person living in this world w it sometimes feels like it's falling apart. I sometimes get the question where where where does your energy to write come from? And I guess it comes from my fear of the world of a world that's changing.
Well Sarah from Coventry sent us this question on that subject.
In Tao's timeline we move to the future. Is this proposed story one among many, or the most likely one, in your view?
Well, this novel started with a what if question. What if all the pollinating insects disappear? I don't think this exact scenario will happen the way I described it. Ah, I mean in my next books, because this is the first of of of uh three so far, I actually look into what we know will happen with the world with if we don't stop ch climate changes. But for the history of bees, luckily, I don't think we will get this exact scenario.
Rosamond from Bristol sent this question to us, which is on pretty much the same theme. Let's hear it.
Hi Maya. I just want to start by saying how much I loved your book and that it really inspired me. In fact, I was especially interested in this book because my recent PhD project examined how the B decline is being narrated and imagined. My question is about Teo's story, which is set in the future.
In this story the world has been through a catastrophic period of social and environmental breakdown. However, this speculative story also ends on a hopeful note about the possibility to learn from our past mistakes. I therefore wondered if he meant this speculative story to be a warning for our futures if we follow our current path. And why you chose to draw this story to a close in a more hopeful way?
Well, that's also an interesting uh question. I think if I I if I were to have one clear message I would probably be a politician. Um this story actually started when I saw a documentary about colony collapse disorder and the importance of bees. And in that documentary I saw these beekeepers in the United United States in two thousand and seven. I saw hand pollinating women in China already today.
and I learned about how the first bee hives were invented and I saw the three main characters very clearly from from the first day. So I always start with, you know, trying to find out who these people are, trying to be inside their heads, trying to to feel what they feel, to be hungry when they are hungry, thirsty when they are thirsty, and sad when they are sad. In that process, the message of the text and the readers are actually Far away from me, he said.
What Rosamond noticed, of course, was that you do end on a hopeful note.
I do, and I think that's Probably something that comes from my personality. But going into these subjects of course hard and can make me quite pessimistic. Because I force myself to do research. I force myself to read everything I can find, I force myself to be in the climate crisis, in the nature crisis, so to speak. But I find myself usually ending on a positive note. And that's probably also because I am an optimistic person. And I do find there are so many things in us, in humans.
Gives me hope. our ability to change, for example, our ability to to communicate.
¶ Parenthood and Intergenerational Duty
You're listening to Book Club on Radio 4 and BBC Sounds, Maya Lunda is talking about her novel The History of Bees. You've described for us the way that uh this book emerged as a story of parents and children, really. And Emily, a reader who joins us from London, has a question about that very aspect of the book, Emily.
Yes. Um Hello Maya. I thought this was a really wonderful and imaginative and powerful book. So I'm very happy that I get to ask you a question about it. And please forgive my voice. So you've already spoken so much. about how the relationship with your own children helped you to inhabit your characters and write the book. And I wanted to ask you more about the parent-child relationship.
We see in Tao, George and William that they all have hopes for a better life for their children. And George in particular has so many dreams for his son taking over his hive. And I wanted to ask you, what did you want the book to say about the intergenerational obligations we face in relation to the natural world? What do you think children can expect from their parents and in fact their grandparents?
Well, I do not only in this book, but me as a person do believe that our children should expect that we we do something with these extreme issues we have we are facing right now and that we try to make the world a better place for our children, for our grandchildren. And I guess you can find that world view throughout my book.
Actually right now I'm writing about children taking too much responsibility. And I think that's what we are doing right now. We are forcing our children to take responsibility for our mistakes. And I I think you can find that view in uh view in the history of a bees as well. And it's it's hard to have children, it's hard to be a parent. And of course it's hard to have parents as well. We all know we all know that. And to understand that they come from another position than we do.
and view the world differently.
In some ways you could say this is a book about the next generation, couldn't you?
Well definitely.
Alex, I think who's joining us from Surrey, has a question along those lines. Alex.
Yes, thank you. And uh Maya, I just found myself, you know, so engrossed in in this book, I just I just really couldn't put it down. But as as Emily was saying there, wanting to kind of dig into more about the the parent relationship with their children because I'm somebody who is about to become a father. So I found myself paying, you know, real attention to these relationships.
But especially George and and his son Thomas, their relationship I found I found uh frustrating and and fascinating. But I just wondered my question was more, do you think that parents have an obligation to to teach their children about protecting the planet and and living in harmony with nature.
Oh yes, I do. And one of the reasons I write about these themes is that my mother always talked about this over dinner. And she was really engaged back in the nineteen eighties, uh, when I grew up. And I think we need to do two things. We need to show our children s the wonders of nature. and to learn them that every little species on this planet deserve to be here just like we do. And also I think we need to to learn our children to to take care of this planet.
Alex, I assume we can take it as red that you will pass that advice on when you do become a parent.
Oh, absolutely. That's right. Yeah.
¶ Author's Research and Intent
What moved you about the book?
So many different elements um moved me. I really found myself moved in a in a kind of psychological sense, moved to read more about the climate crisis, r and and move to learn more about the science and and particularly in the case of B. So I found I found the the relationships within the book between the characters really moving and and also more from a scientific perspective.
Maya, how much research did you do into the the business of keeping bees? I mean we've got one character here who was uh inventing methods of beekeeping in the eighteen fifties, and another who was one of the beneficiaries of that more than a century later. Um how much did you know when you started and how much did you have to learn?
Oh I knew very little. I have to learn almost everything. So I did a huge amount of research. I read all the books I could f find. I saw all the films um available. I talked to a lot of experts and of course I spent time with beekeepers. I helped them, really, out in the fields. And that's usually how I work. I'm quite nerdy. I really like to learn something. I I love to read novels where I learn something and I guess I I like to write those kinds of novels as well.
So you have to immerse yourself in the world of the characters you're writing about.
Yes, I know a little bit about the story and the characters and then I I do a lot of research and then I write. But sometimes the research is completely overwhelming as well as with with William for example in you know, when he's lying in bed he's having something with water in by by his bed and what's he drinking of? Is he drinking of a cup? Is it made of glass? I mean, sometimes it was just too much and I had to tell myself this is not really important for how how does the the story developed.
William, who is the nineteenth century character, um busy inventing hive designs in the eighteen fifties, has a daughter called Charlotte, who works away on those hive designs and George, the twenty first century figure in the novel, is one of her descendants, so everything is passed on, and I know that our reader Amanda has from Lichfield was very interested in Charlotte, and she sent us this question.
Hello everyone. As a member of the Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum Book Club, I thought it fitting that I should look up the definition of the word be in his dictionary. He has two entries, one describing the bee itself, and the second the colloquial use of the word as an industrious and careful person. To me this is a perfect description of one particular character in the novel, William's daughter Charlotte.
She is the mysterious person who keeps William's shop in good order, she is instrumental in the development of the hive, and, like a queen bee, sets up another colony in America. My question is were you ever tempted to write a section in the book about Charlotte's life in a new country and her importance in continuing the family's story?
Oh I love that question, and I love that that she sees uh Charlotte as a queen. That's a beautiful image. And yes, I've been tempted to write more about Charlotte. I wasn't actually when I wrote the book, because I was very clear about having these three main characters and these three different voices. I didn't want to include any other but um I've been tempted to write about Charlotte later and maybe I will.
Well that's good news, and that's the first time we've had a question from the Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum Book Club, and how wonderful that was our thanks to Amanda. Rosamond in Bristol, I think, has another question for us. Here it is, she sent it in.
¶ Fiction's Role in Activism
What do you think the importance of fictional storytelling is as a way of sharing environmental knowledge, particularly in the context of connecting a diverse audience with topics of environmental significance?
Well I think novels can move you in a completely different way than than journalism or reports or politicians can. through a a novel you you live inside another person's head. You feel sympathy and empathy and you you feel what they feel and I think you you have to look at the climate changes and the natural crisis with both your heart And your brain we relate to it differently when we read it.
I think I'll ask Alex to give us a last question. Alex.
You said earlier on Maha Maya that's not a good thing. You don't have one clear message. But I wonder if this book is a work of activism in some sense. D do you hope that people are
Well
believe even slightly differently after reading the history of bees.
Well um I think I have two roles. One is the role I have when I'm writing. When I'm writing I don't think of myself as an activist. I think of of myself as an author. And as I said, I try to be true to the stories and to to be in the stories uh and think about nothing else. But when I talk about the book I guess I'm more of an activist and luckily these books have made it an option for me to talk about this biggest issue of our time globally.
I guess I feel obliged also to be sort of activistic. I'm an activist when I talk about my books, but I'm not an activist when I'm writing.
Sums it up beautifully, and of course this was the beginning of a series of novels. It's not a standalone book.
It's a quartet actually, four books. I'm writing the fourth right now.
Maya Lunda, thank you very much for joining us today from Oslo, and also all our readers. Next week at this time open books going to be delving into the recently published diaries of that fabulous writer Patricia Highsmith. Our next guest here on Book Club will be Rachel Joyce talking about her uplifting and greatly loved novel The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry.
Do pick that book up and send us your questions for Rachel. All the details are on the website, it couldn't be easier to find them. Do keep reading along with us until next month and the next book. You can find more programmes about books and authors on the radio four website at bbc. co. uk slash radio four.