Fruitless Fall: The Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis

Rowan Jacobsen

Jul 2010 · Bloomsbury Publishing USA

About this ebook

Many people will remember that Rachel Carson predicted a silent spring, but she also warned of a fruitless fall, a time with no pollination and no fruit. The fruitless fall nearly became a reality when, in 2007, beekeepers watched thirty billion bees mysteriously die. And they continue to disappear. The remaining pollinators, essential to the cultivation of a third of American crops, are now trucked across the country and flown around the world, pushing them ever closer to collapse. Fruitless Fall does more than just highlight this growing agricultural catastrophe. It emphasizes the miracle of flowering plants and their pollination partners, and urges readers not to take the abundance of our Earth for granted. A new afterword by the author tracks the most recent developments in this ongoing crisis.

Ratings and reviews

My honey purchased a nuc (nucleus - a queen and a bunch of honey bees) in early summer. I quickly became very interested in the bees, often having my morning coffee sitting by the hive, watching the busy little bees go in and out. A few weeks into hosting the bees, we saw a decline in population. Actually, my honey saw it; she is the one who does all the bee work. Why were there fewer bees? This decline sent my honey into research mode, something she is really good at. The hive didn't appear to have the critical mass needed to maintain and grow. This lack of mass has probably doomed them to death this winter, but only if we leave them outside. Which we won't do. Our plan is to bring them into the house in an observation hive. I'm sure it will be much more interesting than a coffee table book. One of the books my honey found was Fruitless Fall, by Rowan Jacobsen. As my honey read the book, she would relate the information in the book. She'd laugh at times, and look serious. I asked her to leave it out for me when she was done reading. There are few books about science I can read. Most of them are cures for insomnia. Not this one. Rowan has a way with words. He mixes in analogies to everyday life to help the reader understand what he is relating. His research, combined with interviews and correspondence with experts; visits with large scale bee keepers; and his own bee hives make this book a very easy read. His thought provoking insights often had me putting the book down so I could process what he was saying, and reflect on how we ended up in the situation we collectively on planet Earth are in with our pollinators. If you eat fruit, eat vegetables, like flowers, or do such a simple thing as breathe air, you must read this book. Our pollinators are disappearing, and there are areas on our planet where humans living in poverty must pollinate millions of fruit tree flowers - by hand, using little sticks - to make up for the loss of pollinators. Now there's a job that would be monotonous, but it is becoming necessary in areas where we've destroyed the ecosystems. A friend of mine recently told me that he sees more bees now, not fewer. I pointed out that there are way fewer pollination sources available, so the "more bees" is really fewer bees, all clustered in higher density at the fewer sources. He skipped cutting sections of his lawn that week, since he saw bumble bees gathering pollen. Who says one person can't make a difference? For his local bees, he made a difference. You can read the full review here: http://wp.me/p1DOKg-eO

About the author

Rowan Jacobsen is the James Beard Award- winning author of A Geography of Oysters and Fruitless Fall. Jacobsen's writings on food, the environment, and their interconnected nature have appeared in the New York Times, Wild Earth, Harper's, Eating Well, and Newsweek. He lives in rural Vermont with his wife and son.