When you read the newly published novel, Bee Club, (Nervous Ghost Press) by M.E.A. McNeil, you're immediately struck by the author's intricate knowledge of beekeeping, her talented ability to weave a fascinating story, and her strong connections with UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology scientists.
In her book, she mentions “The Laidlaw” (the Harry H. Laidlaw Jr. Honey Bee Research Facility at UC Davis); Briggs Hall (home of the UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology); and she draws information from UC Davis scientists. She knew Extension apiculturist Eric Mussen (1944-2022) and learned about Africanized bees and other research topics from him. (She featured him in a two-part story in American Bee Journal in the fall of 2011.)
McNeil learned bee grafting from bee geneticist-breeder Susan Cobey, then manager of the Laidlaw facility. McNeil even mentions UC Davis professor emeritus Robbin Thorp, a global expert on bees who tirelessly pursued the now-feared extinct Franklin's bumble bee on the Oregon-California border. She met him during her visits to the Laidlaw facility.
Bee Club is a great read. McNeil sets the scenes well, she pops her characters into suspense-filled events, and she inserts the action into the verbs—active voice, where they belong. Readers will learn about pesticides, pests, predators and pathogens—and the problems faced by beekeepers and how some seem to embody the very pests that they're trying to--or refuse to--control.
A resident of San Anselmo, Marin County, McNeil is a master beekeeper, organic farmer and a longtime journalist writing for American Bee Journal and other publications. She holds a bachelor of arts degree in English literature from UC Berkeley and a master of fine arts in creative writing, from Mills College, Northeastern University, Oakland.
One of her main characters, Lilja, is a troubled teenager with a bee phobia who arrives to live with her great-aunt, Etta, president of the Bee Club. Etta's bee farm, located in Northern California, is not doing well and neither is Lilja—at first. You wonder: Will Lilja ever conquer her melissophobia?
Etta lives in a strawbaled house and works out of a strawbaled barn. She is Finnish. She is much like McNeil, who lives in a strawbaled house and works in a strawbaled barn and is also of Finnish descent.
The characters deal with such topics as anaphylactic shock, Africanized bees, queen bee rearing, grafting, Varroa mites, American foulbrood, a proposed beekeeping ban, a prized but aging queen bee named Georgia Green, a county fair judging contest deemed "unfair," and a wildfire spiraling out of control.
Lilja manages to train Etta's Airdale, Snufkin, to sniff out American foulbrood in her neighbors' colonies, but Lilja won't accompany the pooch on her rounds. That melissophobia...
Etta loves her Finnish sauna (McNeil is installing one) and enjoys playing her cello when she's not working the bees and worrying about Varroa mites and her languishing income.
Honey sticks the characters together both at Etta's home (breakfasts always feature honey) and at the Bee Club meetings (more honey).
The Bee Club is filled with folks you might meet at your local PTA meeting—some agreeable, some indifferent, some polite, some rude, and some who cannot tolerate any other views but their own.
The book is 20 years in the making. We asked McNeil a few questions:
How long did it take you to write the book?
“I entered the MFA (Master of Fine Arts) program at Mills to work on my non-fiction writing, but I was asked to write some fiction to that end. That was when I put perhaps ten years of collected musings, this and that about bees into a story, which I workshopped, chapter by chapter, with the other writers in the program--none of whom were into bees. The detail about the votive candle on the dash came out of that old collection. Hard to answer how long it took-- 0 years of non-fiction articles morphed into two years in the MFA included in perhaps six years of interspersed fiction writing, but it seems all of a piece.”
How long have you known the bee scientists at UC Davis? Interesting that you mentioned Briggs Hall, Laidlaw, and worked with or met a number of bee scientists, including Eric Mussen, Susan Cobey andRobbinThorp
"I first called Eric in 2005 to ask him about Africanized bees. I was delighted to find him so willing and so knowledgeable that I chatted with him a lot over the years--sometimes just picking his brain for a small point or getting access to a research paper. (You'll remember that was more difficult before the Internet.) That was after Laidlaw (but we have a close family friend who met his wife in Laidlaw's class, and they wore honeycomb pattern rings. Hmm, I should have used that.)"
"There was something about Robbin Thorp, such a gentle focus, always there - working when I came through, so genuinely fascinated by the bees, and so grieved by the loss of Franklin's bee and all that went with it. I just wanted the honor of his presence."
"The only character that is not an invented amalgam is Elina Niño, who is the UC Davis extension specialist. The tattooed arm and the bike are from a UC Riverside entomologist."
What's your next project? I can see this being a movie. Or a next book to see what happened to all the characters?
"Ha, movie. (I'd give that an exclamation point, but I have only three for my life, to be distributed for the weddings of my three past-grown sons, none of whom are married. That from a writing mentor.)"
"Let's see, hmmm: How about Etta--Frances McDormand; Ernie--Sam Elliott. Raz is an actual guy from a vet's rehab program I interviewed. He really said that he sat and looked at the hive boxes for a year, watched them swarm."
"At the moment, I am preparing a PowerPoint connecting the factual stories that informed the fiction."
"It would be so interesting to see that landscape come back in a sequel, much more about the pesticides, and always the resilience in this community."
How much of the book is you? The strawbale house, as mentioned. The sauna? The special Finnish dishes? And I know you had a bee club in your barn.
"So much. Yes, the Marin Beekeepers met in our barn for a number of years. We have lived with so much incredulity about strawbale building. We live in a strawbale house and barn and had bale raisings for both--quite joyous community events that gave me a sense of what can happen when people join together. I also wrote an article about strawbale building for Craftsmanship Quarterly Magazine and visited a strawbale house that stood after a burn-through just like the scene in the book."
"A lot of the rest of it. We have Airedale dogs. My mother is Finnish, and so much of the culture is part of me, of the book---the Finnish Moomentroll books, the baking as an expression of caring. We've planned for a sauna for decades and are at last putting it in."
Speaking Engagements
M.E.A. McNeil is engaged in a speaking tour and has delivered presentations, among others, to the California State Beekeepers' Association Conference and to the UC Davis-based California Master Beekeeper Program, founded and directed by Elina Niño, associate professor of Cooperative Extension, Apiculture, and a faculty member, UC Davis Department of Entomology and Nematology.
San Rafael Presentation. McNeil will be featured at a presentation, "M.E.A. McNeil in Conversation with Dr. Maria Spivak," at 6 p.m., Wednesday, Feb. 26 in the Creekside Lounge, Dominican University of California, San Rafael. Tickets are $30 and the price will include a copy of the book. The event, hosted by the Dominican University of California, is presented in partnership with Institute for Leadership Studies) and the Women, Leadership and Philanthropy Council. Spivak is a MacArthur Fellow and Distinguished McKnight University Professor in Entomology at the University of Minnesota. Her innovative research influences beekeeping and is a theme in the Bee Club. (Buy tickets here. Contact books@bookpassage.com with questions regarding online events.)
Woodland Presentation. McNeil will present a program and answer questions on Saturday, March 1 from 3 to 4:30 p.m. at The Hive, 1221 Harter Ave., Woodland, announced "Queen Bee" Amina Harris of The Hive, retired director of the UC Davis Honey and Pollination Center. Books will be available for sale and signing. (See more information here)
Says Spivak: “Bees have a way of healing and educating people, and the process is usually unconventional. With a clear and honest voice, M.E.A. McNeil takes us on Lilja's journey into the world of bees and beekeepers where we experience truth-telling within Finnish saunas, just-like-real-life bickering among beekeepers, and biologically sound depictions of bees' magical ways. We learn it is not just Lilja's journey; it is also all of ours.”
It's all about the bees.
Attached Images:
