After five years of working with bees on her farm in northern Alberta, Jenna Butler shares with the reader the rich experience of keeping hives. Starting with a rare bright day in late November as the bees are settling in for winter she takes us through a year in beekeeping on her small piece of the boreal forest. Weaving together her personal story with the practical aspects of running a farm she takes us into the worlds of honeybees and wild bees. She considers the twinned development of the canola and honey industries in Alberta and the impact of crop sprays, debates the impact of introduced flowers versus native flowers, the effect of colony collapse disorder and the protection of natural environments for wild bees. But this is also the story of women and bees and how beekeeping became Jenna Butler's personal survival story.

Jenna Butler is the author of three critically acclaimed books of poetry, Seldom Seen Road (NeWest Press, 2013), Wells (University of Alberta Press, 2012) and Aphelion (NeWest Press, 2010); an award-winning collection of ecological essays, A Profession of Hope: Farming on the Edge the of Grizzly Trail (Wolsak and Wynn, 2015); and a poetic travelogue, Magnetic North: Sea Voyage to Svalbard (University of Alberta Press, 2018).

Butler's research into endangered environments has taken her from America's Deep South to Ireland's Ring of Kerry, and from volcanic Tenerife to the Arctic Circle onboard an ice-class masted sailing vessel, exploring the ways in which we impact the landscapes we call home. A professor of creative writing and environmental writing at Red Deer College, she lives with seven resident moose and a den of coyotes on an off-grid organic farm in Alberta's North Country.

Jenna Butler's profile page

• Long-listed, Canada Reads
• Short-listed, Governor General's Literary Award for Non-fiction
• Short-listed, High Plains Book Award for Woman Writer

"It is Butler’s luminous and discerning prose that places this volume with other classics that closely observe a place and its inhabitants, giving us insight into what it means to be fully and powerfully human in a turbulent but beautiful world."

Story Circle Network

"Butler's book reads like a cross between a collection of essays and a naturalist's journal, containing the attentiveness of a love letter and the wistfulness of an elegy."

EVENT Magazine

"Butler explores the many ways beekeepers seek healing through bees, going well beyond the expected apitherapy treatments. She notes how some seek economic healing, hoping for financial independence and security, others find spiritual growth through bees."

Bee Culture: The Magazine of American Beekeeping