Book Focuses On ‘Brilliance Of Honeybees’ - Signing At Brewster Conservation Day Saturday

 “I’m a beekeeper allergic to bees,” Laura Kelley notes as the introduction to her first and only book, “The Brilliance of Honeybees.”

The allergy that developed after decades worth of bee stings forced her to give up the hives that filled her Eastham backyard with constant buzzing and her kitchen with jars of honey. It was her passionate hobby, an avocation she could immerse herself in after a long day landscaping or advocating for pesticide reduction petitions. 

 “I thought they were cute and fuzzy. They make me feel better. They’re like a pet. I miss them like you’d miss a dog,” she reflected among the flowers behind her house. 

So she decided to remember them and spread the word by mining her stash of photos and summarizing two decades of beekeeping on Cape Cod.

 “Every word is mine, every photo, every chart,” Kelley said. “It’s just a labor of love. I wanted to show the connection to the food supply.”

Kelley will sign copies of her book at the Brewster Conservation Day this Saturday, July 11 at the Sea Camps property on Route 6A.

Kelley, who has run Littlefield Landscapes (Organic Plant Care) since 1992 and founded Protect Our Cape Cod Aquifer in 2012 to combat pesticides use under the power lines, wasn’t always bee-focused. She grew up on a sheep farm in Dennis, rode and trained horses and worked as a massage therapist before becoming a landscaper or “exterior decorator.” Bees were a hazard on the job. She was stung a lot, then less often when she sought out the Barnstable County Beekeepers Association to learn more. 

 “I went once a month. And went to bee school with my mom and learned how to build hives. Set them up in the south corner of my yard. They’re Italian bees shipped to Maryland and then to Barnstable. I got two hives, two packages they were called, 500 workers and one queen in her own wooden box with food. I put the two hives next to each other,” she recalled. “They have two personalities because the queen is in charge. It’s always good to have two hives. I believe they help each other out.”

She eventually had eight hives. The queen lays 2,000 eggs a day. Bees are born 21 days later. In the summer, the hive has close to 80,000 bees.

 “It was just a kick, and then I ended up falling in love with honeybees,” Kelley said. “I put a rocking chair in front of the hives and just watched them. They know geometry; they make a honeycomb of hexagons to birth in. They’d do their dance on the porch and I knew a message was coming in and I knew what was going on. I studied them. I was fascinated beyond anything I’d done in life. Watching their communication. They are the best on the planet, the best communicators. They listen to one queen.“

That dance is how one worker informs the rest where to find the nectar source. They are loyal to the queen. So it is that Kelley decided to test her own communication skills without dancing on the porch but by writing a book to convey her enthusiasm to the next generation and anyone else.

 “I started off thinking it was for kids, kids who don’t know how food is made. You’d ask them where food comes from and they’d say Stop and Shop,” she said. “That’s explained with the photos, it makes learning fun. But when you read it there’s a lot of information. People think that it is an adult read so the book is for anyone that wants to learn about what we can do to help them in our own backyards.”

Without bees, most food crops would disappear, not just fruits and vegetables but coffee, chocolate, almonds and more. We’d be living a grain-based life as grains, all in the grass family, are wind-pollinated. Bees, both wild species and domesticated types like Kelley’s Italian honeybees, are efficient pollinators.

 “Three seasons of native wildflowers is the key to attracting pollinators. Perennials, bushes, trees. You grow food for other species. We have a lawn monoculture. If you could dedicate half the lawn to nature, that is where we want to be,” Kelley said. “Nothing toxic inside the house because it goes down the drain into the leach field. Whatever you purchase matters in nature. We are planting native vegetation for creatures we will never see, and I think something is so peaceful about that. That’s what I do everyday at work. I care for living things for the future. Plants, animals and people. We all want the same things: sunlight, nutrition and water. We all have a symbiotic relationship but don’t know it. I hope this book shows how simple acts of kindness on our own can help the world if we all do it.”

While the book discusses how brilliant bees are, Kelley noted flowers are just as critical.

 “The flowers are in charge,” she declared. “The flower and bee needed each other. The flower and honeybees have co-existed over 20 million years. The flower puts on a show and gives off a scent and color vibrations to attract somebody over to enjoy the nectar while their pollen gets on the insect’s back and goes on to the next flower. So because the flower needs the pollinator, the flower is doing all the work.”

The bee is working too — flying takes energy.

 “At the heart of every bloom is a plan: reproduction,” Kelley writes in chapter one. “Pollen carries the vital instructions for new life. But plants can’t walk, stretch or carry their own pollen, so they’ve learned to attract the partners they need to do the work for them.”

That includes butterflies, moths, beetles, flies, wasps and even birds and bats, but most of all bees

 “If you mow and blow and weedwhack, you have a sterile environment,” Kelley concluded. “It’s time to shift off of a maintenance program so you are doing less, and if you do less you get more, more creatures, more life, more bees.“

The book is available at Agway, the Brewster Bookstore and from the website brillianceofhoneybees.com.