Sweet thing

Published 18 October 2004

The Hive: the story of the honey bee and us Bee Wilson John Murray, 308pp, £14.99 ISBN 0719564093

Good food writers deserve the accolade either because they get you out of your chair and into the kitchen or because they write so well that mealtimes come and go without a hope of any cooking getting done at all. Elizabeth David fell into the latter category: I once made the mistake of consulting her about poaching eggs. An hour later, I could have argued the pros and cons of salt or vinegar in the water, of new-laid versus week- old eggs, or of the whirlpool versus the still-pond method. I was glowing with smug agreement on the abomination of those metal "egg poachers", and I'd had a very happy time - even if my bottom was ridged and stiff from sitting on the kitchen radiator. Yet no eggs had been poached. David herself would not have cared. She was always prouder of her literary awards than the ones she won for food writing.

I have always put Bee Wilson in the first category, as a writer who connects readers' imaginations with their salivary glands,whose words rise from the page like the aroma from beneath a lifted pot lid, whose recipes get clipped, photocopied, plagiarised and appropriated by the rest of us. New Statesman readers will know Wilson better than most - she wrote for this publication for five years, until she was lost to the Sunday Telegraph. But The Hive, her first book, shows her to be a fascinating, careful, witty and intelligent historian, who draws us into the history of the honey bee as surely as a 60 per cent sugar solution will draw the bees. (They turn up their noses at 20 per cent and are only mildly tempted by 40 per cent.)

Wilson's book is short, but never lightweight. I thought I was familiar with the wondrous workings of a hive, with its social order, efficiencies, chemistry and waggle-dances. But Wilson's clear and unsentimental retelling is riveting, as is her account of how life in the hive has long been idealised as a lesson in government, the lesson changing with the ages. Virgil saw "Great-hearted leaders, a whole nation whose work is planned,/Their morals, groups, defences". Pliny added bee guards and lictors (Roman junior magistrates) to the hive. A 12th-century apologist for feudalism explained the worker bees' obedience as being due to their "arranging their own king for themselves. They create a popular state, and although they are policed under a king, they are free."

The cleric Charles Butler studied bees and music for the 45 years of Elizabeth I's reign and, unsurprisingly, he extolled the "feminine monarchy", with a queen bee in charge. Once James succeeded her, however, Butler's queen bees became "stately princes" and "governours". Political nose to the wind, Butler now also applauded the bees' good sense in killing off all pretenders to the throne. And so it continues throughout history. Under Cromwell, we get the "Reformed Commonwealth of Bees" and, after the restoration, more panegyrics on the divine right of kings.

The Hive is a pot-pourri of all you ever wanted to know about bees (how exactly the waggle-dance works); all you never wanted to know (how the copulating drones have their mating appendages wrenched from them by the queen to join similar body parts of other drones who have recently died the same ecstatic death); and all you ought to want to know (how Zeus, unlike his five elder brothers, was saved from their father's murderous designs by wild bees).

As a rule, I am rather irritated by books designed to be read in the loo. Usually, they are a miscellany of mildly interesting quotations, facts or witticisms, but not interesting enough to hold the attention during a long soak in the bath. The Hive would do admirably as a loo book, with one caveat. Although almost any paragraph chosen at random is entertaining, the book is more pick-uppable than put-downable, and would get nicked.

And for those of you who, like me, expect recipes as well as chat - never fear, this book has them. Here is one I expect I will never try, but we all know that cookbooks are as much for bedside dreaming as for stove-side slaving. It's called "Thunder and Lightning":

Take one piece of honeycomb and one tub of real clotted cream. Eat in alternate spoonfuls.

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