Happy Birthday Bee Book

The best-selling bee book is FIVE years old this month.

Happy 5^th Birthday to The Secret Lives of Garden Bees.

My best-selling bee book is FIVE this week. I am finding that very surreal. Can a book have a birthday? I’m not sure. But five years old it is and in its short life it has brought so many positive changes to my life. So, I’m celebrating.

Happy FIFTH birthday to: The Secret Lives of Garden Bees.

I’m rather fond of my bee book, though sometimes I look at it and think “did I write that?”. I am proud of it too, not in a big-headed way, but because it has introduced the secret world of bees to so many people.

Weirdly my bee book was being printed as COVID started to shake the world. And by the time it was published in March 2020, we were right in the middle of a pandemic.

Lock down

The covid lockdown is possibly one of the most life-changing moments in many people’s lives. Significant powerful and devastating for so many. I sometimes liken it to the start of War of the Worlds. It feels like that looking back. We were about to enter a scene from a horror story that sometimes it’s hard to believe really happened. But it did and it left many huge scars on many, many families; mine included.

It felt like a huge powershift, but there were some positive changes too. Confined to home people started to get out into nature for their exercise. They started noticing the smaller things. The birds, the bees and all the creatures that have always been there but were often overlooked and underappreciated.

For many of us, including me, wildlife and nature really made the difference. We harnessed vitamin N (nature) and vitamin G (garden) as we navigated the rules and stayed home. Gardens, if you were lucky to have one, became an extra outdoor room and facilitated staycations, an outdoor gym and somewhere to immerse yourself in nature. And if you didn’t have a garden, the local park and anywhere else to get fresh air was the new gym and an escape from captivity. The lack of traffic gave wildlife a break and coupled with a resurgence of rediscovering nature, it created a new objective. Suddenly looking after what was on our doorstep was important. My bee book grew wings and landed through letterboxes across the country and beyond.

The bees

Within this passion for nature was a surging interest in bees. Everyone knew about the honeybee, but what was the big fluffy bumbling bee on the garden flowers? Why did some plants attract what looked like the same type of bee? And why did some flowers not attract bees at all? And what on earth is that nesting in my insect house? My bee book was perfectly timed, though that was never the plan, it simply hit the online book stores when we needed it.

It’s not an identification guide (as some kind soul pointed out with a 1-star review on Amazon – thanks for that!). But it’s a peek inside the incredible, wonderful and pretty secret world of bees. It’s an introduction to some of the 260 or so types of bees that we have in the UK. Even that is a surprise to most people. We have one honeybee, 24 bumblebees and the rest are what we call solitary bees which don’t live in a colony. Worldwide we have 20 000 types of bees and just eight of those make honey! The rest are just as important and in terms of pollination often more important. One little mason bee does the pollination work of 120 honeybees! And you don’t have the responsibility of a bee hive. These bees already live in and around your garden, they are active when the fruit blossom is out in spring, so your apples and pears and cherries are pollinated by these little bees. All they need from us is safety to carry out their lifecycle (no pesticides please) and a muddy puddle so that they can collect mud to make the little cells for their babies.

The Secret Lives of Garden Bees

My book filled the gap. Suddenly it was a Number One Best Seller on Amazon. The hardback (now out of print and collectable) sold out in just three months and people devoured the information inside to placate a need for knowledge. It was heartening to know that people really did care about my buzzy friends.

Five years later the bee book is on its sixth reprint and has sold over ten thousand copies. But what has been amazing is that it has also turned my world upside down (in a good way), opening new doors and avenues to share my love of bees with others. Now I give talks, take bee walks, run workshops and support community projects with my interactive bee-inspired nature table. I’m still writing for magazines and newspapers too and while all of that was going on, I wrote my second book Attracting Garden Pollinators which explores our other pollinating pals like butterflies, moths, hoverflies, hornets, wasps, beetles and of course the bees. Pollinators are my passion and my books have grown wings and flown around the world. It’s lovely to think that they are really making a difference.

So, if you need an excuse to have a glass of something cool, please join me in a toast to my little bee book and wish it a Happy Birthday.

Signed copies of my books are available from my website:

www.TheGreenJeanie.com