Author Event: Bee Club by Mea McNeil

Join us for a special event with Mea McNeil, author of Bee Club. This event is free, but we appreciate your RSVP below so we can plan for your attendance.

“Wonderful. Just – wonderful. From descriptive passages that made me feel Like I was there, to heartbreaking scenes, to the right-on-the-money portrayal of the journalist, I enjoyed this story from beginning to end. Witty, heartwarming and true-to-life.” - Eugene Makovec Editor, The American Bee Journal

“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.” - Marla Spivak Distinguished McKnight Professor of Entomology, University of Minnesota MacArthur Fellow

“This beautiful, evocative story is a love letter to the creative and un-expected communities that sustain us, to the back-roads landscape of northern California – and to the surprising ways that beekeeping can connect hearts and minds. The characters are complex, the vivid descriptions engage your senses, and the story compels you to keep reading.“ - Sarah Pollock Writer and longtime senior editor, Mother Jones Professor Emerita, Mills College

“A thoroughly modern, warm-hearted story. The bee ‘facts’ are impeccable—and extensive in the novel. You will enjoy the beekeeping and the story around the bees.” - Dewey Caron Emeritus Professor of Entomology, University of Delaware Author of Honey Bee Biology and Beekeeping.

Bee Club, a novel by M.E.A. McNeil, tells the story of a disparate group attracted to the importance and intrigue of a bunch of insects. They find themselves bound together like kin to these undomesticated creatures – from the curious hobbyists to the entomologists delving into the mysteries of Apis down to the veins in their wings. Some keep bees to eke out a livelihood, like an elderly Finnish woman; some to heal, like the vet from a VA beekeeping program to treat PTSD; some for the spirit, like the woman who extols the beneficial vibrations of a buzzing colony; some for adventure and a few bucks, like the trio of friends that cram into a vintage Airstream to count frames of migratory bees for almond pollination. And then there is the bee-phobic teenager, with nowhere else to go.

There, in the Northern California countryside, the club is a microcosm of the joys and anguish of the wider beekeeping world. The beekeepers confront the reality of a continuing loss of bees. They face pests, pathogens and poor forage – and their own irreconcilable convictions. Whatever the opinions of those who tend their boxes, the bees are independent; they mingle their genes and their problems. The narrative follows, at bee’s-eye level, the lineage of one queen bee with a genetic advantage. Meanwhile, the beekeepers come together for raucous club meetings, county fair contests, a bee beard show, a pathogen- sniffing dog, a bee truck spill, a battle against regulation that would shut them all down, the annual Bee Ball and an event that brings an unexpected resolution. Here is an engrossing, witty and accurately-detailed story, as much about bees as their hovering people.

M.E.A. McNeil (called Mea) is a journalist and Master Beekeeper living in a strawbale house on a small Northern California organic farm. She is of Finnish extraction, as is a character in the book, and one of her books of Finnish mythology was awarded the Aesop Accolade. Her over 100 non-fiction articles delving into the bee world over two decades have provided a depth of education that frames her current novel, Bee Club.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Napa Bookmine, 1625 2nd St, Napa, United States