Fruitless Fall : The Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis

"Jacobsen reminds readers that bees provide not just the sweetness of honey, but also are a crucial link in the life cycle of our crops."Seattle Post-IntelligencerMany people will remember that Rachel Carson predicted a silent spring, but she also warned of a fruitless fall, a time with no pollination and no fruit. The fruitless fall nearly became a reality when, in 2007, beekeepers watched thirty billion bees mysteriously die. And they continue to disappear. The remaining pollinators, essential to the cultivation of a third of American crops, are now trucked across the country and flown around the world, pushing them ever closer to collapse.Fruitless Falldoes more than just highlight this growing agricultural catastrophe. It emphasizes the miracle of flowering plants and their pollination partners, and urges readers not to take the abundance of our Earth for granted. A new afterword by the author tracks the most recent developments in this ongoing crisis.

Rowan Jacobsen is the James Beard Award– winning author of A Geography of Oysters and Fruitless Fall. Jacobsen’s writings on food, the environment, and their interconnected nature have appeared in the New York Times, Wild Earth, Harper’s, Eating Well, and Newsweek. He lives in rural Vermont with his wife and son.

“A spiritual successor to Rachel Carson’s seminal eco-polemic Silent Spring…Jacobsen’s concern for the fate of the honey bee population is easily contagious…The Verdict: Read.”—Time

“Mr. Jacobsen warns that we may be on the brink of just such a disaster…a detailed history of honeybee biology… [Jacobsen’s] analysis is helpful and instructive.”—Wall Street Journal

“A delightful yet sobering look at how different our lives would be if bees disappear…an important book about one of our natural allies that, like us, is caught in difficult times.”—Arizona Republic

“Past a certain point, we can’t make nature conform to our industrial model. The collapse of beehives is a warning—and the cleverness of a few beekeepers in figuring out how to work with bees not as masters but as partners offers a clear-eyed kind of hope for many of our ecological dilemmas.”—Bill McKibben, author 34 of Deep Economy