The Life of the Bee

Of the hive, the swarm, and the queen’s one flight into the sun.

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About this edition

The Nobel Prize winning poet turns his gaze on the honeybee: the swarm’s sudden departure, the nuptial flight of the young queen high in the summer air, the massacre of the drones, the building of the comb, and the mysterious spirit of the hive that rules every small life for the good of the whole.

Part naturalist’s record and part philosophical meditation, it finds in the beehive a mirror for love, sacrifice, intelligence, and the long future of all living things. More reverie than treatise, The Life of the Bee (1901) is science transfigured into wonder, the small golden insect made a subject for philosophy and poetry alike.

It remains the most lyrical book ever written about the honeybee, treasured by beekeepers, naturalists and poets. This edition presents Alfred Sutro’s classic translation behind an original painting.

Details

• Maurice Maeterlinck (1862–1949), translated by Alfred Sutro
• The complete 1901 text
• Solocosmo Press
• The Lightbound Library
• Paperback and hardcover, 6 × 9, 190 pages