“Those who suppose that the new colony consists wholly of young bees, forced to emigrate by the older ones, if they closely examine a new swarm, will find that while some have the ragged wings of age, others are so young as to be barely able to fly.”
The very first words a reader encounters in the narrative of this novel actually originate in a completely different book. Central to the novel is the 1878 edition of A Practical Treatise on the Hive and Honey-Bee by L.L. Langstroth, originally published in 1853. Not only does the opening chapter commence with a quote from this actual volume, but so do all subsequent chapters. Any reader supposing that they will be finishing this novel without having learned a good deal of factual information about bees should be advised against picking up Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick under the same delusion that they will close the back cover on novel having only enjoyed an entertaining piece of fictional storytelling. To invest in reading The Music of Bees means not just investing in the fiction, but also opening a side account in rudimentary beekeeping. The observation by Langstroth from her groundbreaking study of bees is not merely for information purposes, however. Each of the quotes from that book that kick off each chapter in this book serves as a kind of foreshadowing of what to expect from the fictional story being told in that chapter. For instance, this quote precedes the actual first line of the novel itself which introduces a teenager named Jacob who lays claim to having the highest mohawk haircut in the history of his high school. Consider him a young bee.
"Though it was no longer the quiet backwater it had been when Alice was born, Hood River was still a great place to live. The 1980s brought the windsurfers with their vans and long hair. There were some fights between them and local loggers and farmers, like the ones who hung out at the Red Carpet. But the hippies who caused trouble ultimately left."
The setting of the story is Oregon and much of the descriptive prose is devoted to conveying the extraordinary natural beauty of this region. The mention of windsurfers and loggers in the same sentence hints at the variety of the state’s natural beauty where one can take a dip in the ocean in the morning and still manage to climb into bed that night in a mountain chalet surrounded by snow. This natural diversity of the setting is mirrored by the reference to population diversity. This description will go on to explain that the hippies who stayed behind and weren’t troublemakers went on to become the group that introduced microbreweries, coffeehouses, and pineapple pizza to the more adventurous loggers and farmers, among others. The characterization of the hippies as the troublemakers in a conflict with loggers subtly indicates where another major character—Alice Holtzman—is situated within the culture wars still aggravating other parts of the state.
"He couldn’t remember what “pastoral” meant, exactly—something outdoorsy—but it had a nice ring to it. Anyway, it was a good list word—short and punchy. This list-making strategy was something Harry had employed for at least two decades of his young life…Harry continued to use this strategy as a young man. The list-making helped, or at least Harry liked to believe it did, as he so often found himself stuck between the now and the next."
This novel is basically a story of three people and 120,000 Russian honeybees, more or less. Of course, there are more than three people in the story and there are millions of bees other than the Russians, but these characters serve as the central core around which the story revolves. Jacob (Jake), Alice, and Harry are also a tiny little unit reflecting the diversity of the population calling Oregon home. They are each very different from the other, but as with bees working for the collective good of the hive, they each bring their own distinctive aptitudes to the events at hand. Harry’s attempt to impose at least the perception of control over the chaos of a world that has proven challenging to him is perhaps the character attribute of the trio that most strongly reflects the nature of bee society. A nature in which order is maintained by rigid adherence to the completion of one’s assigned tasks and recognition and acceptance of one’s limited role within the bigger picture.
