Coté conveys one adventure after another ... He tells one lighthearted anecdote after another ... Everything is told with Coté’s light touch and excellent comic timing ... this book is fun, a near perfect bee-ch book (no, I will not apologize) for the summer.
... Coté chronicles a year of hard work, adventure and just plain fun ... His easygoing narrative, recounting his apian experience from his childhood in Connecticut to his current position as president of the New York City Beekeepers Association, will educate and entertain even the most bee-phobic reader ... [Coté] demonstrates the ability to make a complex subject clear while adding enough humor to make it engaging ... thanks to this delightful memoir, readers will have a new appreciation for these complex insects and the humans who care for them.
... charming ... Fascinating, not only for the beekeeping information, but also for the urban-wildlife interactions involving bees. A good companion for anyone contemplating apiculture.
... delightful ... Throughout, [Cote] writes sweetly about the life cycle of the honey bee and praises his father, who 'holds more information about bees in one hair of his white moustache than I will ever know.' Honey farmers and urban naturalists will be buzzing about this one.
it’s scenes...in which Coté freely expresses his superiority to so many of the other 'beeks' he encounters both in NYC and around the world, that render him a less-than-charming companion. One or two such anecdotes might be funny; 12 months’ worth grow old. So, too, do the author’s frequent references to his appearances in the media. The freely dropped celebrity names also grate (10 within three paragraphs in the prologue alone); irritatingly, he refers to both Martha Stewart and Yoko Ono, whom he 'bump[s]' into when keeping bees at MoMA, by their given names, a familiarity he does not assume with male celebrities such as Paul Newman or Bill Clinton (Spike Lee is an exception). Coté has both a rambling, conversational style that can leave readers unmoored in his timeline and the bad habit of introducing beekeeping practices unlikely to be understood by general readers pages before he describes their purpose, often only elliptically. His obvious, oft-stated love for his father—his beekeeping mentor—and regard for those beekeepers he deems competent are warming, but it's not enough to remove the sour air of self-regard ... Too much venom, not enough honey.
