A Buzz in the Meadow: by Dave Goulson

A Buzz in the Meadow successfully accomplishes a delicate, high-degree-of-difficulty balancing act. On one hand, it is a self-aware capital-I “Important” work of nonfiction on the trendy topic of the planet’s dwindling bee population from one of the world’s foremost experts on the topic. On the other hand, it is an unassuming, randomly-organized personal narrative detailing the author’s lifelong fascination with insects. These conflicting tones and topics are held together through descriptions of the author’s summer home in a sleepy farming village in northwestern France. Dave Goulson pulls this all off with aplomb, and the result is an immensely-enjoyable, lavishly-informative and activism-oriented book.

A Buzz in the Meadow immediately evokes bees in its very title. Goulson is an established authority on bees. Therefore, any moderately-informed reader could be forgiven for cracking open the book expecting a doomsday manifesto on the massive ecological ramifications of the Western world’s capitalist profligacy. After all, bees—and their decreasing numbers—are an undeniable component of our cultural zeitgeist, something that is ubiquitous on both on Facebook feeds and elementary-school curricula. But such expectations about A Buzz in the Meadow should be repressed. Bees are only moderately featured, especially in the opening chapters.

Moreover, this is not a manifesto. There is no eschatological angst to be wrung from its admonishments. Goulson does critique the lavish consumption intrinsic to contemporary society, but does so within the broader landscape of human civilization. Per him, humans have always wrought environmental destruction, ecological collapse, and mass extinctions. He does not necessarily reject the notion of the Anthropocene outright, but he certainly challenges the usefulness of such a distinction. Goulson’s reasons for doing this are not to suppress environmental activism but rather to purge the quixotic notions such activists often hold of a pre-capitalist past wherein humans had a harmonious relationship with the planet’s ecosystems.

A Buzz in the Meadow does not want its readers to relax in the face of our impending ecological apocalypse, but Goulson writes in a way that suggests his readers are intelligent enough to glean the need for action from between the lines rather than in them. Rarely does he urge action and even more seldom is does he use emphatic language. He instead traces the mating habits of the death-watch beetle, discusses how to catalog butterfly species, and offers paeans to the life cycles of ants, flies, and wasps.

The effect is mesmerizing and enthralling and the message absolutely clear: even if one only lies in a patch of grass, one will see an incredible world worth saving. Goulson does not resort to the lazy spectacle of pointing to dwindling polar bear populations, nor does he take the well-trod path of prophesying woe. Instead, to his immense credit, A Buzz in the Meadow is composed with the understanding that airily discussing the wondrous behavior of the most banal creatures will induce in readers an anxiety about the loss of our current ecological paradigm.

So confident is Goulson in the appeal of this narrative style that he does not broach the book’s raison d’etre until chapter 13. Only 187 pages in does he feel that he has sufficiently set the stakes. At this late stage, the reader is finally primed to hear about the collapse of bee populations. Even those skeptical of the impact of globalized capitalism on bees will by this point trust in Goulson’s even-handed expertise; this book is a masterclass in ethos. And chapter 13 does not disappoint; it makes plain the irrefutable scientific research the author and his bee-studying peers across the world have conducted, it postulates how exactly neonicotinoids lead to population collapse in bees and it pulls no punches in declaring what must happen next.

While A Buzz in the Meadow is a tour-de-force of scientific reasoning and a worthy addition to the bookshelf of every tree-hugging activist, it still has its faults. At times, Goulson’s insistence on venturing tangentially into the natural history of a specific meadow in west-central England or into his error in destroying a prime newt habitat can generate impatience. Readers have surely come to this work to read about the bees! If, however, one is able to buy into the organizational conceit and stealthy pathos-driven argumentation of the book, then even these tangents can be forgiven. They are, in fact, essential to the book’s plans. Even if one cannot overlook them, the final chapters pack enough punch to make the tedious reading before them worth it.

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