Meredith grows, matures and gains strength and confidence while also finding a kindly school friend. Meredith and her brother do spend happy times with their father and his new wife, and Meredith sometimes wonders if they should have chosen to stay with him instead of her mother-but she loves her grandfather and the bees too much to leave.Ī sometimes angering, sometimes sad look at a very common occurrence nowadays-divorce. The bees teach Meredith about what a family should be-how each type of bee has a job to do and they all do things for the good of the hive or family. He fills the 2 children with the life lessons and the love, attention and affection they so desperately need. Meredith spends time with her grandfather, learning all about beekeeping. Meredith’s mother retreats into a bedroom, rejecting motherhood and sinking into self pity and depression letting HER own mother baby her and shoo her children away. Part memoir, part beekeeping odyssey, The Honey Bus is an unforgettable story about finding home in the most unusual of places, and how a tiny, little-understood insect could save a life.Another new author for me, named Meredith May! One of the more “real” stories out there-a memoir! It tells us about a young girl, Meredith and her brother, Matthew, who are uprooted when their parents are divorcing…they accompany their mom to their grandparents home. The bees became a guiding force in May’s life, teaching her about family and community, loyalty and survival and the unequivocal relationship between a mother and her child. It was during this pivotal time in May’s childhood that she learned to take care of herself, forged an unbreakable bond with her grandfather and opened her eyes to the magic and wisdom of nature. Her mother had receded into a volatile cycle of neurosis and despair and spent most days locked away in the bedroom.

May turned to her grandfather and the art of beekeeping as an escape from her troubled reality.

That first close encounter was at once terrifying and exhilarating for May, and in that moment she discovered that everything she needed to know about life and family was right before her eyes, in the secret world of bees. She was five years old, her parents had recently split and suddenly she found herself in the care of her grandfather, an eccentric beekeeper who made honey in a rusty old military bus in the yard. Meredith May recalls the first time a honeybee crawled on her arm. An extraordinary story of a girl, her grandfather and one of nature’s most mysterious and beguiling creatures: the honeybee.

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