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  • A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings

  • By: Helen Jukes
  • Narrated by: Jane Collingwood
  • Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins
  • 4.4 out of 5 stars (10 ratings)

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A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings

By: Helen Jukes
Narrated by: Jane Collingwood
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Publisher's Summary

A fascinating, insightful and inspiring account of a novice beekeeper's year of keeping honeybees, which will appeal to readers of H Is For Hawk and The Outrun.

Entering her 30s, Helen Jukes feels trapped in an urban grind of office politics and temporary addresses - disconnected, stressed. Struggling to settle into her latest job and home in Oxford, she realises she needs to effect a change if she’s to create a meaningful life for herself, one that can accommodate comfort and labour and love. Then friends give her the gift of a colony of honeybees - according to folklore, bees freely given bring luck - and Helen embarks on her first full year of beekeeping. But what does it mean to ‘keep’ wild creatures? In learning about the bees, what can she learn of herself? And can travelling inside the hive free her outside it?

As Helen grapples with her role in the delicate, awe-inspiring ecosystem of the hive, the very act of keeping seems to open up new perspectives, deepen friendships old and new and make her world come alive. 

A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings is at once a fascinating exploration of the honeybee and the hive and the practices of honey gathering and the history of our observation of bees and a beautifully wrought meditation on responsibility and care, on vulnerability and trust, on forging bonds and breaking new ground.

©2018 Helen Jukes. All rights reserved (P)2018 Simon & Schuster, UK. All Rights Reserved.

Critic Reviews

"This book has found a special place in my heart. It’s as strange, beautiful and unexpected, as precise and exquisite in its movings, as bees in a hive. I loved it." (Helen Macdonald, author of H Is for Hawk)

What listeners say about A Honeybee Heart Has Five Openings

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Wonderful narration

I found Jane’s voice as soothing as the summer beehive. Thoroughly enjoyed this read. Well worth.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars

I quivered with each new chapter.

The bee stung lip, oozing honey coupled with a Russian accent was most memorable, te he!

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