Absolutely loved this book. It was heart-warming but, didn't hid the fragility and instability of family life. It shows how much we learn as individuals as family relationships change. I'm also an expert on bees now!!!

I found this quite poignant and a totally engaging memoir about ordinary folk struggling with life. Mererdith May's life fell apart when her parents broke up acrimoniously and she, her mother and brother move across America to California to live with her grandparents. Her mother has immense psychological issues and cannot relate either to her children or the real world and grows increasingly withdrawn, self obsessed and violent. Meredith's saving grace is her Grandfather who keeps bees, this gentle man quietly guides Meredith from a tough childhood into adulthood via his beekeeping and is the true hero in her disruptive childhood. His understanding of humanity is totally absorbing and he always knows exactly when to impart information and when to try and encourage Meredith forward

Thought provoking about relationships and empathy with nature plus information about bees in relation to how a caring society should work for the greater good. A salutary lesson in today's turmoil. I, for one, will be looking at bees differently come the summer and try to identify the different behavioural traits around local hives. It is a totally compelling read and beautifully written which I recommend highly

An interesting read, a bit slow at times but different from a lot of things I’ve read. It’s a real page turner, a story of pain, forgiveness , growth and of course the bees. A beautiful memoir and story of surviving a dysfunctional mother into her grandfather’s love.

Thanks to netgalley and the publisher for a free copy for an honest review

4.5 stars
I’m not a great reader of memoirs but I do love bees, so that drew me to this book. When she is five years old, Meredith and her brother are taken to California by their mother when she and their father divorce. They live with her grandparents. Grandpa keeps bees on a fairly large scale and teaches the young Meredith about them. Her mother is obviously unstable, her grandmother cold and, to my view, cruel. I wanted to shake her grandpa to make him stand up for the children, but his method of supporting them was different.
Meredith began to compare and contrast the cooperative and altruistic life of the bees to her own car-crash of a family unit. I admired her later understanding of her mother and grandmother. It is no thanks to them that she turned into an empathic adult. The only slight downside, for me, was that this felt at times like a beekeeping manual. It was necessary to have Grandpa’s lessons in there but occasionally they repeated things we’d been told before. It’s a tough, thought-provoking but enjoyable read and it must have taken a huge amount of courage to write and publish it.

The Honey Bus of the title is an army surplus truck converted by Meredith May's step-grandfather into a homespun honey bottling plant. In her grandfather's company, she learns about the secret life of bees and the craft of the beekeeper. As she grows older her grandfather conveys life lessons by using the bees as examples of the proper way to behave.

With the help of her grandfather and the bees, she navigates her parents broken marriage and her mother's inability to mother, born of an abusive childhood.

This is an exemplary work of creative nonfiction. A factually accurate story of real people and events is presented in a very compelling, vivid, and dramatic way..