Bee Conservation in Literature: Representations of Stressors to Bees and Their Solutions in Creative Books and Beekeeping Guides

The global population of bees is declining, and news and social media outlets have controlled the narrative by focusing on Apis mellifera and discussing the most inflammatory causes while other bees and stressors are often overlooked. Creative fiction and nonfiction books do the same thing with the added complication that the discussion of bee conservation is often not the primary focus of the book if conservation is addressed at all. Beekeeping guides also provide drastically different views and ways of addressing bee conservation while targeting audiences that are directly involved with caring for honey bees. While the impact of the news and social media on people's perceptions of bee conservation have been explored, these lasting forms of media with which people engage years after being published are overlooked. The purpose of this research is to explore popular creative works, selected based on their number of readers on Goodreads, and beekeeping guides, selected based on their accessibility, to assess their engagement with the topic of bee conservation. The setting, need for plot relevancy, presence of unreliable narrators, and interests and knowledge of the author all limit the ability of a creative text to convey the topic to its audience. Beekeeping guides can directly engage with the topic, yet the personal experiences and knowledge of the author, "natural" beekeeping ideologies, and ulterior motive to push products also can limit the accuracy of their information. This raises the question of what can be done to reduce the spread and impact of misinformation.