This book had a lot of really interesting bee related facts. I really appreciated the format of it being broken up into months of the year to learn about what the bees are doing throughout the year. I didn't love some of the authors side stories, and he did an awful lot of name dropping, which folks unfamiliar with the bee community don't really care much about. I think he could've done away with a lot of that back patting and it would've been a better book for it. As long as you can look past that sort of behavior, this one was very interesting.

Coté’s book shares the story of his family’s honey soaked roots, the evolution of his beekeeping hobby into a full time profession, his work with Bees Without Borders and the New York City Beekeepers Association while it also provides readers with beekeeping history and little known facts about bees with a peppering of humor.

Honey and Venom is part memoir, part tell-all, both of which had this non-bee lover enjoying the read. Yes, the author thinks quite highly of himself, but it's his memoir, so he can say whatever he wants about himself. The name dropping and public shaming of his contemporaries made me a bit uncomfortable. Who knew the urban bee keeping world was so contentious?

Thank you to Net Galley for the ARC for an honest review.

I have a weird relationship with honey bees. I am legit terrified of them and of being stung, and yet, they fascinate me to no end. I enjoy telling people that me and honey bees have a love/hate relationship. I love to learn more about honeybees and was really excited to get the opportunity to read Honey & Venom.

The stories that Andrew Cote has and shared were fascinating and entertaining. It was very clear that he knows his stuff and is a respectable voice within the beekeeper world. The book did have a few preachy moments and it was apparent that Cote has a high opinion of himself and his beekeeping skills, but that is totally forgivable when you consider how much experience he and his family have in the honeybee field.

The book included a lot of information about honey bees that I did not previously know. They really are fascinating animals. All in all, Honey & Venom was an interesting read and I thoroughly enjoyed reading all of Cote’s stories.

I LOVE THIS BOOK!! My brother is a beekeeper and this was such an engaging and informative book. I loved learning more about something that is such a passion for someone I love. Andrew Cote takes you through a year of beekeeping. Each chapter is filled not only with information but also lots of humor. Bees are the foundation of our ecosystem. It's so important for everyone to understand their importance to our survival. This is a must-read.

I learned some really interesting facts about honey bees in the prologue of Honey and Venom. Did you know bees can be trained to detect bombs and cancer? Did you know they’ve traveled on the space shuttle? Or that they coexisted with dinosaurs??

All really interesting facts that may come in handy on a trivia night in the future! Unfortunately the rest of the book wasn’t for me. I decided to DNF at 15%. Thank you Ballantine and Netgalley for the free review copy.

Did I learn quite a bit about honeybees, their habits and their units? Yes. Did I love learning about beekeeping in NYC? Yes. However, I was so overwhelmed by the ego of the author that I was sometimes annoyed and not interested in picking up the book again.

I truly did learn so much and loved that it covered beekeeping, learning about the types of bees (their roles and behaviors), the legal and safety side of beekeeping, and hearing some of the stories as it relates to safe (and unsafe!) beekeeping. However, the tone of the writing just made it seem like the author was so self aggrandizing (particularly in stories related to other, lesser experienced beekeepers) that it took away from the content a bit.

Not my favorite - but definitely learned a lot and enjoyed the more educational components/stories of this work.

When I think of beekeepers, I think of pastoral, rural, peaceful settings, a life full of flowers and honey ; Andrew Coté, is far from this image. His life and career is globetrotting, star studded, and full of rooftops and city streets, hard work and long hours (although I am sure those rural type beekeepers also work long and hard hours!)

I was pleasantly surprised by this book! I should have realized that the life of an urban beekeeper would be leagues different from those on farms and homesteads, however I never would have imagined the amazing things that Coté, has done in his life as a beekeeper. One such thing is his Bees Without Borders program that he founded to help fight poverty, and he has travelled to such countries as Kenya, Nigeria, and Iraq and others, to teach them beekeeping skills. Some of the stories he had to tell about his travels were were humorous, while some highlighted the dangers he faced in his mission to help others, and bees.

Coté, also had stories to tell of commercials, tv show appearances (Cake Boss, for one), and being a beekeeper to the rich and famous – namely one very famous woman renowned for her lifestyle whose name begins with M. In addition to all of this, Coté, also founded the New York City Beekeepers Association, maintains his own empire of bees, and assists with dangerous bee situations that plague the city – such as a hoarding house whose bees became a danger and nuisance to the city, working side by side with the police in such cases.

I really loved this book – I loved hearing about all of Coté’s adventures, his family history with bees and beekeeping, and the little facts that he threw in about bees as well – such as the fact that the scent of bananas enrages them! This book was a great read and I loved learning about a whole different world, the world of the urban beekeeper.

BEE prepared for a fun book filled with interesting and humorous stories by a New York City beekeeper. But the stories just don’t take place in NYC. He teaches beekeeping in Iraq, Uganda and other places for Bees Without Borders. It’s hard work but Cote makes it sound like fun.

Honey and Venom: Confessions of an Urban Beekeeper is a vividly written and engaging discourse on bees, beekeeping, ecology, and life philosophy filled with personal anecdotes by Andrew Coté. Released 9th June by Penguin/Random House on their Ballantine imprint, it's 320 pages and available in hardcover, audio, and ebook formats.

The book is arranged around the calendar year, starting in January, moving through to December, and elucidating the trials, drama, and triumphs of the beekeeper's year. There is a rhythm and flow to both the subject matter and the author's retelling. Tucked into the pages are many entertaining anecdotes about the author's experiences as a beekeeper, from a beekeeping family, and travels as an educator and international ambassador and ombudsman for honeybees and apiarists worldwide.

For readers who have enjoyed and loved John Seymour and Sue Hubbell but were looking for a little bit more modern glamorous NYC version of the beekeeper's year, this is your book. Coté writes humorously and well about life and his encounters with humans and bees. For readers in search of a no-frills how-to-keep-bees, this isn't it.

Four stars, I really enjoyed it.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

I have always been interested in bee keeping. I found this book to have valuable insight and chocked full of interesting stories. The author does jump around a little bit he tends to weave them all together by the end of the chapter. I do wish he would have included pictures. I was constantly looking up the stories as I read! It was a good book. I would recommend to anyone who finds bees interesting.

"Life is the flower for which love is the honey."

I was thrilled to receive this advanced reader copy of Andrew Cote's world of honey bees from Ballantine Books. My family currently resides in North Dakota, where there are nothing but miles upon miles of fields full of canola, flax, barley, etc. They honey bee plays a huge part in production of these crops, and you can't help but notice all the bee boxes as you traverse the countryside (pretty much the whole entire state). This is why North Dakota is the number 1 producer of honey in the United States. Therefore, I dove into Cote's memoir with eager anticipation about all the new things I would learn about the honey bee and the production of honey.

Andrew Coté is the founder of the New York City Beekeeper's Association and the executive director of Bees Without Borders, an international nonprofit that helps needy countries and communities develop their own beekeeping apiaries. Their organization has allowed them to travel to many corners of the world; Fiji, Zimbabwe, and Korea...just to name a few far flung countries, and getting to read of his travels was so fun.

Honey and Venom is divided into 12 chapters, covering a chapter for each month of the year. Each chapter is also told with a backstory where the reader gets to dive into Cote's family history, beekeeping fun with friends, his travels around the world, and how each month brings something new into the life of a beekeeper.

I'm a huge fan of a backstory within a story, so I was constantly drawn into each chapter as the story progressed along with my knowledge of the honey bee and it's keepers. Cote is not just rambling on about himself throughout the story. Instead, his tales include his family, friends and beekeeping community.

For those afraid that this is a 'typical memoir' where the author just drones on....pun intended...it is not. Cote has a fun way of telling his story along with the facts of bee keeping life by sprinkling knowledge of the honey bee and beekeeping throughout each chapter. I also found myself laughing along with him and his experiences as a beekeeper throughout the memoir.

I learned so much and quite a few fun facts about the honey bee. For example, did you know that honey bees can be trained to detect bombs or cancer? That the honey bee and dinosaurs coexisted since around the Cretaceous period?? And never eat bananas before....well....you'll have to read the story to learn that bit of trivia.

Andrew Cote's tale is truly memorable, educational, and endearing. The way he works with and is impassioned to help others truly endeared me to his life and his cause.I highly recommend this book for anyone looking to learn more about the honey bee or would love to dive into the fun world of a beekeeper, and I especially recommend this book to school teachers. I could definitely see myself teaching this memoir to my English class.

"Everyone should have two or three hives of bees. Bees are easier to keep than a dog or cat. They are more interesting than gerbils."

Thank you NetGalley for this advanced reader copy in exchange for my honest review.

This really is a story more about beekeepers than it is about bees. I admit to being a little disappointed in that, but that is on me not the author. The author tells many tales of beekeeping in the urban environment of New York City and around the world. He tells entertaining, though occasionally perplexing tales, about beekeepers and their many foibles. Celebrity names and locations abound, the author has led a charmed life through beekeeping. A sweet read.

Wild stories involving beekeeping in NYC, as well as all over the world.

It's not meant as a tutorial on how to keep bees, but there's still tons of interesting information on what bees are up to at any given time of the year, why they may behave a certain way, how they function as a hive, and so on. You won't be lost if you don't know anything about the subject matter.

In a day and age where preserving ecosystems are paramount to our own survival, education on the role(s) of animals essential, bees being among them. If you're interested in learning but repelled by the dryness of a textbook, then this is a fantastic on-ramp. Sure, you're hearing about a lot of extreme and/or incredibly rare instances, but those are the coolest stories, right?

Cote writes about much of the strife associated with various individuals/fellow beekeepers, which seems like it would naturally come with decades of experience, as well as curtail his own global exposure as an ambassador for urban beekeeping.

Incredibly interesting, endearing, and informative.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Random House Publishing, and Ballantine Books for the advance read.

This seems to be a very well-written book about beekeeping and the author's life and experiences, broken up by month, but the writing was hard for me to get through. It's not an easy read, and I frequently found myself going over paragraphs a couple of time to sort out the thread. Anecdotes are thrown in seemingly at random, and while they're interesting, they make it hard to follow along. I wanted to enjoy it, but ultimately couldn't.

This would be a good book for people interested in learning more about beekeeping.

I read this as an ARC from NetGalley.

Honey and Venom: Confessions of an Urban Beekeeper by Andrew Coté, published by Ballantine Books, is an amazing memoir by an urban beekeeper and international nonprofit educator, encompassing an all-around journey through the many seasons of Coté's life as a beekeeper. The book is simultaneously deeply personal and colorfully captivating as each chapter meanders through stories from the author's career, his personal life, and endless interesting facts about the incredible honey bee.

Andrew Coté is the founder of the New York City Beekeeper's Association and the executive director of Bees Without Borders, an international nonprofit that assists in developing beekeeping projects and educating new generations of beekeepers in every corner of the world. While a fourth-generation beekeeper who often works alongside his father and other family members, Honey and Venom takes readers through how Coté came to keep bees on his own accord and the countless journies it has taken him on ever since.

Honey and Venom is broken down into 12 chapters, one for each month of the year. This framing device allows every chapter to begin with one story taking place in that month of the year for Coté to come back to as he weaves tale after tale of his, his family's, and his friends' lives as beekeepers. The structure helps set a sense of progression as the seasons change and the stories can build off one another chapter-to-chapter as Coté explains the life and business of bees (and their keepers) living in the northeastern United States.

Coté's mastery over words in Honey and Venom alone is enough to make every last page utterly captivating. The way he is able to tell stories within stories is phenomenal and his wide vernacular is just bold enough to teeter the right side of the line between exciting and excessive. He has countless ways to describe the majesty of bees throughout the book without ever having to repeat himself or blunder. While the book holds a crude joke or description here or there, it is clearly a reflection of Coté's joviality and not his lack of creative expression.

One might think that a beekeeper would run out of tales to tell after only so long; a few bad bee stings, a poor honey yield, and maybe something about Colony Collapse Disorder. One would, however, be so, so wrong. Coté's experiences over his beekeeping career are so varied, eclectic, and unexpected that as soon as you begin a new chapter you are instantly enthralled with a new story and then three more equally engaging ones emerge over the next five pages alone. His ability to deliver so many unique and worthwhile stories is, in part, the result of having his hand in so many pots at once. Coté's various urban beekeeping and honey-selling ventures around the world are always interesting. What really helps everything shine though, is all of the ways Coté shines lights on his friends and family as well.

Virtually all of the stories in Honey and Venom feature the life and times of the many people Coté has met along his way. The way he pays love, respect, and reverence to so many of his friends, family, and mentors helps not only provide him with even more diverse stories, it simply makes the book stronger.

Coté is perfectly aware of the vast privileges he holds and has taken advantage of over his life to achieve the success he has. He makes reference to it frequently. However, he also pays enormous respect to the folks he works with who do not enjoy the same privileges and makes it clear not through any specific words he writes, but through the reverence for all of these people he pays along the way. While Honey and Venom is a memoir from a single man's perspective, it is palpable just through his own love and admiration for the people in his life that he strives to do all he can to lift others up through the success and good fortune he has enjoyed.

I wholeheartedly recommend Honey and Venom to not just readers with interests as eclectic as mine, but to anybody who simply enjoys reading well-written and absolutely captivating stories. One needs not to have any experience with honey bees or their keepers to learn a lot and be enthralled by Coté's writing and the stories he tells.

Honey and Venom: Confessions of an Urban Beekeeper will be available June 9th wherever books are sold.

Part memoir, part crash-course in the basics of understanding bees and beekeeping, Honey and Venom is an insightful peek into the world of this growing hobby and sometimes-profession. This title isn’t simply dedicated to the mechanics of keeping bees and how their needs and habits change throughout the year: it is also a collection of vignettes from the life of an inquisitive and occasionally rogue beekeeper.

Throughout the pages of this book, the reader travels around the world to far-flung places, and gets a sense of the impact of bees on communities all over the world, as well as the impact and intrinsic complication of urban beekeeping in New York City. All of this is accomplished with Cote’s unique voice – occasionally crass, usually funny, always earnest – adding levity and informative tangents to a dive into the mechanics of the lives of bees and this ancient hobby.

Honey and Venom is an excellent choice for anyone with even a passing interest in bees or beekeeping, and Cote’s fellow beekeepers will delight in seeing their shared passion reflected in this title’s pages. A worthwhile read for any curious individual, this book would make an excellent addition to a nonfiction collection with other special interest titles.

To bee or not to bee, that is the question.
My answer would be, to bee, after reading Honey and Venom.
Alas, I’m allergic to honey. I’ll spare the details what happens to me when I eat honey. It’s not pretty. So I can’t eat it. Still, I always loved bees, the smell of honey and the art of beekeeping.
It was a real pleasure to read the adventures a beekeeper goes through with their bees. This book not only was very interesting, but made me also laugh out loud a few times. I had no idea so much things were involved into beekeeping or how fantastic those little buzzing insects werr!
The only reason I didn’t give this book 5 stars was that I thought some parts could have been cut shorter or didn’t need to be mentioned.
But altogether I enjoyed it very much and it made me want to be a beekeeper.

While I don't normally read Non-fiction, if there is a topic that is particularly fascinating to me, I will definitely read a NF every now and again. Beekeeping is one of those topics that I find utterly captivating. The whole process is so absorbing and engrossing that I just want to learn all about it.

This book tells the story of an urban beekeeper. The knowledge and passion that the writer has for bees is clearly evident.

If you are interested in the topic of beekeeping, this is definitely a book for you. I'd highly recommend it.

A humorous memoir of a NYC beekeeper. Its Cote’s journey through beekeeping and his relationship with the bees and honey! If you wanna know about bees and beekeeping, read this book. Informative, light read and a good outdoorsy book.
Thank you NetGalley, Andrew Cote and Random House publishing for reader’s copy of this book. This review is not influenced and is my own opinion of the book.