Fruitless Fall

The Collapse of the Honey Bee and the Coming Agricultural Crisis

By: Rowan Jacobsen

Narrated by: Rowell Gormon

Many people will remember that Rachel Carson predicted a silent spring, but she also warned of a fruitless fall, a time with no pollination and no fruit. The fruitless fall nearly became a reality when, in 2007, beekeepers watched 30 billion bees mysteriously die. And they continue to disappear. The remaining pollinators, essential to the cultivation of a third of American crops, are now trucked across the country and flown around the world, pushing them ever closer to collapse. Fruitless Fall does more than just highlight this growing agricultural catastrophe. It emphasizes the miracle of flowering plants and their pollination partners, and urges readers not to take the abundance of our Earth for granted. A new afterword by the author tracks the most recent developments in this ongoing crisis.

©2008 Rowan Jacobson (P)2013 Audible, Inc.

Compulsory Reading - Share with Everyone!

As a beekeeper and staunch advocate for the protection of pollinators, the sooner people understand the problems associated with the way we humans are choosing to exist on this planet, the sooner we may be able to stop this 6th extinction from transpiring. Our global quest for large-scale mono crop agribusiness as the primary means for human existence on earth, means some get extremely wealthy and powerful while most go extinct. Trouble is, when all the life has been squandered in pursuit of wealth and power, one cannot eat money nor exist in a world devoid of that which fostered our ascent to planetary domination . Well done Rowen, this is an epic novel that deserves to be a chart-topper. Move over Rachel Carson, your "silent spring" has reaped a fruitless fall.

A must read

Absolute eye opener! Makes you realize how serious a problem this is. New respect for the wonders of nature. Great!

Fantastic Perfection of disaperance of bees.

This is the most comprehensive studying of why the bees are diapering the world wide easy to understand.

We are in trouble

I never would have imagined we could mess up our world so easily. Bees are one of the things that keep us alive and we are destroying them.

Great story to show great science

This book is definitely a narrative of bees and the new situation for the last decade or so (even sipping briefly back to the origin of bees). It also contains good science, it's well referenced, and provides answers to a lot of questions this lay-person has been wondering about what ever came of that CCD crisis that seems to have slid out of the media as it became less captivating (but not less urgent).
The narrator is good, though even toned, which might be right for this kind of science-heavy writing. But his French and German accents when quoting studies from those countries is a little silly, though it does provide a nice departure from the evenness of the rest of the book. He's also got a nice impersonation of a southern drawl.

Incredible book

What made the experience of listening to Fruitless Fall the most enjoyable?

The most important of subjects

Who was your favorite character and why?

The honeybee

Which scene was your favorite?

entire book

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Yes and i did

Any additional comments?

A crtitical subject on an issue affecting the planet

How little we really know

I had heard of bee colony collapse in the news and this is a great in depth coverage of what exactly colony collapse disorder is.We discover there are many things that are hurting bee: verroa mites, pesticides, feeding them fructose pancakes and working them to death are all contributing factors. I was left feeling that man has this need to bend nature to his will, but nature bites back with disease, predators, and extinction in some cases. Man seems to come up with band aid after band aid to solve these problems without regard to how it affects other things in the same environment. We are losing our connection to the earth and its resources. One bee keeper in Vermont let nearly all his bees die and started over with Russian bees and good cultural practices. He also did this in a remote area. His bees are robust and get better with each generation. He see the pests as warning signs that he has done something wrong or that simply a certain amount of pests are to be expected. He doesn't want to rely on yet another quick fix. Industrialization of food is the overall problem. This book is a lot like things from Michael Pollan, Paul Roberts or Joel Salatin. All advocates of smaller scale, diverse farming, something the world seems to be moving away from with such a big population. The bees are living beings and need a rest just like you or me. The book finishes with a short history of pollination and also treats us to the details of bee reproduction, and the kinds of things flowers have done to attract their gracious hosts. The narrator spoke clearly enough, but he spoke a bit too quickly at times. If he had paced himself the delivery would have been a bit longer, but much easier to grasp. Sometimes I had to repeat an entire chapter to fully get the meaning. Maybe this would have been a better book to simply read.