Hey everyone!! So I am a little bored and aim currently listening to Michael Jackson on repeat, that’s why i suddenly wondered what your favorite song right now is. I just need to expand my music taste a little😇 (Ps I know this has nothing to do with books, but I just need recommendations🫠) Also I would be SO happy if there was a Pagebound version for movies/series and music🥹 But anyways I would really love to hear your music style and recommendations 😊 Thank you!🙏

(Edited: thank you all so much for so many amazing recommendations! I have now discovered so many amazing artists and their music! Im definitely going to do this again❤️🙏. Also because you all gave me so many recs I will now list my top 5 songs right now under this message)

Top 5

1. Origami by the rare occasions
2. Hotel room by Ax and the hatchemen
3. Cruisin’ by Samking
4. Brain damage by joywave
5. Brazil by Declan McKenna Hope you like the songs and thank you again!🎧❤️

Hello nerds I’m very curious what settings n stuff everyone has on their ereaders 🤓 Mine on my kindle is Font: OpenDyslexic (I’m not dyslexic but I read it apparently helps with reading with audhd) with bold 2 and size 4 with line spacing 3 (I sometimes reread the same sentence over and over so it helps having big line spacing lol) I don’t have any reading progress settings on bcos it’s too distracting for me

It's that occasional time where I want to hear about all the Bookclubs everyone runs/participates in. It's nice being able to hear about everyone's little groups and communities!

I'll start!

I co-run a horror centred bookclub that's fully on discord. Open to anyone interested, we read one book a month (chosen by a poll) and discuss it via discord calls and then also text based discussion questions. It's obviously a lot more structured and requires a bit more work to run, but when the participation is high it's such a nice feeling!

Then I also am in a personal bookclub that's only my close IRL friends, we meet in person with snacks and it's more chill, less structure.

❝When colonial-era beekeepers wanted to harvest honey or beeswax, they had to destroy (or at least significantly mangle) the hive to get it. Generally, the beekeepers would wait until fall and then smoke out the bees so they could safely get at the loot. Each year new swarms had to be captured. A few innovations were developed along the way, but the biggest step to modern-day beekeeping happened with Lorenzo Lorrain Langstroth invented the movable frame hive.❞

This paragraph reads like alarm bells of western Eurocentrism. It makes it sound like no one anywhere knew how to get honey and wax from hives without destroying them until LLL. So I started researching Chinese beekeeping, because if I've learned anything over the years, is that there's a high chance China did it first. Specifically I was researching to see if the only way known for collecting honey and wax was by destroying hives and killing bees. I do wish I had researched native bee keeping in North America, but I've already spent two days on this so I'd at least like to share the info.

The Song essay Feng ji (“On Bees”) by the poet-official Wang Yucheng (954–1001) records his conversation with a monk. In which the monk informs him that ❝When collecting honey one cannot take too much; if too much is taken the bees become hungry and do not multiply. One also should not take too little; if one does, the bees become lazy and don’t produce any more.❞ (p. 242)

This, to me, sound like they're trying to preserve the bees, not kill them. These may not have been hive bees, but it's hard to say with the texts we have. To quote Pattinson: ❝Wang’s essay suggests that by the early Song period, the Chinese seemed to have been able to manipulate bees to control swarming and to maintain honey production.❞ (p. 243)

But a little later we do have mention of hive care. The 1273 Fundamentals of Agriculture and Sericulture by the Mongol government was published with beekeeping instructions

❝Honeybees: New addition. People mostly capture bees from old kilns in the mountains. Then they build a small house, or weave a skep in the shape of a [cylindrical] basketwork grain bin from the branches of the Heterophyllous Chaste Tree. Both ends are sealed with mud, with one or two small openings being made so the bees can go in and out. Another small door is made and sealed with mud. From time to time open this door and clean the hive out; the hive must be kept clean and nothing else be allowed in. Once the autumn flowers have all withered, leave some honey for the bees to eat over winter. The remaining honeycomb should then be cut away and used to produce honey and beeswax. In the third month of spring the hive should be cleaned out as above. Normally a container of water should be placed before the hive to ensure that the bees are not lost through thirst. If in the spring months as the bees mature several kings appear, one should check how many there are and which are strong and which are not. If possible divide them into two colonies, leaving just two kings, picking out the others. If the colony is not strong, take out all the other kings except the original one.❞ (p. 244)

Not only do the beekeepers care about keeping the hive clean and making sure their hives can grow. They understood there was a queen (that they called king) and that the bees also needed to eat. Again this doesn't sound like destroying or mangling the hive nor are they having to capture new swarms. Actually they're multiplying their swarms and expanding their hives.

This is reiterated in Nongshu (Manual of Agriculture) by Wang Zhen 40 years later: ❝Beekeepers who multiply their hives until they have several hundred of them can become wealthy without needing to pursue any other trade.❞ (p. 245)

You can't multiply your hives if you're killing them. But we don't have any info on the hives themselves, what they look like or how they work besides that they're given doors. Then Liu Ji an official of the late Yuan and early Ming write Yulizi (1350) and we have the first indication of something like the movable frame hive

❝Wood was shaped to make palaces for the bees, using no split or rotten wood. These hives were then arranged in rows an appropriate distance apart, with old ones and new ones in the right order. Each hive had its correct position and each window faced the correct direction, and they were arranged in units of five by five, with one person overseeing each, watching their reproduction, adjusting the temperature [inside the hives], strengthening the frames [of the hives], and opening or sealing the hives at the appropriate times.❞ (p. 246)

We're getting suspiciously close to LLL's hives.

Finally we have a mid-Ming dynasty agricultural manual Zhuyu Shanfang Zabu (Miscellaneous Books from Bamboo Island Mountain Hut) by Song Xu (1504) ❝First make three or four square wooden boxes [literally “levels”] to be the bees’ rooms. In each box fix one strip of bamboo each lengthways and crossways, and make a roof for the top box and a floor for the bottom one. Make a stand to hold the bottom box, and make a tenon structure for the floor so it can be moved out. Put all this into a larger enclosing hive “residence.” Make a small slit in the south-facing outside wall of the hive, then cover the slit with a cover woven from thin bamboo strips, making several holes in that cover, each hole being just big enough for one bee to go in and out.❞ (p. 247)

not only were these accessible by the bottoms for cleaning and maintenance but they have frames of bamboo to build onto

❝When the bees have produced one layer of honeycomb, wait until the evening when the bees are resting and do not sting, then lightly lift the upper box and slip in another box, with the base box below it and the cover on top. Seal it tightly as above. As they produce another full honeycomb, one can slip in a third and fourth extra box in the same way❞ (p. 248) Source: Pattinson, David (2012). ‘Pre-modern Beekeeping in China: A Short History’, Agricultural History 86.4, 235–55

I don't doubt that Langstroth invented a neat hive that we still use today, but I do think a fuller history of hive development for beekeepers that lead to his hive would have been nice. I also question why we haven't covered native beekeeping (yet?) besides a few throwaway paragraphs about the stingless bee. At the very least destroying resources sounds more like something colonists would do. And I question why the white history of bee keeping is the one being examined here. It was fun to learn about Chinese beekeeping tho!

Special thanks to @yeliuxi for helping me get the research materials for this topic and for listening to me talk about bees!!