The Last Beekeeper

The disappearance of the world’s bees, along with the other pollinating insects, in an ecological disaster dubbed the Great Collapse provides the backdrop for this moving postapocalyptic thriller from Dalton (Waiting for the Night Song). Sasha Butler, 22, changed her name from Alexandra Severn to hide that her father is Lawrence Severn, a bee researcher thought to have been the world’s last beekeeper. With humanity desperate for information about bee survival, Lawrence went to prison rather than reveal that he had kept invaluable data about bees. Sasha knows he hid records at their rural home that could provide a basis for hope, but retrieving them is hampered by the presence of squatters on the property. She’s also haunted by visions of bees, which she tells herself are just wishful hallucinations, but which also allow her to speculate that the Great Collapse could be reversed. Dalton does a fine job imbuing all the characters with plausible emotions and reactions to their grim reality. Superior worldbuilding (hysteria about bees has led Congress to criminalize “reporting bee sightings without evidence”) elevates this above similar books. (Mar.)