For The Threepenny Review, novice beekeeper David Fowler recounts his attempts to fill his hive box with wild bee swarms near Penelope, Texas. He learns that when it comes to beekeeping, perseverance is the primary requirement.The queen lives to lay eggs, the only bee in the hive of say, eighty thousand, who does so. A handful of males, drones, are...

This story was funded by our members. Join Longreads and help us to support more writers.Betsy Golden Kellem | The Atavist Magazine | September 2024 | 2,055 words (8 minutes)This is an excerpt from issue no. 155, “City on Fire.”The first fire bell rang out at the St. James Hotel at a quarter to nine in the evening. A guest had noticed smoke curling...

Don’t own an EV yet? Do the current options on the market bore you? Dive into Rosecrans Baldwin’s GQ piece about Kindred Motorworks, a San Francisco startup modernizing and electrifying classic cars, like vintage Ford Broncos and Volkswagen microbuses. Baldwin tours the company’s HQ—”basically a gigantic toy shop for car nerds”—and gets to test-drive...

“Any worthwhile analysis has to start from the searing fact that so far, nothing we’ve done has worked.” So begins this reflection by leftist collective The Bad Side on the campus encampments from last spring. Originally published as a pamphlet, and reproduced for a wider readership by n+1, this essay may start on a dispiriting note, but it quickly...

Police knew that Maylia Sotelo was selling fake Percocet—really fentanyl combined with a filler—but did not stop her. Jack McDonough’s mother sought the right treatment for his addiction but could not find it. When Jack bought a pill from Maylia, their worlds collided. This is the story of how two kids were failed by various systems—criminal, educational,...

For Hakai Magazine, Kimberley Brown reports that the violence in Ecuador from gangs, drug cartels, and other armed and criminal groups is threatening the livelihoods of cangrejeros, people who catch and sell crabs. These cangrejeros, who are part of traditional crabbing collectives on the Ecuadorian coast, also help to protect the country’s mangrove...