Beekeeping

Beekeeping plays a big part in the book.  Sue Monk Kidd does a good job describing the equipment and processes of beekeeping.  But here's some extra info anyways.
Beekeeping (or apiculture) is the maintenance of honey bee colonies, commonly in hives, by humans. A beekeeper (or apiarist) keeps bees to get honey, beeswax, propolis, pollenn and royal jelly.  They use these products to pollinate crops or to sell the products.  A bee yard or apiary is what a place is called where bees are kept.  A colony of bees consists of three types of bee:

• a Queen bee, which is normally the only breeding female in the colony;
• a large number of female worker bees, typically 30,000–50,000 in number;
• a number of male drones, ranging from thousands in a strong hive in spring to very few during cold season.

The queen is the only sexually mature female in the hive and all of the female worker bees and male drones are her offspring. The queen may live for up to three years or more and can lay up to half a milliion eggs before death. At the peak of the breeding season, late spring to summer, a good queen may be capable of laying 3,000 eggs in one day, more than her own body weight. This would be rare; a good queen queen might peak at 2,000 eggs a day, but a more average queen might lay just 1,500 eggs per day. The queen is raised from a normal worker egg, but is fed a larger amount of royal jelly than a normal worker bee, resulting in a becoming much larger. When a queen dies it must be quickly replaced, or the colony will die.

Here is  a short video with some graphics.