Long-form Essay · Indigenous Culture & Conservation
Juliana, The Queen of the Bees
My Encounter and Life With the Queen of the Bees and the Yaaku People
by Makena Brandon · Published by Discussion Publishers · Sponsored by Utu Heritage · Images by Discussion Publishers
About this book
In August 2026, Makena Brandon travelled from Nanyuki to Doldol and into the edge of Mukogodo Forest, and came back with a different story than the one he went for.
Juliana, The Queen of the Bees follows Juliana Loshiro — one of the youngest fluent speakers of Yaakunte and a beekeeper who reads a hive the way others read weather — across four days of tea and mandazi, fire and nyama choma, an elder's gifted log hive, and cave walls painted long before anyone called this place Laikipia. It is a portrait of the Yaaku: a people whose language, forest and bees survive only together.
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