Where Honeybees Thrive
Where Honeybees Thrive

Author: Heather Swan

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2017-11-21

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 0271080736

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Colony Collapse Disorder, ubiquitous pesticide use, industrial agriculture, habitat reduction—these are just a few of the issues causing unprecedented trauma in honeybee populations worldwide. In this artfully illustrated book, Heather Swan embarks on a narrative voyage to discover solutions to—and understand the sources of—the plight of honeybees. Through a lyrical combination of creative nonfiction and visual imagery, Where Honeybees Thrive tells the stories of the beekeepers, farmers, artists, entomologists, ecologists, and other advocates working to stem the damage and reverse course for this critical pollinator. Using her own quest for understanding as a starting point, Swan highlights the innovative projects and strategies these groups employ. Her mosaic approach to engaging with the environment not only reveals the incredibly complex political ecology in which bees live—which includes human and nonhuman actors alike—but also suggests ways of comprehending and tackling a host of other conflicts between postindustrial society and the natural world. Each chapter closes with an illustrative full-color gallery of bee-related artwork. A luminous journey from the worlds of honey producers, urban farmers, and mead makers of the United States to those of beekeepers of Sichuan, China, and researchers in southern Africa, Where Honeybees Thrive traces the global web of efforts to secure a sustainable future for honeybees—and ourselves.

Where Honeybees Thrive
Where Honeybees Thrive

Author: Heather Swan

Publisher: Penn State Press

Published: 2017-09-05

Total Pages: 178

ISBN-13: 0271080752

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Colony Collapse Disorder, ubiquitous pesticide use, industrial agriculture, habitat reduction—these are just a few of the issues causing unprecedented trauma in honeybee populations worldwide. In this artfully illustrated book, Heather Swan embarks on a narrative voyage to discover solutions to—and understand the sources of—the plight of honeybees. Through a lyrical combination of creative nonfiction and visual imagery, Where Honeybees Thrive tells the stories of the beekeepers, farmers, artists, entomologists, ecologists, and other advocates working to stem the damage and reverse course for this critical pollinator. Using her own quest for understanding as a starting point, Swan highlights the innovative projects and strategies these groups employ. Her mosaic approach to engaging with the environment not only reveals the incredibly complex political ecology in which bees live—which includes human and nonhuman actors alike—but also suggests ways of comprehending and tackling a host of other conflicts between postindustrial society and the natural world. Each chapter closes with an illustrative full-color gallery of bee-related artwork. A luminous journey from the worlds of honey producers, urban farmers, and mead makers of the United States to those of beekeepers of Sichuan, China, and researchers in southern Africa, Where Honeybees Thrive traces the global web of efforts to secure a sustainable future for honeybees—and ourselves.

The Lives of Bees
The Lives of Bees

Author: Thomas D. Seeley

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2019-05-28

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 0691166765

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Seeley, a world authority on honey bees, sheds light on why wild honey bees are still thriving while those living in managed colonies are in crisis. Drawing on the latest science as well as insights from his own pioneering fieldwork, he describes in extraordinary detail how honey bees live in nature and shows how this differs significantly from their lives under the management of beekeepers. Seeley presents an entirely new approach to beekeeping--Darwinian Beekeeping--which enables honey bees to use the toolkit of survival skills their species has acquired over the past thirty million years, and to evolve solutions to the new challenges they face today. He shows beekeepers how to use the principles of natural selection to guide their practices, and he offers a new vision of how beekeeping can better align with the natural habits of honey bees.

Wild Honey Bees
Wild Honey Bees

Author: Ingo Arndt

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2022-02-01

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 0691235090

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A lavishly illustrated exploration of the mysterious, hidden world of forest-dwelling wild honey bees—with new insights that promise to revolutionize conservation and beekeeping The honey bee, a key pollinator, is now an endangered species, threatened by human activity and loss of biodiversity. Because of this, understanding forest-dwelling wild honey bees—which are more resistant to diseases and parasites than honey bees kept by beekeepers—is more important than ever before. In this lavishly illustrated book, Ingo Arndt, one of the world’s best wildlife photographers, and Jürgen Tautz, one of the world’s leading bee experts, set out on the trail of wild honey bees, bringing back sensational photographs, some of which document behaviors never captured before, and new scientific insights that promise to revolutionize conservation and beekeeping. A remarkable number of wild honey bee colonies still exist, living in hollow trees inside the forest, largely unnoticed by humans. This book explores the fascinating secret world of wild honey bees, including the adaptations and behaviors they have acquired to survive and the new challenges they face today. Featuring incredible macro and wide-angle photographs, some taken from inside hives, Wild Honey Bees is a unique collaboration that documents a major research project and offers critical new insights about these essential creatures. A stunning photographic record that documents for the first time the original way of life of the endangered, forest-dwelling honey bee A unique collaboration between one of the world’s best wildlife photographers and one of its leading bee experts Features incredible macro and wide-angle photographs, some from inside the hive, depicting bees as never seen before Offers fascinating new insights into the mysterious, hidden world of the wild honey bee

100 Plants to Feed the Bees
100 Plants to Feed the Bees

Author: The Xerces Society

Publisher: Storey Publishing

Published: 2016-11-29

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 1612127010

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The international bee crisis is threatening our global food supply, but this user-friendly field guide shows what you can do to help protect our pollinators. The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation offers browsable profiles of 100 common flowers, herbs, shrubs, and trees that support bees, butterflies, moths, and hummingbirds. The recommendations are simple: pick the right plants for pollinators, protect them from pesticides, and provide abundant blooms throughout the growing season by mixing perennials with herbs and annuals! 100 Plants to Feed the Bees will empower homeowners, landscapers, apartment dwellers — anyone with a scrap of yard or a window box — to protect our pollinators.

The Bees in Your Backyard
The Bees in Your Backyard

Author: Joseph S. Wilson

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2015-11-24

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0691160775

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An introduction to the roughly 4000 different bee species found in the United States and Canada, dispelling common myths about bees while offering essential tips for telling them apart in the field

What If There Were No Bees?
What If There Were No Bees?

Author: Suzanne Slade

Publisher: Capstone

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 14

ISBN-13: 1404860193

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Talks about each habitat and shows what would happen if the food chain was broken.

What Bees Want: Beekeeping as Nature Intended
What Bees Want: Beekeeping as Nature Intended

Author: Susan Knilans

Publisher: The Countryman Press

Published: 2022-02-22

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1682686744

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Bee populations are plummeting. The solution? Give them what they need to live naturally, and they’ll handle the rest. Susan Knilans and Jacqueline Freeman are in love with bees. So in love that they observe their bees—their work, communication, seasonal activity, and more—for hours each day. And with observation came realization: when bees are allowed to live as they would in nature (with smaller hives, no chemicals, freedom to swarm, and little-to-no human interference), they will thrive. Accordingly, Knilans and Freeman have spent decades perfecting the revolutionary practice of preservation beekeeping, guided by the simple question, “What do the bees want?” A surprising page-turner, this instructional book tells the story of their successes and failures, demonstrating what was learned along the way. Sharing preservation beekeeping’s key tenets, the authors provide concrete, simple ways to implement their approach, from finding the right hive location to honing observation skills. This preservation manifesto is a vital addition to any beekeeper’s library, imparting all the joys of a beekeeper's life.

Turn This Book Into a Beehive!
Turn This Book Into a Beehive!

Author: Lynn Brunelle

Publisher: Workman Publishing

Published: 2018-04-03

Total Pages: 195

ISBN-13: 1523501413

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The Real Buzz on Bees What a promise! Actually, promises. First, here’s a book that teaches kids all about the fascinating world of bees. Second, fun exercises, activities, and illustrations engage the imagination and offer a deeper understanding of bee life and bee behavior. Third, by following a few simple steps including removing the book’s cover and taping it together, readers can transform the book into an actual living home for backyard bees. Fourth, added all together, Turn This Book Into a Beehive! lets kids make a difference in the world—building a home where bees can thrive is one small but critical step in reversing the alarming trend of dwindling bee populations. Written by Lynn Brunelle, author of Pop Bottle Science, whose gift for making science fun earned her four Emmy Awards as a writer for Bill Nye the Science Guy, Turn This Book Into a Beehive! introduces kids to the amazing mason bee, a non-aggressive, non-stinging super-pollinator that does the work of over 100 honeybees. Mason bees usually live in hollow reeds or holes in wood, but here’s how to make a home just for them: Tear out the perforated paper—each illustrated as a different room in a house—roll the sheets into tubes, enclose the tubes using the book’s cover, and hang the structure outside. The bees will arrive, pack mud into the tubes, and begin pollinating all the plants in your backyard. Twenty experiments and activities reveal even more about bees—how to smell like a bee, understand the role of flowers and pollen, learn how bees communicate with each other through “dance,” and more. It’s the real buzz on bees, delivered in the most ingenious and interactive way.

Honeybee Democracy
Honeybee Democracy

Author: Thomas D. Seeley

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2010-09-20

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 140083595X

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How honeybees make collective decisions—and what we can learn from this amazing democratic process Honeybees make decisions collectively—and democratically. Every year, faced with the life-or-death problem of choosing and traveling to a new home, honeybees stake everything on a process that includes collective fact-finding, vigorous debate, and consensus building. In fact, as world-renowned animal behaviorist Thomas Seeley reveals, these incredible insects have much to teach us when it comes to collective wisdom and effective decision making. A remarkable and richly illustrated account of scientific discovery, Honeybee Democracy brings together, for the first time, decades of Seeley's pioneering research to tell the amazing story of house hunting and democratic debate among the honeybees. In the late spring and early summer, as a bee colony becomes overcrowded, a third of the hive stays behind and rears a new queen, while a swarm of thousands departs with the old queen to produce a daughter colony. Seeley describes how these bees evaluate potential nest sites, advertise their discoveries to one another, engage in open deliberation, choose a final site, and navigate together—as a swirling cloud of bees—to their new home. Seeley investigates how evolution has honed the decision-making methods of honeybees over millions of years, and he considers similarities between the ways that bee swarms and primate brains process information. He concludes that what works well for bees can also work well for people: any decision-making group should consist of individuals with shared interests and mutual respect, a leader's influence should be minimized, debate should be relied upon, diverse solutions should be sought, and the majority should be counted on for a dependable resolution. An impressive exploration of animal behavior, Honeybee Democracy shows that decision-making groups, whether honeybee or human, can be smarter than even the smartest individuals in them.