| The Lives of Bees | A Natural History of our planet’s bee life | Christina M Grozinger & Harland Patch | Princeton University Press | 2024 | Hardback | 288 pages, 150 colour photos, b/w illustrations, and colour distribution maps | ISBN: 9780691247298 |
The Publisher’s View:
A beautifully illustrated guide to the vibrant and richly diverse world of bees
The Lives of Bees provides a one-of-a-kind look at the life and natural history of bees. Blending stunning photographs and illustrations with illuminating profiles of selected species, this incisive guide takes readers inside the world of these marvellous insects, exploring their physiology, behaviour, ecology, evolution, and much more. The Lives of Bees is essential reading for nature lovers everywhere.
– Features a wealth of stunning colour images
– Covers everything from the social lives of bees to bee conservation
– Written by two leading experts in the field
– Discusses the cultural, ecological, and economic interconnection between humans and bees
– Highlights strategies to support bee populations in backyards, farms, and natural areas
The Authors: Christina M. Grozinger is the Publius Vergilius Maro Professor of Entomology and Director of the Center for Pollinator Research at the Pennsylvania State University. Harland Patch is an Assistant Research Professor in the Department of Entomology and Director of Pollinator Programming at the Arboretum at Pennsylvania State University.
Fatbirder View:
If anyone doubted the importance of bees to the world in general and humanity in particular, then even a casual glance through the pages of this book would comprehensively convince them.
There must be many thousands of bee species… I was stunned to learn that in the recording area of my local bird observatory there are around 200 species in just a few square miles! My postage stamp garden has a couple of dozen regular bee species visitors and, apart from the busy honeybees we are all familiar with there are flower bees, mason bees, leaf-cutter species as well as cuckoo bees and bumblebees. Their habitat, behaviour and niches are legion.
To even skim these pages you get a sense of their remarkable lives and how much good they do, not to mention the risks we face if we do not take better care of them.
This is the sort of book you will go on dipping into learning more on every visit.
Fatbirder