Bookshelf

The lives of bees – the untold story of the honey bee in the wild

Thomas Seeley

2019 353 pages Hardcover

There are different ways to regard the honey bee colony. The beekeeper focusses on the industrious aspects of bees to be utilised for human gain, while the scientist sees the honey bee as a sophisticated social insect – also highly convenient – to be studied, examined and reported ad infinitum. A third way to look at bees is as an admiring onlooker, taking delight in understanding the natural history of this wonderful species. In writing his new book, The Lives of Bees, Tom Seeley has endeavoured to adopt these three perspectives, while observing and seeking to comprehend and explain – what has not been explained before – how bees live in nature.

Reading this otherwise untold story makes The Lives of Bees easily the most informative and mind-nourishing book on bees I have read. It provides the knowledge we need to rethink beekeeping. Tom Seeley deftly articulates how honey bees survive - and indeed thrive - living naturally inside trees. Yet when utilised within vast beekeeping industries, honey bees are currently suffering 30- 40% annual mortality. This marvellous new text will enable the thinking beekeeper to lean in towards the natural life system that delivers resilient and healthy honey bee populations.

Tom Seeley’s work deserves to be celebrated far beyond the bee world - as well as being the foremost honey bee researcher and ecologist, he belongs within the current generation of spectacular nature writers.

Available for purchase from www.shop.beesfd.org (£24.00 plus post and packing)

The bras and the bees

F A Notley

2019 268 pages Hardcover

Brian Sherriff is known to beekeepers in many nations for his famous beekeeping clothing with its distinctive ‘Sherriff’ star. This is the story of Brian’s life: having been given two bee hives while working as a factory director, Brian and his wife Pat decided to manufacture beekeeping clothing that offered strong protection from bee stings using their knowledge about the materials used in making women’s underwear. The book closes with a section Look after the bees – which lists the charitable organisations that Brian and his company have supported – including their generous support for Bees for Development.

Protecting pollinators – how to save the creatures that feed our world

Jodi Helmer

2019 256 pages Paperback

The world’s pollinators enable a third of all the crops that humans consume. However, over half of those 2,000 pollinator species are now threatened by the changes we have caused. Not only bees are being destroyed, but also bats, birds, and butterflies, and many other pollinators.

This book outlines where the problems have come from including the overuse of chemicals and our heating planet. It offers practical and inspiring solutions in chapters titled: The need for native plants, Helping without hurting and Stand up and be counted!

Global Hive – what the bee crisis teaches us about building a sustainable world

Horst Kornberger

2019 146 pages Paperback

The author argues that we must start thinking about ecology in a different way if we want to slow down the current detrimental effects to our planet. This is more than a study about the problems facing bees, it uses the crisis to explore the wider ecological and social issues.

QueenSpotting – meet the remarkable queen bee and discover the drama at the heart of the hive

Hilary Kearney

2019 127 pages Hardcover

Hilary Kearney is the creator of the beekeeping business “Girl Next Door Honey” that offers educational opportunities to hundreds of aspiring beekeepers in the USA each year. Her new book introduces the honey bee colony, the important relationship between the queen bee and the colony, and the life cycle of the queen. A wonderful and unique aspect of the book is “spot the queen” with 48 full colour close-up photographs where the reader is challenged to find the queen amongst the worker bees.

The author is a professional swarm catcher and she relays stories of retrieving swarms from many unusual places including a speed boat and an owl’s nesting box.

The good bee – a celebration of bees and how to save them

Alison Benjamin and Brian McCallum

2019 192 pages Hardcover

In 2006 the authors began beekeeping in their garden in London, UK when they heard about the threat to bees through the loss of habitat and the opportunity for cities and towns to offer some refuge. The first chapter – Bees and Nature – includes an insight into the evolution of bees, species of bees and how to identify them, the honey bee life cycle and the life of social insects. The remaining chapters are about bees and humans, bees as deterrents, pollination, apitherapy and with the final chapter suggesting ways in which we can help bees in urban living: year round bee friendly flowers, shrubs and trees, nesting sites and materials, no use of pesticides and weed killers, leave the lawnmower in the shed, and create a watering hole for bees!