Bookshelf

Pollinator Conservation Handbook

The Xerces Society and The Bee Works 2003 145 pages A5 soft over £19.70 (€29.55) Code X100

Most flowering plants are pollinated by insects. If pollinator populations are depleted, then many of these plants will produce few seeds, or no seeds. The consequence is that plant populations decline and maybe disappear, and the pollinators decline and disappear too.

This excellent handbook describes how you can help to protect and re-establish populations of pollinators: included here are solitary and social bees, flies and beetles. Chapters cover threats to pollinators, actions to help pollinators, planning habitats, providing forage, nesting and over-wintering sites. Annexes include more ideas for educators and parents, resources and plant lists.

Although written primarily for North America, this book will be helpful for farmers, gardeners and environmentalists everywhere. With beautiful colour pictures throughout, this is an extremely useful text.

Field Guide to the Bumblebees of Great Britain and Ireland

Mike Edwards and Martin Jenner

2005 108 pages Pocketbook soft cover £11.50 (€17.25) Code E010

Bumblebees are social bees with an important role in pollinating wild and cultivated plants. In the UK there are (or were) 22 species - one has recently been declared extinct. A problem has been the difficulty of identifying the different species, that until now required expert knowledge and the use of a microscope. This excellent new book describes how to identify bumblebees using the new three-step method. This will assist the UK's army of amateur naturalists and professional field workers who have been monitoring decades of decline in Britain's native bumblebees.

This is how the method works: Step one is to look for the presence and number of yellow bands on the bee's thorax. Step two is to cross check with the pattern on the abdomen: using the colour chart allows quick identification of most species. Step three is to confirm identification with the photographs and species accounts given in the text.

The new guide has been developed by entomologist Mike Edwards and Martin Jenner who developed the book's strong visuals, that make the three-step identification simple to use. The guide contains over 90 colour photographs of both sexes of all 22 known species.

It is hoped that by making bumblebee identification easier, better data will be available to ensure their future protection. The decline of bumblebees in the UK has been measured only for a few, very rare species but it is clear from surveys that even the currently most abundant species have suffered declines of similar proportions. Since the 1970s some species have declined by over 60%.

Pollen: the hidden sexuality of flowers

Madeline Harley and Rob Kesseler (Papadakis Publisher)

2005 264 pages in full colour Hardcover £42 (€63) Code H235

A very special book, one of the most visually magnificent to be reviewed on these pages. The authors are Madeline Harley, Head of the Palynology Unit at the UK's Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and Rob Kessler who is an artist working with Kew. Their collaboration concerns the perfect design of pollen grains. These are too small to be seen without a microscope, and this book brings the most amazing photographs of pollen grains and flowers, fruit and (just one) bee, and describes the remarkable events from pollination to fertilisation, and the impact of pollen on our lives. While it is the images that make the book so unique, the text is also useful. Chapters include: The art and science of pollen; No pollen no flowers; No flowers no pollen; Picturing the invisible, and Pixillated pollen. This is a large and heavy hardback book that will surely become a classic.

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