Bees for Development Journal 97
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BOOK SHELF
BEE’S EYE VIEW OF FLOWERING PLANTS Nectar and pollen source plants and related honeybee products
Masami Sasaki 2010 413 pages Hardback £115 (€1175) S905 This gorgeous book presents a lifetime’s study of honey bees by Professor Masami Sasaki of Tamagawa University, Japan. Each page contains many perfect pictures of bee plants, foraging bees, flowers or fruit. There are also pictures of honey, pollen grains, other insects, (a few) birds, and of beekeeping and horticulture, with several thousand pictures in total. The main part of the book details the 647 plant species occurring in Japan that are utilised by bees for nectar, pollen, propolis or honeydew: 57% are indigenous to Japan. Also provided are floral calendars, colours of pollen, and scientific explanation of some topics such as pollination, the honey bee species present in Japan, and honey bee foraging. The text is in Japanese language, with an English summary. However all the plants are listed by their Latin names, together with common names in English, therefore this book can be of great interest for people interested in honey bee plants of any temperate zone. There is in existence no comparable English language book covering temperate zone bee plants so extensively.
HONEYBEE DEMOCRACY
Thomas D Seeley 2010 273 pages Hardback £22.95 (€333) S910 A wonderful new book by Tom Seeley. Contained here is explanation of how honey bee colonies reach consensus to make the right decisions, and hence the title: Honeybee democracy. Understanding how a honey bee society (i.e. one colony) collects facts, debates them and then acts upon the majority decision, will enhance your appreciation of bees: by taking information from a large number of individuals, the best decision is made. There is guidance here for running our own societies and how groups can best achieve optimal decision making. The book explains the recent work of many researchers, which together with Seeley’s own research, provide excellent insight into how simple but ingenious research can be designed and then interpreted. The book contains much information about natural nesting of honey bees, and this is used to explain how swarms arrive at decisions on nest site selection. This involves accumulating a diversity of knowledge, enabling a competition between the variety of ideas (the different nesting places identified by the scout bees), and voting by the population. The book contains an extensive notes section that provides further helpful explanation of many topics. Seeley’s compelling writing style, combined with a beautifully produced and illustrated text, make this a highly attractive and informative new work that will deepen your admiration for honey bee societies.
HONEY NATURE’S GOLDEN HEALER
Gloria Havenhand 2010 160 pages £13.99 (€221) H800 Another beautifully produced book with excellent pictures of bees and their products. It describes the links between the products of honey bees and good human health. As the book describes them, bee products are ‘a treasure trove of foods, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and industrial processes that bees have freely offered to our human population for thousands of years’. Full of recipes, remedies, hints, and information about bees and their products.
SMART SWARM
Peter Miller 2010 283 pages £20 (€330) M800 Peter Miller uses examples from nature - ants, fish, starlings, termites - to show how good decisions are made and communicated, and proposes that smart humans can learn from these methods that have developed over millennia. From the bee world, he cites Tom Seeleys’ work (see above) describing how bees use consensus. Miller explains how this type of behaviour, tapping into the wisdom of crowds, enabled a huge organisation like Boeing to develop the complex distribution logistics required for manufacture of the new Dreamliner aeroplanes. This book enables us to gain a little more awareness of the intelligent life surrounding us on earth.
STOREY’S GUIDE TO KEEPING HONEY BEES
Malcom T Sanford and Richard E Bonney 2010 244 pages £14.99 (€222) S915 A new text for beekeepers in North America. This book is very clearly laid out and describes all that a beginner beekeeper needs to know: installing a colony in the hive, keeping bees healthy, understanding and preventing disease (with excellent coverage of Varroa ) and harvesting honey. It is up to date, with line drawings of city roof top hives, listings of blogs, and discussion of small hive beetles. The text is interspersed with interesting case studies, hints, letters and facts. 12
