The Buzz About Bees: Biology of a Superorganism
Why buy this book?
This is one of our all time Top 10 books - on any subject! In fact, it's what finally made beekeeping "click" for us.
The Buzz About Bees starts with the quote "A bee colony - surely nature's most wonderful way of organising matter and energy in space and time." This sums up the book's expansive and marvelling approach to the subject. The author considers the honey bee colony as a superorganism - an approach that is both useful to beekeepers and fascinating to anyone interested in natural history.
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Some of the latest thinking on how bees work together as individuals to make one super-organism - "a mammal in many bodies"
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An explanation of the behaviours and evolution behind nest building, mating, nectar gathering and raising young including the best description of comb building you will find
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Amazing action photography that shows activities including comb-building, entrance guarding and caring for brood
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The Buzz about Bees looks at each aspect of honeybee life such as mating and nectar collection. As well as explaining what happens, the author explains why it is happening. He explains how biology, ecology and evolution have all worked together to produce the honey bee colony we know today.
The vast amount of information available to beekeepers can be overwhelming. By explaining the why of honeybee behaviour, this book (and Tom Seeley's Honeybee Ecology) helps cut through some of that. It is the main book we refer to on the bee keeping courses that we run.
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If you are looking for a book to help you decide what type of hive you should have, then this isn't for you. But if you would like to know more about what bees actually do in their hives - how they work together to raise young and see the colony through months of winter, then this is the book for you. We cannot recommend it highly enough.
