Books on:

Recent Books on Bees

Letters from the Hive: An Intimate History of Bees, Honey, and Humankind, by Stephen L Buchmann, and Banning Repplier, Bantam Books, April 2005, Hardcover

In telling the age-old story of the honey bee and its generous legacy of gifts, the author journeys around the world to witness field research from the rain forests of Malaysia to small villages in the Yucatan.

Robbing the Bees: A Biography of Honey—The Sweet Liquid Gold that Seduced the World, by Holley Bishop, Free Press, April 2005, Hardcover, 336 pages

Part biography, part history, Robbing the Bees is a celebration of bees and the honey they produce. Honey has played significant and varied roles in civilization: it is so sweet that bacteria can't survive in it, so it was our first food preservative and all-purpose wound salve. Honey wine, or mead, was the intoxicant of choice long before beer or wine existed. Hindus believe honey leads to a long life; Mohammed looked to honey as a remedy for all illness. Virgil; Aristotle; Pythagoras; Gregor Mendel; Sylvia Plath's father; and Sir Edmund Hillary are among the famous beekeepers and connoisseurs who have figured in honey's past and shaped its present.

Sweetness and Light: The Mysterious History of the Honeybee, by Hattie Ellis, Crown, March 2005, Hardcover, 256 pages

Sweetness and Light is the story of bees and honey from the Stone Age to the contemporary cutting edge; from Nepalese honey hunters to urban hives on the rooftops of New York City. Honey is nature in a pot, gathered in by bees from many different environments—Zambian rain forests, Midwestern prairies, Scottish moors, and thyme-covered Sicilian mountainsides, to name a few. But honey is much more than just a food, and bees are more than mere insects. The bee is the most studied creature on the planet next to man, and it and its products have been harnessed by doctors, philosophers, scientists, politicians, artists, writers, and architects throughout the ages as both metaphor and material.

More Books on Bees

The Forgotten Pollinators by Stephen L. Buchmann and Gary Paul Nabhan

Explores the vital relationships between plants and the animals and shows how plant-pollinator relationships are threatened by destruction of ecosystems.

From Where I Sit: Essays on Bees, Beekeeping, and Science, by Mark L Winston, Cornell University Press, Paperback 1998, 192 pages

A Book of Bees: ... and How to Keep Them, by Sue Hubbell , Mariner Books, 1998, Paperback

From the author of the widely acclaimed A Country Year comes another elegant and appealing book about the world of the beekeeper and what he or she must do in each of the four seasons. 28 illustrations.

Bees, by Rudolf Steiner, Anthroposophic Press, 1998, paperback

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