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Jax
, January 24, 2024
(view all comments by Jax)
This wonderful book is full of interesting details including descriptions of various types of bees, stages of life, environmental and disease threats, pollen and nectar gathering, and hive organization. One graph compares the lifespan of a human if she were a queen honeybee. Let’s just say it’s a long, long time!
Any important job, such as collecting pollen and nectar, needs specialized tools. A honeybee’s eyes are her most important ones. I say her, because it is the female honeybee who forages for pollen and nectar. The bee will use various visual cues such as landmarks, vertical features (roads, drainage ditches), and polarized light e-vectors when foraging. She will pass along this gps information via a dance when she returns to the hive.
Like most animals, honeybees see ultraviolet light, but they see it faster than other creatures. UV light plays a critical role in finding pollen but also penetrates cloud cover, widening the foraging window. Color patterns in flowers are nectar guides and iridescent, not all of which are visible to the human eye. For honeybees, these vectors are pay dirt.
The book is well designed, and the information alone is worth a read. But the most spectacular feature of this book is the photography. The flower images are produced using ultraviolet-induced visible fluorescence photography to mimic how a bee sees, and they are breathtaking.
Many thanks to Chronicle Books and NetGalley for providing this eARC.
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