The accidental introduction of the Asian hornet or more accurately the yellow-legged hornet into France and South Korea over ten years ago and its subsequent spread to neighbouring countries has been worrying both governments and beekeepers alike. Many people are now seeking more information on this new threat to our beloved honey bees. Hornet biology is very different to that of honey bees and this can lead to misunderstandings and false assumptions. So, this book is aimed at anyone wanting to learn more about hornets, why the Asian hornet possesses such a threat, and what you can do about it. 
While the natural history of hornets makes their eradication impossible, it is important that all interested parties are well informed about their biology and potential impact. The Asian hornet will continue to expand its range into new countries irrespective of the measures taken, so education is the best way to lessen their impact. 
This book aims to cover all the key aspects of the hornets’ biology including the impact they have on both people and honey bees. The information presented is gained from various sources during the many years I studied hornets in Asia (mainly Japan), and more recently via the ever-expanding scientific literature on the spread and impact of the Asian hornet both in France and South Korea.

The Asian Hornet: Threats, Biology & Expansion

Science & Math

Martin, Stephen John

Nature & Ecology

Ibra & Nbb

Bee Optimism: Translational Research Can Rescue Honeybees And Other Pollinators

The title of this book reveals all: Jay Evans approaches science and life with clarity and optimism. Every essay in this book is concise yet funny, and rich in content. Each cleverly-worded chapter uncovers exciting findings from complicated research. Some topics covered in these 34 short essays include how bees' fat bodies may hold clues to new mite control strategies (the "Fats Domino Effect"), an aerial view of helicopter beekeepers and burned out foragers, why bees drink dirty water, chasmogamy in soybeans, "trait rot", genetic signatures described as chords composed of eight genetic notes, and winter bees as the third worker form. The essay "Magic Bullets for Mites" is a great example of Jay's ability to communicate complex topics with compelling, accessible prose.\nEven though he muses that "we are attempting to manage a social organism that is affected by rules we do not yet fully understand" Jay remains firmly rooted in the #Beeoptimism movement: for his scientific mind, the unknown is full of possibilities. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and devoured it in one sitting, although I recommend savoring it more slowly. 
Marla Spivak 
St. Paul, Minnesota

Bee optimism: Translational Research Can Rescue Honeybees And Other Pollinators

Evans, Jay D

The title of this book reveals all: Jay Evans approaches science and life with clarity and optimism. Every essay in this book is concise yet funny, and rich in content. Each cleverly-worded chapter uncovers exciting findings from complicated research. Some topics covered in these 34 short essays include how bees’ fat bodies may hold clues to new mite control strategies (the “Fats Domino Effect”), an aerial view of helicopter beekeepers and burned out foragers, why bees drink dirty water, chasmogasmy in soybeans, “trait rot”, genetic signatures described as chords composed of eight genetic notes, and winter bees as the third worker form. The essay “Magic Bullets for Mites” is a great example of Jay’s ability to communicate complex topics with compelling, accessible prose. 
Even though he muses that “we are attempting to manage a social organism that is affected by rules we do not yet fully understand” Jay remains firmly rooted in the #Beeoptimism movement: for his scientific mind, the unknown is full of possibilities. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and devoured it in one sitting, although I recommend savoring it more slowly. 
This title is also available in softback

Honey, a comprehensive survey

“A pound of honey on the breakfast table necessitates a total flight path equivalent to three orbits round the earth, each orbit using up an ounce of honey as fuel.” 
Bees were producing honey long before man appeared on earth. Honey was one of man’s earliest foods, and has been valued throughout successive civilizations. Today its popularity is increasing as never before. 
Here is a lively but authoritative book written by eminent world experts covering the whole subject of honey, its plant sources, its production, marketing and economics. The contributors deal with, for example, the flowers that honey comes from, and the role of the beekeeper; the chemical, physical and biological properties of honey; modern methods of processing, storing, and quality control; legislations; world trade; the manifold uses of honey, including its fermentation; the language of honey. In fact, each chapter is almost a book in itself: that on history, for instance, describes the part played by honey - before the existence of man, among primitive peoples, in ancient civilisations, in medieval Europe, and up to the present day-with beautiful illustrations for every period. 
Beekeepers, honey producers and traders, food chemists and biochemists, entomologists and botanists are not the only ones catered for: mead makers, those who like natural foods, social historians, and language students will find plenty to interest them.

Crane, Eva

Since varroa arrived in Europe and America in the 1980s, most beekeepers have found it necessary to treat their colonies with chemicals in order to avoid heavy colony losses. But a minority of beekeepers have managed to care for their colonies without the use of chemicals and have done so with not just tolerable colony losses, but with losses that are sometimes equal to or smaller than the losses of those beekeepers who treat with chemicals. 
With the help of thirty examples of treatment-free beekeepers in Europe and America, including famous names in varroa-resistant bee breeding, this book documents the encouraging success and growing popularity of beekeeping without chemicals, and details the bee husbandries of the beekeepers presented.

Treatment Free Beekeeping

Engineering & Transportation

Heaf, David

Engineering

The book offered to the reader's attention is the author's translation of a book published in Poland in 2013. The book is addressed to the lovers of wildlife and honey bees, and to everyone interested in beekeeping products, their composition and medicinal properties. For Western European and American readers, Chapters 4 and 7, containing information about practically unknown in the West unconventional but very valuable beekeeping products, may be of particular interest. 
The author's scientific interests extend not only to the chemical composition and the origin of propolis, honey and other bee products, but also to the bee health. Unfortunately, in recent decades the bee health has noticeably deteriorated, resulting in many difficulties in beekeeping. The last Chapter of the book is devoted to the bee health and possible ways of their treatment, avoiding synthetic drugs with their unwanted side effects. The author's work in recent years is connected with these problems and it is no coincidence that the chapter devoted to the bee health has turned out to be the most revised and extended in comparison to the Polish edition. 
In preparing this publication, photographs were used, kindly provided to me by the Polish beekeeper Mrs. Teresa Porankiewicz-Bartkowiak, to whom I express my sincere gratitude.

Honey Bee Alchemy. A contemporary look at the mysterious world of bees, hive products and health

Religion & Spirituality

Isidorov, Valery A.

Occult & Paranormal

Simply keeping bees with the Golden Hive from Mellifera 
Keeping bees, because one loves nature or wants to harvest one's own honey, no longer has to remain a dream. The Golden Hive makes beekeeping simple - and is gentle on one's back, while the needs of the bee colony remain central. 
The German Non Governmental Organization - Mellifera - works to protect bees, humans, and nature. The Golden Hive, which has been developed in the teaching apiary owned by Mellifera, provides optimal living conditions for the bees: they build their own comb and they are allowed to swarm, which benefits their health and makes many interventions by beekeepers superfluous. The colony has enough space in one single cavity, which allows it to develop as one contiguous organism, while retaining sufficient honey stores. 
Dr Johannes Wirtz, a board member of Mellifera, and master beekeeper Norbert Poeplau provide an introduction to the concept of bee friendly beekeeping and insights into the fascinating life of the makers of honey. The authors' experience guides the reader step by step while managing a Golden Hive throughout the course of a year. Important issues related to location, swarming, varroa treatment and winter feeding are competently addressed. Valuable suggestions help children become familiar with a bee colony, and with teaching its relationship with nature in general. 
This comprehensive guide to beekeeping with the Golden Hive ensures that beekeeping is a joyful endeavour. At the same time our respect for the bees will continue to grow.

Keeping Bees Simply and Respectfully: Apiculture with the Golden Hive

Wirz, Johannes

Poeplau, Norbert

Biological Sciences

Vol III 
The COLOSS BEEBOOK, Vol III 
Standard methods for Apis mellifera hive product research 
- Vincent Dietemann, Peter Neumann, Norman L. Carreck & James D. Ellis (Eds)\nThe COLOSS (Prevention of honey bee COlony LOSSes) BEEBOOK is a unique venture that aims to standardise methods for studying the honey bee. It is a practical manual intended for scientists, extension specialists and beekeepers, compiling standard methods in all fields of research on the honey bee, Apis mellifera. Since the original publication of the first two volumes in 2013, the BEEBOOK has become the definitive bee research manual, and the original papers have been downloaded some 180,000 times and cited in more than 2,300 scientific papers. The hard copy volumes have proved invaluable at the laboratory bench. The new Volume III contains seven peer-reviewed chapters written by 125 authors from 23 countries which cover the major honey bee hive products: royal jelly, beeswax, propolis, brood, honey, venom and pollen. These cover not only the use of these products by the bees themselves, but also their use as human food, and their growing use in human medicine.\n﻿

COLOSS BEEBOOK - Volume III: Standard Methods for Apis mellifera Hive Product Research

Dietemann Et Al (Editors), Vincent L

Science for Kids

The Pollen Loads of the Honeybee by Dorothy Hodges, an artist and experienced beekeeper, was first published 1952. It included drawings of pollen grains which will never be surpassed. The originals are preserved at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. This booklet, published by IBRA, reproduces these drawings.\nDorothy Hodges was a trained artist with an artist's acute powers of observation as well as being a beekeeper. In 1946 she had the idea of making a colour chart of pollen loads. It took several years for her ideas to gestate but the glorious outcome was the publication, by the then Bee Research Association, of The Pollen Loads of the Honeybee in 1952.\nDesigned as a very practical guide for beekeepers, the importance of the book was immense and it has long since risen from being a humble textbook and guide to a much sought after collectors' item. Its rarity and importance mean that it is no longer easily obtainable and so difficult for the ordinary beekeeper to appreciate its contents. For this very reason IBRA has decided to reproduce Mrs Hodges's delicate drawings of pollen grains as a separate publication and in so doing hopefully make her work known to other generations of beekeepers.\nAlthough the painstakingly produced colour charts of the original book still have their value it would.not be possible to reproduce them with sufficient accuracy to do justice to the original work. However, the drawings lend them-selves to reasonable reproduction. They are of outstanding artistic merit and offer the possibility of identifying the pollen forms which are most frequently collected by bees. For beginners these drawings will do good service as an introduction to the pollen analysis of honey.\nThe drawings need no explanation other than a name - the family group, the Latin scientific name and the common English name - thus making the book independent of language barriers. This means it can be appreciated in many countries where the original work was unknown or is now out of reach because of rarity and cost.\nThe cover is taken from Dorothy Hodges own watercolour painting that she suggested might adorn the dust jacket of the original publication. The artwork was not used and so this booklet allows it to be seen publicly for the first time in almost sixty years.\nFinally, for the convenience of the reader, the actual pollen drawings retain the same page, numbers as the plates in the original book.\nRichard Jones 
Former Director, IBRA 
October 2009

The Pollen Grain Drawings of Dorothy Hodges: Taken from the Pollen Loads of the Honeybee

Arts & Photography

Hodges, Dorothy

Graphic Design

Title: Geometry and Colours of Meliponine Brood Cells - Part 1 Subtitle: Preliminary Emphasis on Genus Tetragonula Synopsis: This literature is for enthusiasts who have difficulty remembering scientific names but can recognize geometric shapes. A preliminary look at what is termed as the most difficult genus in the Indo-Malaya stingless bee group to identify and differentiate between species by morphology. This book will take the readers on a journey to explore the various aspects of Tetragonula brood structure and form across the Indian Subcontinent, South East Asia, Sunda, Wallacea and the Sahul regions. A study on brood cell shapes of the different stages of the cell build-up. From newly operculated cells, larval brood cells to pre-pupal and cocoons. Queen cells are scrutinized in size, proportion, and shape. The colour of the cells with the bee's anatomical colours and host cavity is examined. There is a schematic impression of the development and a growth sequence of clusters, clumps, semi-combs, full layered and spiral combs. A brief glimpse is provided of the brood of some other genera like Austroplebeia, Geniotrigona, Heterotrigona (Platytrigona), Homotrigona (Lophotrigona), Lisotrigona, and Wallacetrigona are given as comparisons. Where available, the nest and brood structure are associated with its nest entrance, which I hope will make it easier to recognize a particular species.

Geometry & Colours of Meliponine Brood Cells

Hassan Jalil, Abu

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