Thor Hanson - Buzz: The Nature and Necessity of Bees

Thor Hanson writes with the infectious enthusiasm of one encountering wonders for the first time; less a teacher than a fellow traveller on a shared voyage of discovery. Surely among the finest nature writers of our time whatever subject Hanson turns his hand to, the result is spellbinding.

Katrina Van Grouw, author of The Unfeathered Bird and Unnatural Selection

Thor Hanson is a gifted story teller and naturalist. In Buzz, he takes us along on a wondrous, action-packed journey to discover the secret lives of bees, flowers, and the unconventional men and women who study them. This book really is the buzz about bees, and its destined to become a natural history classic.

Stephen Buchmann, author of The Reason for Flowers

Thor Hanson is a magician at making entomology and taxonomy exciting, highlighting the fascinating world of bees. Buzz hums with science and history, exposing how bees have shaped our world. A delightful, buzzworthy must-read!

Daniel Chamovitz, author of What a Plant Knows

This book is a joy. In it, Thor Hanson reminds us that the story of bees is the story of the origin of societies, of sweetness and collapse, of flowers and their sex, and of the humans who study all of these things. It is a story of evolution and biodiversity, a story that bears on much of the food we eat but also so very much else. Buy it. Read it. Read it again. And when you do, you will look out at the buzzing world anew.

Rob Dunn, author of Never Home Alone and The Wild Life of Our Bodies

This beautifully written natural history book, brought to us by a graceful and talented author, packs surprise after surprise with every turn of the page. Who knew bees were just evolved wasps? Or that ancient Egyptians ferried bees up and down the Nile to pollinate their crops? Dont pass this one up.

Wendy Williams, author of The Horse

As he did for feathers and seeds, Thor Hanson has written a wonderfully engaging work of natural history that will delight readers with its elegant prose, surprising stories, and deep humanity. Bees, so important to life on earth, are fortunate to have someone as passionate and knowledgeable as Hanson tell the tale of their evolutionary past, turbulent present, and precarious future. After reading Buzz, you will look at bees with a profound mixture of awe and gratitude.

Eric Jay Dolin, author of Black Flags, Blue Waters, and Leviathan

A lthough honeybees make many appearances in these pages, I want to state right up front that this book is not specifically about them. There will be no detailed descriptions of the waggle dance, swarming, or their many other unique and fascinating behaviors for the simple reason that those topics have been well covered elsewhere. Writers dating back as far as Virgil, and including at least two Nobel Prize winners, have produced hundreds of excellent volumes focused entirely on honeybees. This book, in contrast, celebrates bees in general, from leafcutters and bumbles to masons, miners, diggers, carpenters, wool-carders, and more. Honeybees feature as part of that panoply, but in this story, as in nature, they must share the stage.

Also, at the risk of vexing my entomologist friends, Ive chosen to use certain words informally in this volume. Any insect might be referred to as a bug, for example, rather than just those found in the order Hemiptera. Technical terms that couldnt be avoided are included in a glossary at the end, where readers will also find an illustrated guide to bee families, a bibliography of helpful references, and a collection of chapter notes. I heartily recommend the notes. Theyre full of intriguing tidbits that fell just outside the flow of the narrativethings like nectar pirates, date honey, and how the fuzzy-horned bumblebee got its name.