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Bees and Their Keepers: From waggle-dancing to killer bees, from Aristotle to Winnie-the-Pooh
by Lotte MöllerWith deep knowledge and a sharp wit, Lotte Möller unfolds our understanding of bees and bee lore from antiquity to the present. A beekeeper herself, she gives insight into the activity in the hive and describes the bees' natural order and habits. She explores the myths of the past, and how and when they were replaced by fact. For example, the heated discussions that broke out in the eighteenth century when it was discovered that the hive was ruled by a queen, not a king as had been the belief since Aristotle. In her travels Möller encounters a host of colourful characters, from a trigger-happy Californian beekeeper raging against both killer bees and bee politics, to the warring beekeepers on the island of Læso and Brother Adam of Buckfast Abbey, breeder of the Buckfast queen now popular throughout Europe and beyond. Bees and Their Keepers is a compelling cultural history for the beekeeper and general reader alike.Translated from the Swedish by Frank Perry(P)2020 Quercus Editions Limited
Bees Are My Business
by Harry J. Whitcombe John Scott DouglasWhen Harry Whitcombe was seven years old he persuaded a not very enthusiastic father to let him have a hive of bees. From that day on, bees were his business. It was often a precarious business, but it was to prove its worth more than once during the depression, when Whitcombe, still in high school, helped balance the family budget by selling five-gallon cans of honey to a local grocer. Later the sale of his apiary, grown to a hundred colonies, helped pay his way through college.As time went on, Harry Whitcombe found that his real interest lay in the part beekeeping could be made to play in replenishing the soil through pollination of crops. There were many lean years, but Harry Whitcombe persisted, and he became one of the largest shippers of package bees in the world. He was the first man ever to ship bees by plane and his bees were flown all over the United States and Canada and to Europe, India, Korea, Guam and Israel.This heartwarming human success story is told against a background rich in information of vast importance to all of us and of practical value to beekeepers. With amazing clarity the authors describe the science of beekeeping from elementary facts about hives and swarms, to the science of pollination. It is the only book of its kind that relates the story of the beekeeping industry to agriculture. It tells the story of modern commercial beekeeping and vividly describes how bee pollination contributes to man’s dinner table in meat, milk, butter, vegetables and fruits. It explains how the application of insecticides, such as DDT, kills both beneficial as well as injurious insects and how the honey bee has taken over pollination for continued production of many crops.
Bees in Early Modern Transatlantic Literature: Sovereign Colony (Perspectives on the Non-Human in Literature and Culture)
by Nicole A. JacobsThis book examines apian imagery—bees, drones, honey, and the hive—in the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century literary and oral traditions. In England and the New World colonies during a critical period of expansion, the metaphor of this communal society faced unprecedented challenges even as it came to emblematize the process of colonization itself. The beehive connected the labor of those marginalized by race, class, gender, or species to larger considerations of sovereignty. This study examines the works of William Shakespeare; Francis Daniel Pastorius; Hopi, Wyandotte, and Pocasset cultures; John Milton; Hester Pulter; and Bernard Mandeville. Its contribution lies in its exploration of the simultaneously recuperative and destructive narratives that place the bee at the nexus of the human, the animal, and the environment. The book argues that bees play a central representational and physical role in shaping conflicts over hierarchies of the early transatlantic world.
Bees in the City
by Andrea Cheng Sarah McMenemy2018 Green Earth Book Award Finalist Lionel lives in a Paris apartment building but loves keeping bees with his Aunt Celine at her farm outside the city. But when her bees start dying, how can he help? The solution, he realizes, is in the rooftop gardens and window boxes of his apartment neighbors, representing a varied and continuously blooming array of flowers that the bees will love. Aunt Celine must bring her bees to Paris! But first he and his friends Alice and Samir must convince their skeptical neighbors and landlord, Mr. Dubi, that this is a good idea. Adorned with Parisian skylines, Bees in the City is a love letter to the City of Light and a celebration of the can-do spirit of kids. Sarah McMenemy’s illustrations recall the Parisian magic of Madeleine. The book’s backmatter explores urban beekeeping and rooftop gardening in greater depth. Fountas & Pinnell Level P
Bees on the Roof
by Robbie ShellSam needs to find a seventh-grade science fair project and a way to save the restaurant where his father works. When he enrolls three friends in an effort to raise bees on a hotel roof in New York City, the complications multiply. Bee sting allergies, a great bee die-off, a rival team's cheating, a mysteriously reclusive science teacher, and Sam's romantic feelings for a classmate make the bee project anything but simple. This story includes lots of facts about bees and Colony Collapse Disorder.
Beetle Bop
by Denise FlemingThey crawl up walls, they hide in cracks, they flip, they fly, and sometimes . . . crrrash. Beetles come in all shapes and sizes, and they are everywhere in this thoroughly buggy, beautifully designed book. There are striped beetles, spotted beetles, all-over-dotted beetles--and don't forget the noisily gnawing beetles! Whether you love bugs or whether the sight of them makes you itch, you'll adore this infested offering from the beloved Denise Fleming.
Beetle Busters: A Rogue Insect And The People Who Track It (Scientists in the Field Series)
by Loree Griffin Burns Ellen HarasimowiczThe Asian longhorned beetle (ALB) has made news across the United States. These beetles came to America from China, living in wood turned into shipping material. At first the beetles invaded urban areas, where hardwood trees were in limited supply—Chicago was able to declare itself ALB-free in 2006. But right now there is bad news in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, and Toronto—infestations have erupted in the area’s hardwood forests, and these beetles, while bad at flying, are very good at killing trees. Clint McFarland’s job? Stop the ALB at any cost. How do you balance the needs of residents, the impact to the environment, and an invasive species primed to wipe out entire forests? It takes the help of everyday people, such as children playing baseball at a playground, teams of beetle-sniffing dogs, and science-minded people (bug scientists and tree doctors) to eradicate this invasive pest.
Before It's Gone: Stories from the Front Lines of Climate Change in Small-Town America
by Jonathan VigliottiFrom CBS News national correspondent Jonathan Vigliotti, a &“vivid&” (Elizabeth Kolbert, Pulitzer Prize–winning author) and &“stunning&” (Booklist) character-driven call to action on our climate, told through the stories of the pioneering Americans working to persevere as leadership inaction risks the very survival of our heartland and hometowns.Discussion of the climate crisis has always suffered from a problem of abstraction. Data points and warnings of an overheated future struggle to break through the noise of everyday life. Deniers often portray climate solutions as inconvenient, expensive, and unnecessary. And many politicians, cloistered by status and focused always on their next election, do not yet see climate as a winning issue in the short run, so they don&’t take any action at all. But climate change, and its devastating consequences, has kept apace whether we want to pay attention or not. CBS News national correspondent Jonathan Vigliotti has seen that crisis unfold for himself, spending nearly two decades reporting across the United States (and the world) documenting the people, communities, landmarks, and traditions we&’ve already surrendered. Vigliotti shares with urgency and personal touch the story of an America on the brink. Before It&’s Gone traces Vigliotti&’s travels across the country, taking him to the frontlines of climate disaster and revealing the genuine impacts of climate change that countless Americans have already been forced to confront. From massive forest fires in California to hurricanes in Louisiana, receding coastlines in Massachusetts and devastated fisheries in Alaska, we learn that warnings of a future impacted by climate are no more; the climate catastrophe is already here. This is the story of America, and Americans, on the edge, and a powerful argument that radical action on climate change with a respect for its people and traditions is not only possible, but also the only way to preserve what we love.
Before Morning
by Joyce Sidman Beth KrommesThere are planes to fly and buses to catch, but a child uses the power of words, in the form of an invocation, to persuade fate to bring her family a snow day — a day slow and unhurried enough to spend at home together. In a spare text that reads as pure song and illustrations of astonishingly beautiful scratchboard art, Sidman and Krommes remind us that sometimes, if spoken from the heart, wishes really can come true.
Before Spring, Montréal
by Robert Melançon Donald McgrathTelephone wires, dark as a line in a schoolboy's notebook against the dawn; paint flakes from houses drifting down like dust; the hulking shadow of a desk that emerges, stock-still as a cow, in the moment of waking. Join poet Robert Melançon for a quiet celebration of his city, its inhabitants, and the language that gives it life.From "Eden":You go forth drunk onthe multitudes, drunkon everything, whilethe lampposts sprinklenodding streets with stars.Robert Melançon, former poetry columnist for Le Devoir is a recipient of the Governor General's Award, the Prix Victor-Barbeau, and the Prix Alain-Grandbois.
Before the Collapse: A Guide to the Other Side of Growth
by Ugo BardiNobody has to tell you that when things go bad, they go bad quickly and seemingly in bunches. Complicated structures like buildings or bridges are slow and laborious to build but, with a design flaw or enough explosive energy, take only seconds to collapse. This fate can befall a company, the stock market, or your house or town after a natural disaster, and the metaphor extends to economies, governments, and even whole societies. As we proceed blindly and incrementally in one direction or another, collapse often takes us by surprise. We step over what you will come to know as a “Seneca cliff”, which is named after the ancient Roman philosopher, Lucius Annaeus Seneca, who was the first to observe the ubiquitous truth that growth is slow but ruin is rapid. Modern science, like ancient philosophy, tell us that collapse is not a bug; it is a feature of the universe. Understanding this reality will help you to see and navigate the Seneca cliffs of life, or what Malcolm Gladwell called “tipping points.” Efforts to stave off collapse often mean that the cliff will be even steeper when you step over it. But the good news is that what looks to you like a collapse may be nothing more than the passage to a new condition that is better than the old.This book gives deeper meaning to familiar adages such as “it’s a house of cards”, “let nature take its course”, “reach a tipping point”, or the popular Silicon Valley expression, “fail fast, fail often.” As the old Roman philosopher noted, “nothing that exists today is not the result of a past collapse”, and this is the basis of what we call “The Seneca Strategy.” This engaging and insightful book will help you to use the Seneca Strategy to face failure and collapse at all scales, to understand why change may be inevitable, and to navigate the swirl of events that frequently threaten your balance and happiness. You will learn:How ancient philosophy and modern science agree that failure and collapse are normal features of the universePrinciples that help us manage, rather than be managed by, the biggest challenges of our lives and times Why technological progress may not prevent economic or societal collapseWhy the best strategy to oppose failure is not to resist at all costsHow you can “rebound” after collapse, to do better than before, and to avoid the same mistakes.
Before the Deluge: The Vanishing World of the Yangtze's Three Gorges
by Deirdre ChethamChetham's elegiac book about the towns along the banks of the Three Gorges area of the Yangtze River was written on the very eve of their destruction. After great controversy, the Chinese government has begun construction of the world's largest hydroelectric dam in the Three Gorges section of the Yangtze, a place renowned for its beauty. For over two thousand years, the Yangtze has been the great transport route linking the coast with the west and southwest and providing irrigation for thefarms that fed China. Once the dam is completed in 2009, the water level will rise as much as 350 feet in a hundred-mile stretch of the river. The water will submerge over a dozen large cities, almost 1,500 villages and towns, and innumerable historical and cultural sites. Over a million people are being moved, voluntarily or otherwise, altering not only their lives, but the lives of a multitude of others whose existence is intertwined with the river. Before the Deluge captures a sense of the daily life, traditions and history of the people who live along the Upper Yangtze's Three Gorges area. It chronicles the region's past and present with an eye on the disruption of an existing way of life. Perhaps most importantly, it captures a world that is rapidly vanishing under the rushing waters of one of the world's largest rivers.
Before the Knife
by Carolyn SlaughterIn this unforgettable memoir, acclaimed novelist Carolyn Slaughter recalls her childhood in Africa and how the land itself released her from a rage that threatened to destroy her. For Carolyn Slaughter, who grew up in Botswana in the 1950s, it was the Kalahari Desert that made life bearable. Her father was a cruel and violent district commissioner during the last days of British colonial rule, and their family’s stiff English facade masked an unspeakable household secret. But out in the bush, the intensity of the air and the beauty of the landscape touched her with a kind of feverish grace. She would disappear for hours to watch the flat brown river with its water lilies and crocodiles; the thorn trees and the flocks of flamingos; the local women with their babies strapped to their backs. Filled with the majesty and splendor of the ever-changing desert,Before The Knife is the deeply moving story of a girl who endured and transcended her family’s violence to emerge an impassioned observer and explicator of her world.
Before They're Gone
by Michael LanzaA longtime backpacker, climber, and skier, Michael Lanza knows our national parks like the back of his hand. As a father, he hopes to share these special places with his two young children. But he has seen firsthand the changes wrought by the warming climate and understands what lies ahead: Alaska’s tidewater glaciers are rapidly retreating, and the abundant sea life in their shadow departs with them. Encroaching tides threaten beloved wilderness coasts like Washington’s Olympic and Florida’s Everglades. Less snowfall and hotter summers will diminish Yosemite’s world-famous waterfalls. And it is predicted that Glacier National Park’s 7,000-year-old glaciers will be gone in a decade. To Lanza, it feels like the house he grew up in is being looted. Painfully aware of the ecological-and spiritual-calamity that global warming will bring to our nation’s parks, Lanza sets out to show his children these wonders before they have changed forever. He takes his nine-year-old son, Nate, and seven-year-old daughter, Alex, on an ambitious journey to see as many climate-threatened wild places as he can fit into a year: backpacking in the Grand Canyon, Glacier, the North Cascades, Mount Rainier, Rocky Mountain, and along the wild Olympic coast; sea kayaking in Alaska’s Glacier Bay; hiking to Yosemite’s waterfalls; rock climbing in Joshua Tree National Park; cross-country skiing in Yellowsto≠ and canoeing in the Everglades. Through these poignant and humorous adventures, Lanza shares the beauty of each place and shows how his children connect with nature when given “unscripted” time. Ultimately, he writes, this is more their story than his, for whatever comes of our changing world, they are the ones who will live in it.
The Beginner's Guide to Mushrooms: Everything You Need to Know, from Foraging to Cultivating
by Britt Bunyard Tavis LynchThe Beginner&’s Guide to Mushrooms is your ultimate guide to mycology. Whether you&’ve never picked a mushroom before in your life or you&’ve been cultivating mushrooms at home for ages, the expert advice in this comprehensive mushroom manual will transform your practice. Never before have mushrooms generated so much interest, for their health benefits and medicinal properties, as well as a new understanding of their crucial role in a healthy environment and ability to regenerate damaged ones. If you are a newcomer, mycology, or the study of mushrooms and other fungi, can seem daunting. While other field guides are geared toward experts with advanced knowledge or regional in scope and aimed at only a few easy-to-recognize mushrooms, The Beginner&’s Guide to Mushrooms by veteran mycologists Britt A. Bunyard and Tavis Lynch is a complete reference and guidebook to get you started identifying, cultivating, cooking, and preserving mushrooms. The Beginner&’s Guide to Mushrooms opens with important basics about wild mushrooming and how to use the book. Information about what fungi are and their role in the environment and around the home is provided in brief and very understandable terms. Basic wild mushroom anatomy is discussed along with how to identify mushrooms and various characteristics to look for—of great importance if you are interested in learning how to recognize edible wild species…as well as dangerous look-alikes. The guide then covers: All the major groups of wild mushrooms, pointing out habitat, region, and notable characteristics—large photographs with easy-to-view characteristics facilitate correct identification. Mushroom cultivation—with easy-to-follow illustrated instructions, learn how to grow mushrooms at home, including how to collect wild specimens and domesticate them. Culinary uses and how to preserve wild mushrooms to be enjoyed in the kitchen all year round. Begin your wonderful exploration of wild mushrooms with this accessible yet thorough beginner's guide.
A Beginner's Guide to Recognizing Trees of the Northeast
by Mark MikolasIdentify maple, ash, oak, and more with easy-to-learn visual techniques. In this friendly and approachable field guide, writer and avid hiker Mark Mikolas shares a unique approach for year-round tree identification. His method, which centers on the northeastern United States where 20 species make up the majority of trees, will prepare readers to recognize trees at a glance, even in winter when leaves and flowers are not present. Mikolas’s secret is to focus on the key characteristics of each tree—black cherry bark looks like burnt potato chips; beech and oak trees keep their leaves in winter; spruce needles are pointed while balsam fir needles are soft and rounded at the ends. Some trees can even be identified by scent. Location maps for each of the 40 species covered and more than 400 photographs illustrating key characteristics make the trees easy to identify. Mikolas also explains how to differentiate between similar and commonly confused trees, such as red maple and sugar maple. A Beginner’s Guide to Recognizing Trees of the Northeast is a book to keep close at hand wherever trees grow.
The Beginner's Guide to Starting a Garden: 326 Fast, Easy, Affordable Ways to Transform Your Yard One Project at a Time
by Sally RothA fresh approach and simple way to transform your yard! The prospect of revamping a yard is daunting. Where do you start? How do all the various areas come together in a beautiful, cohesive way? The Beginner’s Guide to Starting a Garden simplifies the process by showing you how to spend fewer hours (and a minimal amount of money) in the garden by tackling one small area at a time. You’ll find garden plans for ten unique areas—the entryway, the shady areas under trees, and more—that can be linked together over time to create a unified yard, and plants that are dependable, easy to find, and look good year after year. You’ll also learn the basics of good design, which plants offer the most bloom for your buck, and how to avoid the most common planting mistakes.
Behavior and Group Management in Outdoor Adventure Education: Theory, research and practice
by Alan Ewert Curt DavidsonOutdoor adventure activities are becoming an increasingly popular part of physical education programs. The physical risks of these activities are often foremost in the minds of both instructors and participants, yet it is managing group behavior which can prove to be the most difficult. This is the first book for students and practitioners to address this essential aspect of outdoor adventure education (OAE). Outlining key evidence-based training practices, this book explains how to interact with groups ranging from adolescents to military veterans within a variety of outdoor adventure education contexts. It provides practical advice on how to promote positive behavior, while also offering guidance on how to mitigate negative behavior and manage a variety of challenging behavioral issues. With ten chapters full of real world examples from rock climbing to wilderness trekking, it provides a comprehensive guide to understanding the complexities of behavioral group management (BGM) in theory and practice. This book is vital reading for students training to be outdoor physical education instructors and for practitioners looking to enhance their group management skills.
Behavior of Lizards: Evolutionary and Mechanistic Perspectives
by Vincent Bels Anthony RussellKey features: Presents a contemporary snapshot of the mechanisms underlying the evolution and adaptation of behavior Explores how genetics, epigenetics, development, and environment shape behavior Discusses a broad range of behavioral repertoires and responses, including those related to thermoregulatory, foraging, predatory, displaying, social and escape strategies. Examines physiological and sensory mechanisms Covers the effects of various aspects of global change on behavior, with chapters that focus on the impacts of climate change on hydroregulatory behavior and behavioral responses to the effects of habitat alteration resulting from human-mediated change and colonization by invasive species. Lizards serve as focal organisms for many of biological questions related to evolution, ecology, physiology, and morphology. They are studied at multiple spatial and temporal scales, from the individual to the community level. This book, authored by expert contributors from around the world, explores behaviors underlying the evolution and adaptation of these organisms. It covers conceptual, empirical, and methodological approaches to the understanding of the role that natural and sexual selection play in molding the behavioral traits of lizards. This thorough, illustrated reference should stimulate discussion of the conceptual and methodological approaches for studying the behavioral traits of these fascinating and highly diverse vertebrates.
The Behavior of Texas Birds
by Kent RylanderWhether it's the sudden, plunging dives of Brown Pelicans, the singing and aerial displays of Northern Mockingbirds, or the communal nesting of Purple Martins, innate and learned behaviours are some of the most fascinating things to observe in Texas birds. Even casual birdwatchers eventually ask, ""why do they do that?"" while serious birders and ornithologists seek to understand all the behaviours involved in feeding, flying, mating, and rearing young. But until now, it has been hard to find this information in one handy source. In this comprehensive, yet easy-to-use book, Kent Rylander distils data from many sources to provide an authoritative guide to the behaviour of Texas birds. He begins by explaining the principles of animal behaviour and illustrating how they can be applied to interpreting bird behaviours in the field. The majority of the book is devoted to accounts of more than 400 species of birds that are most likely to be encountered by Texas birdwatchers. Each account describes such behaviours as feeding, courtship, parenting, and other behaviours that are significant for that species.
Behavioral Ecology and the Transition to Agriculture
by Douglas J. Kennett Bruce WinterhalderThis innovative volume is the first collective effort by archaeologists and ethnographers to use concepts and models from human behavioral ecology to explore one of the most consequential transitions in human history: the origins of agriculture. Carefully balancing theory and detailed empirical study, and drawing from a series of ethnographic and archaeological case studies from eleven locations--including North and South America, Mesoamerica, Europe, the Near East, Africa, and the Pacific--the contributors to this volume examine the transition from hunting and gathering to farming and herding using a broad set of analytical models and concepts. These include diet breadth, central place foraging, ideal free distribution, discounting, risk sensitivity, population ecology, and costly signaling. An introductory chapter both charts the basics of the theory and notes areas of rapid advance in our understanding of how human subsistence systems evolve. Two concluding chapters by senior archaeologists reflect on the potential for human behavioral ecology to explain domestication and the transition from foraging to farming.
Behavioural Ecology of Western Palearctic Falcons
by Giovanni LeonardiThis monograph is the result of eight years of bibliographical and field research concerning several behavioural ecology aspects of the Palaearctic falcons. For a while, this book grew along with “The Lanner falcon” published in 2015 and revised in 2017. In both books the main aim was to provide a clear overview of the biology and ecology of these species. In fact in the last 20 years, the number of publications on falcons has grown tremendously and, in parallel, also those belonging to the so-called "grey literature". The number of people involved is also increased by including both academics and nature lovers. Many previously published books emphasized identification, and offered little insights on the behavioural and ecological aspects of the species. Very often, the research on behavioural ecology remains closed within the confines of academic community. By contrast, a multitude of basic data is scattered in countless articles published in local magazines. Many falcon species are easy to observe and study (such as kestrels) but others are more rare and localized. In order to understand the survival strategies adopted by this group of avian predators, it is necessary not to lose sight of the overall picture. This book tries to explain the different survival strategies by examining, through a few essential chapters, some crucial aspects for all species. The first chapter provides information on the genus Falco, its genetics, evolution and morphological peculiarities. The other chapters deal with reproductive strategies, competition, exploitation of resources, dispersal patterns, communication and sociality. One of the main objectives of this book is to produce an accessible but scholarly curated source of reference. By understanding the most common species, it is possible to provide a working framework for rarer, and especially threatened, falcon species.
Behavioural Economics of Climate Change: New Empirical Perspectives (Springerbriefs In Climate Studies)
by Vladimir UdalovThis book investigates various kinds of climate change mitigation behaviour, which range from a general support of environmental policy to concrete energy-saving activities, in selected countries. Drawing on extensive national and international survey data, the analysis has the following main objectives: to identify potential determinants of individuals’ renewable energy support, and to analyse the impact of experiences with natural disasters on individuals’ choice between economic growth and environmental protection. Moreover, it examines the role of environmental motivations behind direct daily energy-saving behaviour. The empirical results reveal that various types of climate change mitigation behaviour are not only driven by a mixture of environmental and non-environmental/economic motivations but also depend on external circumstances such as natural disasters. Since CO2 emission dynamics stem to some extent from the choices people make every day in their roles as consumers, investors and citizens, the new findings presented are also valuable from a policy perspective.
Behind the Dolphin Smile
by Susan Casey Keith Coulbourn Richard O'BarryBehind the Dolphin Smile is the heart-felt true story of an animal lover who dedicated his life to studying and training dolphins, but in the process discovered that he ultimately needed to set them free. Ric O'Barry shares his journey with dolphins and other sea mammals in this captivating autobiographical look back at his years as a dolphin trainer for aquatic theme parks, movies, and television. Also included is a preface relaying a first-hand account of his adventures filming the 2010 Academy Award-winning documentary The Cove, which covertly uncovered Japan's inhumane dolphin-hunting practices. O'Barry, a successful animal trainer who had had everything--money, flashy cars, pretty women--came to realize that dolphins were easy to train, not because of his great talent, but because they possessed great intelligence, and that keeping them in captivity was cruel and morally wrong. O'Barry now dedicates his life to stopping the exploitation of these exceptional mammals by retraining them to return to their natural habitats.
Behold the Beautiful Dung Beetle
by Cheryl BardoeDung is a precious pile of food and drink for these beetles.Simple science text and dramatic illustrations give a close-up view of the fascinating world of the dung beetle. When an animal lightens its load, dung beetles race to the scene. They battle over, devour, hoard, and lay their eggs in the precious poop. Dung is food, drink, and fuel for new life—as crucial to these beetles as the beetles are to many habitats, including our own.Back matter includes instructions for finding dung beetles, fun facts, glossary, and a selected bibliography.