Skip to main content

Buzz - Thor Hanson *****

There is no shortage of books about bees - not surprising given their fascinating social structures and importance in pollinating plants. But the majority of titles concentrate on the most familiar bee species, the honey bee and their superorganism nature. However, that leaves out thousands of species of wild bees, from the familiar bumble bees to tiny black insects few would even realise were bees. What Thor Hanson does so well is introduce us to the intriguing world of the wild bee.

I don't find straight natural history books particularly engaging - rather too much of Rutherford's infamous complaint about stamp collecting - but Hanson overcomes this potential problem through storytelling, whether it's telling us about the origins of bees from wasps, his attempts to provide a home for bees with his son, or in his many meetings with bee experts. I was reminded of Fredrik Sjöberg's The Fly Trap in the way that it was the narrative that absolutely tied everything together. Hanson may not have Sjöberg's lyrical, almost mystical, style, but instead gives us homely insights and puts across well his sheer fascination with bees.

Although wild bees are the main focus, there is a discussion of the colony collapse problems that have dogged beekeepers and a visit to America's bee-unfriendly almond groves. Hanson comes across as far more balanced on the potential causes of colony collapse than some environmentalists and explores a range of contributory factors that may have come together to put some bee species in danger. (Interestingly, some wild bee species have been practically wiped out, while others in the same environment remain unharmed.)

There's never the feeling of worthiness that you often get in nature books. Hanson is a scientist who clearly loves bees and is a great narrator, but he's never preachy and puts across both information and enthusiasm in equal amounts. I wish there had been a bit more that was UK specific, rather than focussed on the US - I often found myself thinking 'Do we have bees like that?' - but this didn't stop the book from being an engaging, informative page-turner.
Paperback:  

Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
Review by Brian Clegg
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ignorance: How it drives science – Stuart Firestein *****

This is a delightful little book that really gets you thinking. I stress the ‘little’ part not as a negative, but as a good thing. There is nothing worse than fat, bloated popular science books where the author feels they have to get 120,000 words to be taken seriously. This is the sort of book that can be read in a couple of hours – but you will get so much more out of it than one of those tedious doorstops. The premise underlying the book is in once sense extremely simple, yet is fundamental to an understanding of what science is and what scientists do. And it is an understanding that is totally at odds with the typical way science is portrayed both in university lectures and popular science books. As Stuart Firestein points out, what is important is not the facts, but rather the area of ignorance. The interesting part and the fundamental heart of science is not about what we know, but about what we don’t know and where we want to look next. Take this lovely quote: ‘Working ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Who Invented the Computer? – Ian Watson

Ian Watson is the author of  The Universal Machine  and featured in a recent  Four Way Interview . Saturday June 23 2012 was the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing, the troubled genius who invented the modern computer. Why though do so few people recognize his name and his great achievements? In 1936 English mathematician Alan Turing, published a paper,  On Computable Numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem . This became the foundation of computing. In it Turing presented a theoretical machine that could solve any problem that could be described by instructions encoded on a paper tape. A Turing Machine could calculate square roots, whilst another might solve Sudoku puzzles. Turing demonstrated you could construct a single  Universal Machine  that could simulate any Turing Machine. One machine solving any problem for which a program could be written – sound familiar? He’d invented the computer. Then,  computers  were peop...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Star Book – Peter Grego ****

This attractive landscape format book combines an excellent introduction to the stars and basic astronomy with a set of star maps, plus in depth looks at some of the stars featured, with a  bonus section on the solar system. Amazon says it’s a hardback, but in fact it’s a paperback with a rather ingenious cover – you can’t tell from the photo, but the words ‘The Star Book’ are punched through as a series of holes that show the white paper of the next page beneath. Like many astronomy/space books, the cover lacks shelf appeal because it is mostly black, but at least there is some original thought here. Unlike many books in this format which tend to concentrate on the pictures, there is a good deal of excellent text by Peter Grego, so there was no feeling that you were only getting the star maps and star ‘biographies’, something these days much more suited to an iPad or smartphone app. Instead, the opening 30 or so pages give a very good introduction that would be valuable to ...
Post a Comment
Read more