I recently reviewed a new book for Nature ( 533, 32–33, 05 May 2016, doi:10.1038/533032a), “The Dancing Bees” by Tania Munz, focused largely on how Karl von Frisch discovered the function of the honeybee dance language while in the heart of…
Synchrony
Bees, dance, playgrounds and children’s books came together unexpectedly in Toronto last week, along with synchrony, the idea of simultaneous occurrence or motion. The children’s book was not so much the book as its author JonArno Lawson, whom I met…
All Credit to the Bees
I’m having the most marvelous couple of months at work, with a remarkable diversity of pursuits that, at first blush, seem disconnected. What, for example, do naturopaths, territorial legislatures, a polytechnic college, a human rights caucus, agricultural land use planners…
Beekeeping Has Changed
I’ve had the opportunity to speak at, oh, probably a gazillion beekeeping meetings over the last 40 years, from small local gatherings to an audience of over 3000 at Apimondia 1999. I had a long absence from meetings for ten…
The Chat
To my great surprise, my recent book “Bee Time: Lessons From the Hive” has won the 2015 Governor-General’s Literary Award for Nonfiction (http://ggbooks.ca/books/non-fiction/english/bee-time-lessons-from-the-hive). It’s been a huge thrill, almost on par with the day my daughter was born, or that…
How Will We Feed the World?
I’ve been on an extended book tour, giving lectures and reading from “Bee Time: Lessons From the Hive.” It’s been a great ride, and I’ve had the pleasure of talking to a wide range of public, beekeeping, academic and farming…
Manifesto
We often support the value of bees with economic arguments, neglecting the dimension of values, the principles we hold important and the personal and environmental standards that should be at the heart of beekeeping rather than at its fringes. The…
Honey, Hives and Poetry
Bees do many things, but one undervalued side product of being involved in apiculture is the diversity of doors that bees open for human interaction. There are, of course, the obvious interdisciplinary collaborations: entomologist with botanist, scientist with beekeeper, professor…
Perhaps Beekeeping Should Change?
(The post below first appeared as a Letter to the Editor in Bee Culture magazine) It was an interesting January, bookmarked with the American Beekeeping Federation (ABF) meeting at Disneyland at the front end, and ending with the American Bee…
Who Keeps Bees?
Who keeps honeybees? The number of beekeepers globally is statistically elusive, but there are something like 30 million hives worldwide, tended by a few million beekeepers. Some manage a single colony while the largest commercial beekeeping operation runs about 70,000…