Following the Wild Bees: The Craft and Science of Bee Hunting

by Thomas D. Seeley

Overview

A how-to book on an exhilarating outdoor activity and a unique meditation on the pleasures of the natural world

Following the Wild Bees is a delightful foray into the pastime of bee hunting, an exhilarating outdoor activity that used to be practiced widely but which few people know about today. Thomas Seeley, a world authority on honey bees, vividly describes the history and science behind this lost pastime and how anyone can do it. Following the Wild Bees is both a unique meditation on the pleasures of the natural world and a guide to the ingenious methods that compose the craft of the bee hunter.

Seeley explains how one finds a patch of flowers humming with honey bees, captures and sumptuously feeds the bees, and then releases and follows them, step-by-step in whatever direction they fly, back to their secret residence in a hollow tree, old building, or abandoned hive. The bee hunter's reward is a thrilling encounter with nature that challenges mind and body while also giving new insights into the remarkable behavior of honey bees living in the wild.

Drawing on decades of experience as a bee hunter and bee biologist, Seeley weaves informative discussions of the biology of wild honey bees with colorful historical anecdotes, personal insights, and beautiful photos. Whether you're a bee enthusiast or just curious about the natural world, Following the Wild Bees is the ideal companion for newcomers to bee hunting and a rare treat for armchair naturalists.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691170268
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	05/03/2016
Pages:	184
Sales rank:	1,057,280
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Thomas D. Seeley is the Horace White Professor in Biology at Cornell University. He is the author of Honeybee Democracy and Honeybee Ecology (both Princeton) and The Wisdom of the Hive. He lives in Ithaca, New York.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

1. Introduction 1

2. The Bee Box and Other Tools 30

3. Bee-Hunting Season 44

4. Establishing a Beeline 57

5. Timing Bees to Estimate Distance to Home 79

6. Making Moves Down the Beeline 99

7. Finding the Bee Tree 118

8. On Not “Taking Up” the Bee Tree 138

Notes 151

References 157

Illustration Credits 161

Index 163

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“An excellent addition to anyone’s bee library.”—Adrian Waring, Bee Craft

“Anyone deeply interested in natural history will ignore this mad little volume at their peril.”—Simon Ings, New Scientist

“Highly engaging.”—Gard W. Otis, American Entomologist

“A must have book for all beekeepers and bee lovers.”—Scott Shalaway, Youngstown Vindicator

“Delightful.”—Harvard Magazine

“Following the Wild Bees just might give readers an intellectually (and physically) stimulating new outdoor activity.”—The Scientist

“Seeley’s passion for the social insects blazes as he quotes historical accounts by Henry David Thoreau and describes the intricacies of the chase.”—Barbara Kiser, Nature

Editorial Reviews

"This game has been on my ‘to-do' list since reading Donovan's book on the subject a decade or so ago. Tom has now given me the interest and enthusiasm to get out and do it!"

Chris Slade's Bee Blog

"A delightful new book, Following the Wild Bees: The Craft and Science of Bee Hunting . . . is, as the subtitle suggests, a personal guide to finding wild hives (as opposed to the industry of keeping colonies of bees in hives). With enriching nods to such Harvardian predecessors as Henry David Thoreau and George Harold Edgell (The Bee Hunter, 1949), Seeley's book is richly informed by both research and the author's sheer love for 'the most intelligent insect in the world.'"

Harvard Magazine

"In addition to serving as a primer on the behavior and biology of honeybees, Following the Wild Bees just might give readers an intellectually (and physically) stimulating new outdoor activity."

The Scientist

"A fascinating account of what is something of a lost art—the finding of wild nests of Honey Bees."

Entomologist's Record and Journal of Variation

Honorable Mention for the 2017 PROSE Award in Popular Science and Popular Mathematics, Association of American Publishers

From the Publisher

"This nice book presents readers with interesting insights and memories of Seeley's life as a honeybee hunter. He provides readers with a plethora of information: instructions for bee box building, how to use the boxes, and materials needed to build other necessary utensils. The book has numerous beautiful photographs of equipment, behavior, and other related issues. This is a refreshing book with a message on conservation; it is absolutely appropriate for current times, when many worry about honeybees and their existence."

Choice

"I must recommend this book to you, if you like reading about bees at all. It is a handbook of bee hunting, of course, but it is far more than that. It is both entertaining and instructive, and it carries a great depth of knowledge very gracefully, making it easy for the reader to understand and remember some very new research findings. If you have been fortunate enough to hear Professor Seeley at Gormanston, you will find this book a delightful reminder of his clear style and friendly approach."

Au Beachaire

"[A] fascinating read. . . . Following the Wild Bees not only reveals [Seeley's] passion for this unusual pastime and urges readers to discover the thrill of the chase, but provides an extremely detailed guide to becoming an expert bee hunter."

Country Smallholding

"Bee hunting—the locating and observing of a wild bee hive—is the next eco-hobby and noted biologist Thomas D. Seeley is the perfect guide in Following the Wild Bees."

American Gardener

"This book is science, science history, adventure, sport, treasure hunting, and a delightful read all in one."

Conservation Biology

2016-01-09
A honeybee behaviorist takes a break from hard science to introduce the sport of bee hunting. Seeley (Biology/Cornell Univ.; Honeybee Ecology: A Study of Adaptation in Social Life, 2014, etc.) has been studying honeybees in the wild for decades and in the course of his research has made something of an art of finding—and leaving undisturbed—feral colonies. That he's had a grand time doing so is abundantly clear in this slim volume, and he does his level best to make squadrons of converts: "after…finally spying the glitter of the bees' wings as they dive inside their tree-cavity home, I always experience soaring feelings of success…even triumph!" In similarly enthusiastic, almost antique prose, the author describes the necessary equipment, the most important being a custom-built "bee box" for capturing foraging bees; while the book's photographs are largely negligible, aspiring bee hunters will be grateful for the cutaway diagram included with its description. Seeley proceeds to outline successful bee-hunting strategy, from choosing the optimal moment through establishing a "beeline" (a delightful etymological lagniappe) to homing in on the bees' tree-trunk home. While he emphasizes that bee hunting is a sport anyone can pick up, it's hard not to suspect that without the author's specific advantages—a professorial job with plenty of unrestricted time and apparently unlimited access to an expansive swath of wilderness, in this case, Cornell's Arnot Forest—most will experience frustration rather than soaring triumph. Seeley confirms this with an admittedly tongue-in-cheek statement that a bee hunt can take "somewhere between 58 minutes and 3 years." Still, the author knows his stuff, and he shares his research accessibly and generously along with his enthusiasm—armchair hunters are almost certain to learn something, be it how bees navigate or flashes of hope amid news of massive bee die-offs. Motivated readers may well find themselves setting aside sunny weekends to go tromping in the goldenrod, hoping to "engage the most intelligent insect in the world."

Kirkus Reviews