What a Bee Knows: Exploring the Thoughts, Memories, and Personalities of Bees

by Stephen L. Buchmann

Overview

For many of us, the buzzing of a bee elicits panic. But the next time you hear that low droning sound, look closer: the bee has navigated to this particular spot for a reason using a fascinating set of tools. She may be using her sensitive olfactory organs, which provide a 3D scent map of her surroundings. She may be following visual landmarks or instructions relayed by a hive-mate. She may even be tracking electrostatic traces left on flowers by other bees. What a Bee Knows: Exploring the Thoughts, Memories, and Personalities of Bees invites us to follow bees’ mysterious paths and experience their alien world.
Although their brains are incredibly small—just one million neurons compared to humans’ 100 billion—bees have remarkable abilities to navigate, learn, communicate, and remember. In What a Bee Knows, entomologist Stephen Buchmann explores a bee’s way of seeing the world and introduces the scientists who make the journey possible. We travel into the field and to the laboratories of noted bee biologists who have spent their careers digging into the questions most of us never thought to ask (for example: Do bees dream? And if so, why?). With each discovery, Buchmann’s insatiable curiosity and sense of wonder is infectious.
What a Bee Knows will challenge your idea of a bee’s place in the world—and perhaps our own. This lively journey into a bee’s mind reminds us that the world is more complex than our senses can tell us.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781642833911
Publisher:	Island Press
Publication date:	05/07/2024
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Stephen Buchmann is a pollination ecologist specializing in bees and their flowers. Buchmann is an adjunct professor with the departments of Entomology and of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona. A Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, he has published nearly 200 peer-reviewed scientific papers and ten books, including The Reason for Flowers: Their History, Culture, Biology, and How They Change Our Lives, and The Forgotten Pollinators with Gary Paul Nabhan.

Buchmann is a frequent guest on many public media venues including NPR’s All Things Considered and Science Friday. Reviews of his books have appeared in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal,Time and Discover magazines and other national publications. He is an engaging public speaker on topics of flowers, pollinators, and the natural world. His many awards include the IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award, and an NSTA Outstanding Science Trade Book.

Table of Contents

Preface       
Chapter 1. A Bees’ Life
Chapter 2. The Remarkable Bee Brain  
Chapter 3. Bees Living Together
Chapter 4. What Bees Sense and Perceive
Chapter 5. Bees and Flowers: A Love Story or Arms Races?
Chapter 6. Finding Many Lovers
Chapter 7. Bee Smart
Chapter 8. Master Builders and Memory
Chapter 9. Sleep and Dreaming in Bees
Chapter 10. What do Bees Feel?
Chapter 11. Self-Awareness, Consciousness, and Cognition
Epilogue 
Acknowledgments
Appendix. Things We Can All Do to Help Pollinators and Their Plants
Art Credits
Index
About the Author

Editorial Reviews

As the title says, this volume is about bees. But unlike most bee books, this one was written by a pollination ecologist who knows bees as much as plants, and this makes a difference….Perhaps the most powerful thing we can do is to encourage this book be read by the broadest possible audience, so that people, just like Buchmann, realize how human bees are and how much we need to care about them.”
 

New Biological Books

"In his fascinating new book called What a Bee Knows, entomologist Stephen Buchmann explores a bee’s way of seeing the world and introduces the scientists who make the journey possible."

Psychology Today

"[It] reads well and takes the reader into the world of bees and how they might perceive the world in a very different way to us. He engages with the huge diversity of bees and explores many themes, often alluding to other creatures from jellyfish to elephants for useful comparisons and contrasts.... a thought-provoking read that I expect to return to over time to put new research and even my own observations into context."

BeeCraft

"Steve Buchmann invites us to see, taste, and smell the world as bees do. Along the way, we discover their formidable mental capacities, learning that bees feel pain, solve puzzles, and use tools. Are bees sentient, do they think, and perhaps even dream? Come find out!"

Mark W. Moffett

"No single scientist has ever done so much to broaden our understanding of bees' remarkable capacities. No single conservationist has ever done more to conserve bees and other pollinators. Steve Buchmann is not only insightful and eloquent, but he is a national treasure."

Gary Paul Nabhan

"Bee books tend to be full of intriguing facts and tantalizing possibilities. This rigorous but delightful work by pollination ecologist Stephen Buchmann, who has studied the insects for half a century, is no exception." 

Nature

Bees use a wide range of senses to navigate through the world, sometimes in ways we can scarcely imagine. As a pollination ecologist with decades of research experience, Buchmann is an ideal guide to this world, at once both familiar and alien, in our own backyards.”
 

An Outside Chance

"It is a treat to see Steve Buchmann bring his knowledge and love of bees to the intricacies of how they experience the world. Buchman is a wonderful guide through the well-studied and newest research that is changing our understanding of these fascinating creatures."

Gretchen LeBuhn

"You may pick up the book for... facts about our buzzy pollinator friends, but you’ll want to keep reading for the fascinating way Buchmann challenges our core ideas about a bee’s place in the world."

Civil Eats

"Stephen Buchman is renowned as one of the most eloquent writers on bees and flowers. In What a Bee Knows, he brings his breadth of understanding to the abilities and sensory capacities of these essential insects. Buchmann teaches us about the world according to bees—and about ourselves."

Laurence Packer

Stephen Buchmann is a renowned and talented writer for natural history and especially for the biology of bees and flowers. This book exemplifies his eloquence as well as his astonishing insights, depth, and breadth of knowledge…. This fascinating book provides food for thought for anyone who is curious not just about bees and other insects, but about the workings of natural history.”
 

Bulletin of the Entomological Society of Canada

"What a Bee Knows will not only deepen your understanding of bees but also offer a good starting point to inspire you to join the growing movement of bee supporters."

Journal of Melittology

"Bee books tend to be full of intriguing facts and tantalizing possibilities. This rigorous but delightful work by pollination ecologist Stephen Buchmann, who has studied the insects for half a century, is no exception." 

Nature Lib