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Honey Bee Biology by Brian R. Johnson
16.100 Ft
Honey Bee Biology
16.100 Ft
The most comprehensive and up-to-date general reference book on honey bee biology.
“Honey Bee Biology will become the new definitive textbook for entomology courses, research scientists, science writers, and scientists interested in bees as a model system. Beekeeping teachers and keen students will buy this book as will the curious beekeeper just wanting to learn new things and be a better beekeeper.”
– Ann Chilcott, Scottish Expert Beemaster and author (BBKA News Incorporating The BBJ December 2023).“A detailed and meticulously researched summary of honey bees, covering aspects of physiology, behavior, evolution, and conservation. Honey Bee Biology is a triumph of integrative biology that is notable for its breadth and readability:· Highly recommended for biologists and serious bee enthusiasts.”
– ELIZABETH TIBBETTS, University of Michigan“Honey Bee Biology will be the go-to textbook for college courses and serves as a readable reference for beekeepers who want to learn more about the ‘under the hood’ mechanics of honey bee function, from genomics and neurobiology to foraging and pesticide detoxification. Johnson is to be applauded for assembling and updating centuries’ worth of honey bee science and presenting it as a work of art.”
– MARL A. SPIVAK, University of Minnesota
Honey bees are marvelously charismatic organisms with a long history of interaction with humans. They are vital to agriculture and serve as a model system for many basic questions in biology. This authoritative book provides an essential overview of honey bee biology, bringing established topics up to date while incorporating emerging areas of inquiry.
Honey Bee Biology covers everything from molecular genetics, development, and physiology to neurobiology, behavior, and pollination biology. Placing special attention on the important role of bees as pollinators in agricultural ecosystems, it incorporates the latest findings on pesticides, parasites, and pathogens. This incisive and wide-ranging book also sheds vital light on the possible causes of colony collapse disorder and the devastating honey bee losses we are witnessing today.
The study of honey bees has greatly expanded in recent years and there is more interest in these marvelous creatures than ever before. Honey Bee Biology is the first up-to-date general reference of its kind published in decades. It is a musthave resource for social insect biologists, scientifically savvy beekeepers, and any scientist interested in bees as a model system.
Brian R. Johnson is associate professor in the Department of Entomology and Nematology at the University of California, Davis, and is a leading expert on the behavior, genetics, and evolution of honey bees.
VIEW Contents
- List of Plates
- Foreword
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- Natural History, Systematics, and Phylogenetics
- Development
- Anatomy and Physiology
- Genetics and Genomics
- Neurobiology
- Neuroethology and Cognitive Science
- Reproduction
- Evolution
- Life History, Ecology, and Nesting Biology
- The Honey Bee Colony Is a Superorganism
- Division of Labor
- Communication, Labor Allocation, and Collective Decision Making
- Chemical Ecology
- Foraging
- Tropical Honey Bees
- Immunity, Parasites, Pests, and Pathogens
- Detoxification and Pesticides
- Honey Bees as Managed Pollinators
- Literature Cited
- Index
VIEW Book Review
Reviewed by Norman L Carreck NDB The Beekeepers Quarterly No. 155, March 2024
For most active bee scientists, serious beekeepers and those studying for beekeeping exams, Mark Winston’s “The biology of the honey bee” (1987) has long been a bible. It was an incredible source of reference information, written in a clear, easy to understand style with clear diagrams. My own battered copy, with propolis on the cover, was signed by Mark when he visited us at Rothamsted in 1998. Inevitably, however, there have been huge advances in our knowledge of honey bee biology over the last 36 years, and a quick check of the Web of Science database shows that some 24,000 refereed scientific papers with the key words “honey bee” or “honeybee” have been published since 1987. So although Winston’s book is still available, it has long been overdue for revision. Sadly he moved to other areas of science and was not able to update it, so there has been a big gap in the market.
So does this new offering from Brian Johnson, a well-known bee scientist from the University of Davis, California, fill that gap? It follows a similar format, with some 350 pages, eight pages of colour plates, very clear and well-drawn line drawings and diagrams, some 2,000 references and an index. As Tom Seeley points out in his introduction, Winston’s book needed to be replaced, not only because many of the subjects that he featured have changed radically in scope, but also because a number of areas such as toxicology and immunity were not then widely studied, and new areas of molecular biology and ‘omics, have opened up whole new aspects of bee biology.
I think Johnson’s new book fills the gap admirably. Inevitably the reference list is somewhat biased to US sources, and some key European references that I might have expected to see are absent, but the book thoroughly covers areas such as natural history, systematics, development, anatomy and physiology, genetics and genomics, neurobiology and cognitive science, reproduction, evolution, life history, ecology and nesting biology. A key chapter is “the honey bee is a superorganism”, and this is then followed by chapters on communication, labour allocation and collective decision making, chemical ecology, foraging, and a section on tropical honey bees. The disease section is a bit superficial, and sadly contains a few errors. For example chronic bee paralysis virus is not at all related to acute bee paralysis virus and Kashmir bee virus as is stated here, despite the similarity in symptoms produced, but Israeli acute bee paralysis virus, given a separate section, is now considered to be just part of the APV complex, and is therefore merely a regional variant of the same virus.
As stated already, this new book features several areas not covered by Winston, the chapter about detoxification of pesticides being particularly interesting and timely, given the current debates about how laboratory tests of pesticides actually translate to what happens in the field. Finally there is a chapter about honey bees as managed pollinators. This is important, not only because the needs of commercial beekeeping have driven a number of areas of research, but also because a thorough understanding of honey bee biology is necessary for successful beekeeping.
So in all an essential purchase, and good value as this is a reference book to last for many years.
Reference:-Winston, M.L. (1987) The biology of the honey bee. Harvard University Press; Cambridge, USA. 281 pp. ISBN: 0-674-07408-4
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