Honeybee Democracy. Thomas D. Seeley

Honeybee Democracy. Thomas D. Seeley. Princeton University Press. 280 pages. September 2010nnCornell University

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0046A9M68

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Princeton University Press; Illustrated edition (Sept. 20 2010)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 5703 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 283 pages

In Honeybee Democracy Thomas D. Seeley brings together several decades of field work on the house-hunting process of honeybees. The way they work together to ‘vote’ for a new home, how they find a home, from Europe to America. This book opens us up to a new mindset, inviting us readers to understand that bees collaborate. The Queen is not the ruler. She does not make all the rules. Instead, the bees work together to ensure the survival of the hive.

The quality of the choice of a new home is paramount to their survival. Instinctual behavior enables them to locate nest sites and measure the cavity to see which is suited to the swarm’s needs. Mr. Seeley takes us on an indepth look at the waggle dance, opening up a well researched explanation of the purpose.

Both new beekeepers and seasoned, experienced beekeepers will learn from this book. In my opinion it should be a part of any beekeeping course. Serious beekeepers will learn how to read their hives. They will learn how to interpret behavior they see in the hive.

Thomas D. Seeley is the Horace White Professor in Biology within the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at Cornell University, where he teaches courses in animal behavior and does research on the biology of honey bees.

He grew up in Ithaca, New York where he kept and studied bees while a high school student, and brought home a swarm of bees in a wooden box. He went away to college at Dartmouth in 1970. He went on to graduate school at Harvard University where he began his research on bees in earnest, and earned his Ph.D. in 1978.

He received the Senior Scientist Prize of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany, been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, and been elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina).

His wrote six books: Honeybee Ecology (1985, Princeton), The Wisdom of the Hive (1995, Harvard), Honeybee Democracy (2010, Princeton), Following the Wild Bees (2016, Princeton), The Lives of Bees (2019, Princeton), and Piping Hot Bees and Boisterous Buzz-runners (2024, Princeton).