Natural Science / Natural History > Insects

Beekeeping can provide anyone with an interesting and useful hobby or a lucrative and rewarding business. It is recognised as a vital agricultural industry and can therefore also offer you a globe trotting career. The whole subject is, however, often shrouded in mystery and loaded with jargon, leaving many people unaware of its true potential or how to start.This step-by-step shows how you can start beekeeping as a hobby. Find out how to start and develop beekeeping as a business. It reveals the potential for beekeeping as a career... read more

After being seriously injured in a hit-and-run, Piers Moore Ede goes to an organic farm in Italy to recuperate. There, a beekeeper shows him the magic of the beehive and Piers, depressed since his accident, realises that honey might be his salve and salvation. This is the story of his quest to seek out the most wondrous honeys in the world, from the terracotta bee jars of the Lebanon to the clay cylinders of Syria. Slowly his personal tribulations fall into perspective against the backdrop of the dwindling traditions of the honey-f... read more

An examination of the history, art, and science of beekeeping chronicles the author's own experiences as a novice beekeeper and includes recipes sweetened with honey. Honey has been waiting almost ten million years for a good biography. Bees have been making this prized food - for centuries the world's only sweetener - for millennia, but we humans started recording our fascination with it only in the past few thousand years. Part history, part love letter, Robbing the Bees is a celebration of bees and their magical produce, reveal... read more

This study of butterfies through their life cycles helps reveal the logic behind our fascination with butterflies. It explains the passion of legendary collectors such as the tragic Eleanor Glanville and brilliant Henry Bates and takes us inside some of the most prestigious natural history museums. First published 2003.

The bee is the most studied creature on the planet after man, and down the ages this insect and its honey have been harnessed by doctors, philosophers, scientists, politicians, artists, writers and architects as both metaphor and material.

The history of the world from a bee

Humans have long been fascinated by ants. While not necessarily brightly coloured or beautiful, ants display some remarkable characteristics that are almost unique in the animal world. They live in intricately organized societies, made up of individuals that cooperate, communicate, and divide up daily tasks. They display amazing ingenuity when it comes to building nests and other structures, finding supplies, or even exploiting other members of the animal kingdom. They are capable too of aggression and violence, of disturbing t... read more

The emir of Bukhara used assassin bugs to eat away the flesh of his prisoners. General Ishii Shiro during World War II released hundreds of millions of infected insects across China, ultimately causing more deaths than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. These are just two of many startling examples found in Six-legged Soldiers, a brilliant portrait of the many weirdly creative, truly frightening, and ultimately powerful ways in which insects have been used as weapons of war, terror, and torture. Beginning in prehistoric times and ... read more

They work hard, are devoted to family, love sex, and know the importance of a good piece of real estate. Honey bees, and the daily workings of their close-knit colonies, are one of nature's great miracles. And they produce one of nature's greatest edible bounties: honey. More than just a palate pleaser, honey was once an offering to the gods, a preservative, and a medicine whose sought-after curative powers were detailed in ancient texts . . . and are being rediscovered by modern medical science.In Letters from the Hive, Prof. St... read more

Imagine beetles ejecting defensive sprays as hot as boiling water; female moths holding their mates for ransom; caterpillars disguising themselves as flowers by fastening petals to their bodies; termites emitting a viscous glue to rally fellow soldiers - and you will have entered an insect world once beyond imagining, a world observed and described down to its tiniest astonishing detail by Thomas Eisner. The story of a lifetime of such minute explorations, For Love of Insects celebrates the small creatures that have emerged triu... read more

Honeybees are dying. In America, one in three hives was left lifeless at the beginning of 2008. In France, the death rate might be 60 percent. In Britain, a government minister has warned that honey bees could be extinct within a decade. A third of all that we eat, and much of what we wear, relies on pollination by honeybees. So if - or when - the world loses its black-and-yellow workers, the consequences will be dire. What is behind this catastrophe? Viruses, parasites, pesticides and climate change have all been blamed. As has mo... read more

Humans have long been fascinated by ants. While not necessarily brightly coloured or beautiful, ants display some remarkable characteristics that are almost unique in the animal world. They live in intricately organised societies, made up of individuals that cooperate, communicate, and divide up daily tasks. They display amazing ingenuity when it comes to building nests and other structures, finding supplies, or even exploiting other members of the animal kingdom. They are capable too of aggression and violence, of disturbing the a... read more

'Yet again I was screaming in the night' is the opening sentence in this book. The author decided to deliberately overcome her fear of spiders by observing and studying them, and learning as much as she could about them. As well as being an authoritative book on spiders, this book is a personal account of how the author came to love them, and how any other arachnaphobe can do the same. Firts published 2009.

Spiders, objects of eternal human fascination, are found in many places: on the ground, in the air, and even under water. Leslie Brunetta and Catherine Craig have teamed up to produce a substantive yet entertaining book for anyone who has ever wondered, as a spider rappelled out of reach on a line of silk, 'How do they do that?'
The orb web, that iconic wheel-shaped web most of us associate with spiders, contains at least four different silk proteins, each performing a different function and all meshing together to create a f... read more

The most comprehensive beekeeping resource ever published. This ultimate guide covers all the practical essentials and will teach you everything about caring for bees and safe hive management, with clear instructions and step-by-step illustrations. It also contains a wealth of information about the culinary, medicinal, cosmetic and domestic uses of honey, beeswax and pollen. So much more than just a practical handbook, this beautiful almanac is also a fascinating read, overflowing with charming bee trivia, fascinating folklore, a... read more