Piping Hot Bees and Boisterous Buzz-Runners

20 Mysteries of Honey Bee Behavior Solved

Thomas D. Seeley

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN:
  9780691237718
  9780691237695
• eBook ISBN:
  9780691237701
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Biology
• Index: Biological Sciences

A biologist’s up-close account of how he and fellow biologists cracked long-standing puzzles about honey bee behavior

Piping Hot Bees and Boisterous Buzz-Runners takes readers inside a world seldom seen even by beekeepers, shedding light on twenty of the most compelling mysteries of honey bee behavior.

Thomas Seeley has devoted a lifetime to the study of honey bees and their colonies, unraveling the secrets of these wondrous insects in a career spanning six decades. In this book, he weaves illuminating personal stories with the latest science, explaining such mysteries as how worker bees function as scouts to choose a home site for their colony, furnish their home with beeswax combs, and stock it with brood and food while keeping tens of thousands of colony inhabitants warm and defended from intruders. Along the way, he shares the experiences that drew him to these studies, the small observations that led to big breakthroughs, and the sense of excitement that came with probing each mystery.

Richly illustrated, Piping Hot Bees and Boisterous Buzz-Runners provides a rare look at how a singularly passionate scientist and his colleagues deciphered the pipings, shakings, and puzzling tremble dances of honey bees, and how this journey of scientific discovery continues to shape our understanding of these remarkably intelligent and vitally important insects.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. Avoiding Asphyxia
• 2. Forest Homes
• 3. Homesite Inspectors
• 4. Choosing a Homesite
• 5. Consensus or Quorum?
• 6. Piping Hot Bees
• 7. Boisterous Buzz-Runners
• 8. Flight Control in Swarms
• 9. Astonishing Behavioral Versatility
• 10. Messenger Bees
• 11. A Tale of Four Species
• 12. Colonies Are Information Centers
• 13. Foragers as Sensors
• 14. Nectar Flow On?
• 15. Mystery of the Tremble Dance
• 16. Two Recruitment Dances, or Just One?
• 17. Movers and Shakers
• 18. Groom Me, Please
• 19. Colony Thirst
• 20. Resin Work
• Closing Thoughts
• Appendix: List of Signals
• Notes
• References
• Illustration Credits
• Index