This book celebrates the bee in all its humble glory, and does so in a completely original way. It has long been a dream of art director Iris Rombouts to produce an art book that sheds new light on our familiar surroundings and our daily food in particular. And what better way to do that than with the bee, the most important creature to humans on earth? Not only is this small insect indispensible to our food chain - it pollinates over 80% of all flowering plants and 70 of the top human food crops - but it is also a source of inspiration for architects, writers, artists and even whole cities. This book celebrates the bee in all its humble glory, and does so in a completely original way. With a preface by author Jeroen Olyslaegers. We see the bee represented by old masters and contemporary artists, by insectobsessed Renaissance man Jan Fabre, by Joseph Beuys and his Honey Pump and by Tomas Libertiny with his beeswax sculptures. There is the ceramic piece of art 'The Wall' by Carla Arocha and Stephane Schraenen, with its repetitive structure that reminds of a honeycomb. Fashion, too, is represented: designer Harm Van Zwolle chose the bee as his muse, proving that the beekeeper s outfit can become a covetable piece of clothing. The book is as multi-faceted as the eye of the bee. It pays homage to Maurice Maeterlinck, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, who tells the most inspiring tales about the life and death of the bee. It explores the mythical powers of the Apis Mellifera, and invites passionate beekeepers from all over the world to share their vision and show that there is much more to the bee than honey. The book also explains how the beehive inspired architects Le Corbusier and Frank Lloyd Wright to create stunning buildings that will impress many generations to come. As readers, we explore the feather-light steel building 'The Hive' by Wolfgang Buttress, and travel to Manchester, the city that chose the bee as its symbol and has shown to be every bit as courageous and resilient as the insect itself. All these weird and wonderful stories are accompanied by the work of talented photographers such as Stephen Mattues, Diego Franssens, studioEAST, Mark Haddon, Stephen Goodenough, Joao Sousa, Filip Van Roe, Wout Hendrickx and Iris herself. With this book, Iris Rombouts has created a joyful, brilliant mix of stories, photography and art, with the bee as the well-deserved star of the show.

Animals are often heard before they are spotted, and this book serves as an excellent guide to help identify 76 creatures (mammals, birds, amphibians and insects), based primarily on their calls.

For each of the species listed, there is a full-colour photograph, distribution map and brief facts about its life history and behaviour.

Key features:

- An accompanying CD with 76 common animal calls

- Photographs and distribution maps for each species

- Interesting facts, including habitat, diet and time of calls

An invaluable resource for nature lovers of all ages, this CD and book will provide a new way of recognising the varied sounds of Africa's wild areas.

South Africa has a great diversity of insect life which can be found everywhere – on the ground, in water and in the air. Remarkable Insects of South Africa seeks to introduce the reader to many of the more common and interesting species.

The book features many unique never before published photographs which serve to open a window into the amazing, sometimes bizarre and often beautiful but invariably intriguing miniature world of the insects. Through high-quality digital macro-photography accompanied by informative text and captions the reader is guided on a fascinating safari of images as insects feed, breed and hunt in their natural surroundings.

• Written from the viewpoint of a naturalist, rather than a scientist, the book presents both scientific facts and personal observations in a simple, easily understandable and interesting manner.
• The book is richly illustrated with more than 420 superb full-colour photographs.
• A special section on insect photography gives an overview of the techniques and equipment used in photographing these fascinating creatures.
• Insect-spotting is an increasingly popular hobby and this book makes a valuable addition to the literature on insects that occur in South Africa.

Grab your coat and get ready for an outdoor adventure! This brilliant activity book is packed full of outside play ideas based on four of your favourite books by Julia Donaldson and Axel Scheffler. With a wide range of activities created by nature play specialists Little Wild Things, this book is bursting with ideas to encourage children and adults to explore and celebrate nature together. Includes activities based on: Superworm, The Smeds and the Smoos, Zog and The Scarecrows' Wedding.

The invasive Harlequin ladybird is an eye-catching and beautiful species, but it can be very difficult to identify, with huge variation in colouration and pattern. This comprehensive photographic field guide is the first complete guide to identifying Harlequin ladybirds found in Britain and Ireland. It also covers all the other 25 conspicuous ladybird species that occur. Detailed, informative and beautifully illustrated with more than 350 remarkable colour photographs including ladybird developmental time sequences and numerous images of each ladybird species Ground-breaking quick key for Harlequin identification Includes a photographic guide to the larvae of all 26 species - the first of its kind Easy to follow comprehensive descriptions and explanations of ladybird lifecycles and habits This clear, user-friendly field guide is ideal for anyone interested in learning how to identify a Harlequin ladybird, from beginners to more experienced entomologists, students and professionals. This book is ideal for learning to recognise and understand this charismatic and significant beetle.

This fun-filled adventure handbook is bursting with ideas to help kids discover the great outdoors and get closer to nature. Created with the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS), the UK's leading gardening charity. This beautifully illustrated book is packed fun activities, handy tips and nature facts to encourage children to explore the wonderful world around them. Make a wilderness compass Grow your own herb garden Build a tepee Learn how to read a map Discover more about plants, trees and wildlife Each page is filled with inspiring ideas for discovering and exploring plants and wildlife, with exciting activities for all weathers.

Colin Dayan meditates on the connection between her personal and family history and her relationship with animals in this lyrical memoir about her upbringing in the South. Unraveling memories alongside family documents and photographs, Animal Quintet takes a raw look at racial tensions and relations in a region struggling to change while providing a disquieting picture of a childhood accessible only through accounts of the non-human, ranging from famed Southern war horses led by Civil War generals and doomed Spanish fighting bulls to the lowly possum hunted by generations of Southerners. Placing the reader in the mind's eye of a writer still grappling with her own mixed identity and unsettled past, the book is uniquely capable of transporting one's imagination across time and place, mirroring the natural behavior of remembrances with its feeling of dislocation and non-linear movement. Regional folk songs about old gray mares and possums hiding in trees intermingle with stories and confidences shared by the household's African-American nanny, enclosing the reader in a chorus composed of otherwise lost voices. Presented in a such a way that it simultaneously longs for the past and attempts to keep it at arm's length, Animal Quintet achieves a haunting, nostalgic quality rare to memoirs focused on ancestral and personal identity.

Ever since men first hunted for honeycomb in rocks and daubed pictures of it on cave walls, the honeybee has been seen as one of the wonders of nature: social, industrious, beautiful, terrifying. No other creature has inspired in humans an identification so passionate, persistent or fantastical. In this gem of a book, award-winning writer Bee Wilson explores the magical world of the honeybee. From the hive to honey, from beekeepers to honeymooners, via Aristotle, Shakespeare, Napoleon and Sherlock Holmes, here is a book that delights and surprises at every turn. And there is even a recipe or two.

This classic guide to the butterflies of Britain and northern Europe enters its third edition as part of the authoritative Collins Guide series.

This comprehensive guide to the butterflies of Britain and Europe features over 400 species, depicting both male and female insects. Species descriptions include details on taxonomic nomenclature, distribution, flight period, variation, habitat, behaviour and life cycle. Subspecies are included where there is significant variation, and distribution maps accompany each widespread species.

Illustrated by Richard Lewington, the world's leading butterfly illustrator, this is an ideal field guide for travelling naturalists and butterfly enthusiasts alike and is an essential addition to every nature lover's bookshelves.

The threat of global mass extinction of bees, and the alarming decline in many native bird species, are key topics of discussion today. The main causes of this situation is intensive cultivation of monocultures, and the wide-scale use of pesticides, that in turn lead to destruction of traditional habitats and the various food sources they provide. We know that if just one species in a food chain is lost - and thus no longer able to perform its particular function - this will inevitably lead to the extinction of further species, and a reduction in the stability and productivity of the entire ecosystem. The preservation of biological diversity is guaranteed only if pollinators are able to survive - and each of us can contribute to supporting and strengthening them by creating a natural garden that welcomes and sustains these species, providing what they need to flourish. The spirit and magic of a natural garden stems from the fact that it is not created by human hands - at least not in the usual sense, with a great deal of effort and expenditure. A natural garden is about creating an ecologically balanced slice of nature - one that is not shaped by external forces, but works with what is already there. Turn your garden into a wildlife wonderland - and help to save the environment!

Capture the delicate beauty of the great outdoors with this enchanting collection of stickers. Page after page of this book is packed with beautiful vintage drawings of creatures that soar, flutter, and glide. Get creative! Adorn your personal items with more than a thousand bird- and insect-themed stickers, create gorgeous artwork and stationery, or simply enjoy this book as an exquisite keepsake.

Global bee populations have been rapidly declining for years, and it's not just our honey supply that's at stake: bees' contribution to the pollination of various crops is essential to human survival. But even in industrial apiaries-the most common approach to facilitate the rebound of threatened bee populations-bees are in distress, hiving in synthetic and hostile environments. Enter idle beekeeping: the grassroots, low-intervention system of beekeeping that seeks to emulate the behavior and habitat of bees in the wild-and it only requires two active days of beekeeping per year. In The Idle Beekeeper, Bill Anderson calls upon his years of applied curiosity as an urban beekeeper to highlight the invaluable resources that these underappreciated insects provide and show how simple and rewarding beekeeping can be. In this entertaining, philosophical, and practical guide, Anderson teaches step-by-step how to build a hive system developed to allow maximum idleness, harvest honey and extract honeycomb, make mead and beeswax candles, and to closely observe and understand these most fascinating and productive of insects. Through his laissez-faire approach to maintaining a bee colony using the minimum-interference Warre hives-low-tech, low-maintenance, and bee-friendly hives that mimic the cavity of a tree, the bees' natural habitat-Anderson illustrates how little effort is actually required to raise and nurture a thriving bee community. In fact, his idle approach to beekeeping requires only two days of work per year-one day in the spring, and another in the fall. The Idle Beekeeper offers practical and philosophical advice for getting involved in conservation efforts, and Anderson's expertise will show just how easy it is to make an environmental impact. For anyone interested in keeping bees, The Idle Beekeeper is the definitive guide that teaches you everything you need to get started, even in a city, and without effort.

Fancy meeting a foot-long centipede or a spider the size of your dinner plate? Willing to let the world's weirdest and most fascinating minibeasts join you on your sofa?

Then allow Jess French to lead you head first through the unbelievable world of invertebrates and explore their incredible adaptations, from dancing scorpions and blood-sucking moths to zombie spiders and slime-shooting worms.

Marvel at how minibeasts have evolved to survive in almost every describable habitat. Discover the fascinating ways they find food, mate, fight, hide and collaborate in even the most extreme conditions! And pore over more than 250 breathtakingly detailed photographs of astonishing invertebrates.

With her unparalled zeal for minibeasts, Jess will enlighten you on the most fascinating and intense aspects of the minibeast world, revealing everything from cloaks made of corpses to mid-flight kamikaze mating.

Bees are a fascinating and indispensable group of insects, but many species are in decline, and efforts to help determine distributions and changes in abundance have to date been compromised by a serious lack of identification resources. This eagerly anticipated new addition to the highly acclaimed British Wildlife Field Guides series will unravel the complexities of identification, and is designed to cater for people new to the bee world as well as to more experienced recorders who wish to identify every species accurately. It provides the latest information on the identification, ecology, status and distribution of all 275 species of bee in Britain, Ireland and the Channel Islands. - Written by Steven Falk, professional naturalist and conservationist with over forty years' experience of working with bees - Illustrated with over 1,000 colour and black & white artworks by Richard Lewington, one of Europe's leading insect artists - Stunning photographs of living insects as seen in the wild - 234 up-to-date distribution maps - Comprehensive introduction to bee classification, ecology, field techniques and recording, a full glossary, and information on how to separate the sexes and distinguish bees from other insects - Introductions to families and genera, describing key characters and life histories - Detailed species descriptions covering field and microscopic characters, similar species, variants, flight season, habitat, flowers visited, nesting habits, status & distribution, and parasites & associates - A series of innovative illustrated keys to genera and species, designed to guide the user step by step through the identification process

Beautifully illustrated and approachable, this is the only California-specific, statewide book devoted to all groups of insects. Completely revised for the first time in over 40 years, Field Guide to California Insects now includes over 600 insect species, each beautifully illustrated with color photographs. Engaging accounts focus on distinguishing features, remarkable aspects of biology, and geographical distribution in the state. An accessible and compact introduction to identifying, understanding, and appreciating these often unfamiliar and fascinating creatures, this guide covers insects that readers are likely to encounter in homes and natural areas, cities and suburbs, rural lands and wilderness. It also addresses exotic and invasive species and their impact on native plants and animals. Field Guide to California Insects remains the definitive portable reference and a captivating read for beginners as well as avid naturalists.

A photographic field guide to 1,500 species of insects found in Britain and Ireland A photographic field guide to all the common and some unusual species of insects across Britain that the keen amateur naturalist is likely to spot. Over 1,500 species are illustrated with detailed photographs chosen for their help in identification. Includes photographs of larvae Each section is coded with a symbol for easy reference Differences between similar species are highlighted to avoid confusion Information given on when to look and where to find each species Insect groups dealt with include butterflies and moths, mayflies, dragonflies, damselflies, grasshoppers, crickets, earwigs, lacewings, bugs, bees, wasps, ants and beetles, all with keys to ensure accurate identification.

This field guide to the dragonflies and damselflies of South Africa covers all species known to occur in the region. A detailed introduction covers behaviour, life cycles, biology and breeding; and the species entries focus on identifi cation and distribution. Colour plates feature scans of the actual insects – males and females where possible – as well as close ups and side views; and diagnostic labels help ensure accurate ID. Additional photographs show species in their specific habitat and illustrate key behaviour.

Beautifully presented and authoritative, this book will appeal to anyone with an interest in South Africa’s insect life, and to nature lovers in general.

A carefully designed and beautifully illustrated photographic guide to the moths you are most likely to see during the day This concise photographic field guide helps you to identify the day-flying moths most likely to be seen in Great Britain and Ireland. It combines stunning photographs, clear and authoritative text and an easy-to-use design to increase your knowledge and enjoyment of these intriguing and often colourful insects. Like butterflies, some moths fly regularly in sunshine, whereas others that usually fly at night are readily disturbed from their resting places during the day. This guide describes all of these species and features at least one photograph of each in its natural, resting pose. A brief description of each moth covers the key identification features and when and where to look for it, and includes information on its status, life history, special features and caterpillar food plants. Other sections explain how to distinguish moths from butterflies, and also provide essential information on biology, classification, habitats, gardening for moths, conservation and legislation and recording and monitoring. Individual accounts for 158 species and photos of 28 others More than 320 stunning photos, with every moth shown as you see it Beautifully designed, easy to use and clearly written