When Maurice Maeterlinck, with a poet's sensibility and sensitivity, turned his attention to a bee hive, his observations turned into a masterpiece. In "The Life of the Bee," Maeterlinck illuminates the whole life and society of the bee, from the structure of the hive, to the movement and meaning of the swarm, to the role and activity of the queen. "The Life of the Bee" is for all readers curious about a brilliant thinker's mediation on a force of nature that, ultimately, holds lessons about the human race and our universe. Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949) won the Nobel Prize in literature in 1911. His plays, prose, and poems touched on philosophy, the natural world, and mysticism.

1900. With many illustrations. Do the wild flowers speak to you-do they know you as a friend, or pass you by as an alien? Do you know their names-their language-their secrets? Every lover of the beauties of Nature, everyone who thrills to the out-of-doors, must know the wild flowers. Here in this book is that knowledge-the most fascinating of all the lore of Nature. How plants work out the problems of existence and survival-how they make their families healthy-how they start their children in life-how they found colonies in distant lands-how they use insects for their own purposes-these are some of the gorgeous mysteries which this book reveals-a book that gives every reader a broader sympathy with Nature and with man. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.

In 1876, the U.S. Congress declared the locust "the single greatest impediment to the settlement of the country between Mississippi and the Rocky Mountains." Throughout the nineteenth century, swarms of locusts regularly swept across the American continent, turning noon into dusk, devastating farm communities, and bringing trains to a halt. The outbreaks subsided in the 1890s, and then, suddenly--and mysteriously--the Rocky Mountain locust vanished. A century later, entomologist Jeffrey Lockwood vowed to discover why."Locust" is the story of how one insect shaped the history of the western United States. A compelling personal narrative drawing on historical accounts and modern science, this beautifully written book brings to life the cultural, economic, and political forces at work in America in the late nineteenth century, even as it solves one of the greatest extinction mysteries of our time.

Does the insect know beforehand the sex of the egg which it is about to lay? When examining the stock of food in the cells just now, we began to suspect that it does, for each little heap of provisions is carefully proportioned to the needs at one time of a male and at another of a female. What we have to do is to turn this suspicion into a certainty.

Introduces over 300 of the most common species of Orthoptera in this first guide to one of the most abundant, colorful, and ecologically significant insect groups in North America.

In much of North America, crickets and katydids provide the soundtrack to summer nights, and grasshoppers frequent the fields and roadsides of midsummer days. Although insects from this group have long been the bane of those who make their living from the land, grasshoppers, katydids, and crickets are themselves crucial food sources for many species of birds, reptiles and amphibians, and other creatures.Field Guide to Grasshoppers, Katydids, and Crickets of the United States introduces readers to the biology, behavior, and ecological significance of one of the most obvious (abundant, large, and colorful) and important (ecologically and economically significant) insect groups in North America, the order Orthoptera. A simple, illustrated identification guide assists the reader in distinguishing among the various groups and narrows down the options to expedite identification. The book treats more than a third of the species found in the United States and Canada in brief, easy-to-understand sections that provide information on distribution, identification, ecology, and similar species. Distribution maps accompany each profile, and 206 species are pictured in color. Black-and-white drawings highlight distinguishing characteristics of some of the more difficult-to-identify species. Sonograms provide a graphic representation of the insects' distinctive sounds, which may be heard on Thomas J. Walker's website: Singing Insects of North America.This is the first treatment of North American grasshoppers, katydids, and crickets to portray the insects in full color, and it will be the first time many amateur naturalists and students have the opportunity to see the amazing and colorful world of Orthoptera, because many are cryptically colored (their bright colors evident only in flight) or cryptic in behavior (nocturnal in their habits). John L. Capinera, Ralph D. Scott, and Thomas J. Walker designed their book for amateur naturalists who wish to know the local fauna, for students who seek to identify insects as part of entomology and natural history courses, and for professional biologists who need to identify invertebrates. This invaluable field guide will be a useful supplement for laboratory and field activities and a reference for classrooms at every level.

Now in paperback--a fascinating work of popular science from a world-renowned expert on mosquitoes and a prize-winning reporter.
In this lively and comprehensive portrait of the mosquito, its role in history, and its threat to mankind, Spielman and D'Antonio take a mosquito's-eye view of nature and man. They show us how mosquitoes breed, live, mate, and die, and introduce us to their enemies, both natural and man-made. The authors present tragic and often grotesque examples of how the mosquito has insinuated itself into human history, from the malaria that devastated invaders of ancient Rome to the current widespread West Nile fever panic. Filled with little-known facts and remarkable anecdotes that bring this tiny being into larger focus, Mosquito offers fascinating, alarming, and convincing evidence that the sooner we get to know this pesky insect, the better off we'll be.

1947. An encyclopedia pertaining to scientific and practical culture of bees. Everything a beekeeper needs to know about obtaining and keeping bee hives. The book is an encyclopedia of information and terms on the honeybee. If you keep bees or want to keep bees or simply want to know more about this unappreciated, but vital aid to our modern agriculture, you need this book.

Modern Entomologic book of the early twentieth century by the physicist and botanist Jean-Henri Fabre. He is considered by many to be the father of modern entomology.

1922. The essential genius of this eminent French scientist, Fabre, lies in his ability to humanize a great phase of Nature that has long been a sealed book to the layman. The insect world, to all but the scientist, has always seemed unimportant, uninteresting and hitherto hidden in a maze of technical expressions and technical thought. But with the advent of Fabre another sun has risen to light up this little-known branch of human knowledge and human interest. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.

1925. The essential genius of this eminent French scientist, Fabre, lies in his ability to humanize a great phase of Nature that has long been a sealed book to the layman. The insect world, to all but the scientist, has always seemed unimportant, uninteresting and hitherto hidden in a maze of technical expressions and technical thought. But with the advent of Fabre another sun has risen to light up this little-known branch of human knowledge and human interest. See other titles by this author available from Kessinger Publishing.

Butterflies have always served as a metaphor for resurrection and transformation, but as Sharman Apt Russell points out in this lyrical meditation, butterflies are above all objects of obsession. She reveals the logic behind our endless fascination with butterflies and introduces us to the legendary collectors and dedicated scientists who have obsessively catalogued new species of Lepidoptera. A luminous journey through an exotic world of passion and strange beauty, this is a book to be treasured by anyone who has ever experienced the enchantment of butterflies.

Great French entomologist's charming essays on insect life combine scientific rigor with the style of a literary classic. Beautifully written passages reveal the intricate, fascinating worlds of the beetle, cicada, praying mantis, glow-worm, wasp, grub, cricket, locust, and other creatures as they hunt, build nests, feed families, and more. Rare volume will delight any naturalist.

Every autumn, the monarch butterflies east of the Rockies migrate from as far north as Canada to Mexico. Memory is not their guide — no one butterfly makes the round trip — but each year somehow find their way to the same fifty acres of forest on the high slopes of Mexico’s Neovolcanic Mountains, and then make the return trip in the spring.

In Four Wings and a Prayer, Sue Halpern sets off on an adventure to delve into the secrets behind this extraordinary phenomenon. She visits scientists and butterfly lovers across the country, offering a keenly observed portrait of the monarchs’ migration and of the people for whom they have become a glorious obsession. Combining science, memoir, and travel writing, Four Wings and a Prayer is an absorbing travelogue and a fascinating meditation on a profound mystery of the natural world.

Butterflies are found almost the year around in the relatively warm region of far West Texas. In the parks and preserves of the Big Bend and the Davis and Guadalupe Mountains, and in the arid flat lands between mountain ranges, these flying gems flit from flower to flower in the driest deserts and along the highest mountainsides. Most commonly found along water courses such as the Rio Grande or where flowers are abundant after rain, they can be found somewhere at any time in the vast, varied land west of the Pecos. This book describes and illustrates the fifty most common butterflies to be found in the region, along with eleven additional specialties unique to the far western part of the state. In his introduction to the book, noted naturalist Ro Wauer describes the general feeding habits of the butterflies of the region. He then provides details on each species, including how to distinguish it from similar species, when and where to find it, and other facts about its habits and appearance. Full-color photographs show each of the fifty common species and six of the specialties. Butterfly watching is growing more and more popular in the United States. This book includes a checklist for hobbyists and encourages butterfly watchers to view the colorful creatures in life rather than collect specimens. For that reason it is endorsed by the North American Butterfly Association, the largest organization working to save butterfly species throughout the continent. This book will join bird and wildflower field guides in the backpacks of nature lovers who plan to explore West Texas to the fullest extent and who want an accurate, fully illustrated guide to the butterflies of the region.

Every year Americans use a staggering five hundred million pounds of toxic pesticides in and around their homes, schools, parks, and roads - a growing health risk for people and the environment. But are these poisons really necessary? This book, appealing to the hunter in us all, shows how to triumph in combat with pests without losing the war to toxic chemicals. Tiny Game Hunting, written in a lively and entertaining style and illustrated with detailed drawings, gives more than two hundred tried-and-true ways to control or kill common household and garden pests without using toxic pesticides.

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.
"The Hive "recounts the astonishing tale of all the weird and wonderful things that humans believed about bees and their "society" over the ages. It ranges from the honey delta of ancient Egypt to the Tupelo forests of modern Florida, taking in a cast of characters including Alexander the Great and Napoleon, Sherlock Holmes and Muhammed Ali.
The history of humans and honeybees is also a history of ideas, taking us through the evolution of science, religion, and politics, and a social history that explores the bee's impact on food and human ritual.
In this beautifully illustrated book, Bee Wilson shows how humans will always view the hive as a miniature universe with order and purpose, and look to it to make sense of their own.

Not always regarded with kindness, insects nevertheless hold an enormous fascination for man. And far from being the commonly held "destructive pests", most insects are completely harmless and many are beneficial, if not essential, to human well-being. "Southern African Insects and Their World" gives an unbiased look at the insect realm in a way that enables the reader to appreciate and enjoy these remarkable creatures - which outnumber all other plant and animal groups on earth. The guide is divided into eight chapters which focus on insects' bodies, the behaviour of insects (finding food, mating and development) and on their many and varied strategies for survival (robustness, agility, camouflage, co-operation, patterning, stinging and biting).

"The real masterwork that Sue Hubbell has created is her life," David Quammen wrote in the New York Times. This book is, like its author, a unique achievement. Weaving a vivid portrait of her own life and her bees' lives through the seasons, Hubbell writes "about bees to be sure, but also about other things: the important difference between loneliness and solitude . . . the accommodating of oneself to nature" (Philadelphia Inquirer).

Snake venom that digests human flesh. A building cleared of every living thing by a band of tiny spiders. An infant insect eating its living prey from within, saving the vital organs for last. These are among the deadly feats of natural engineering you'll witness in "The Red Hourglass, " prize-winning author Gordon Grice's masterful, poetic, often dryly funny exploration of predators he has encountered around his rural Oklahoma home.
Grice is a witty and intrepid guide through a world where mating ends in cannibalism, where killers possess toxins so lethal as to defy our ideas of a benevolent God, where spider remains, scattered like "the cast-off coats of untidy children," tell a quiet story of violent self-extermination. It's a world you'll recognize despite its exotic strangeness--the world in which we live. Unabashedly stepping into the mix, Grice abandons his role as objective observer with beguiling dark humor--collecting spiders and other vermin, decorating a tarantula's terrarium with dollhouse furniture, or forcing a battle between captive insects because he deems one "too stupid to live."
Kill. Eat. Mate. Die. Charting the simple brutality of the lives of these predators, Grice's starkly graceful essays guide us toward startling truths about our own predatory nature. "The Red Hourglass" brings us face to fanged face with the inadequacy of our distinctions between normal and abnormal, dead and alive, innocent and evil.

"From the Hardcover edition."

This is a close-up look at the world of ants. Erich Hoyt recounts observations from an ant expedition to the tropical jungle with Edward O. Wilson. He introduces ants who harvest crops, raise insects as livestock, build roads and bridges, embark on nuptial fights and go to war.