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.

They appeared on earth 400 million years ago, long before the first reptile, bird, or mammal. They make up about 75 percent of the 1.2 million currently known species of animals. As many as 30,000 of them coexist and interact in one square yard of the top inch of a forest's soil. The unparalleled success of insects is the story told in this highly entertaining book. How do these often tiny but indefatigable creatures do it? Gilbert Waldbauer pursues this question from hot springs and Himalayan slopes to roadsides and forests, scrutinizing insect life in its many manifestations. Insects through the Seasons will educate and charm the expert, the passionate amateur, and the merely curious about our most populous and tenacious neighbors.

The authors describe more than 120 common varieties of southwestern insects and arthropods, enabling the reader to appreciate and respect the role "creepy crawlies" play in the world.

This practical pocket field guide includes more than 180 species of insect from Britain and the near Continent. Britain is home to a marvellous variety of insects, including dragonflies, bees, wasps, beetles, bugs and flies. Each species account in the field guide contains accurate artworks and a concise written account which covers size, description, habitat, distribution, foodplants and habits. The easy-to-follow layouts and illustrations aid quick and precise identification, and make this book an indispensable reference in the field as well as at home. It is compact enough to fit in the pocket, yet packed with essential information for nature enthusiasts.

A fantastic first book on butterflies and moths, this is the perfect companion for bug hunters ages 6 and up eager to understand how caterpillars become butterflies.

Nature Explorer Butterflies and Moths encourages little explorers to get outside and covers everything you need to know about these critters, including cocoons, wings, caterpillars, and eggs. Children can learn about butterflies and moths from all over the world, from their very own gardens to woodland, mountains, rainforest, desert, and even the Arctic.

With exciting activities, like how to make a butterfly kite, and plenty of fun facts, this beautiful book is a must for children curious about butterflies and moths.

Illustrations by Pamela Johnson

"Why is it that insects often inspire such good writing? You think of Jean Henri Fabre, William Morton Wheeler, you think of Howard Evans' Wasp Farm. To these classics we must now add The Queen Must Die, an altogether pleasing ethnography of the beehive." —Jake Page

"A very fine book indeed. . . . Longgood's Thoreauvian patience and powers of observation . . . make The Queen Must Die a special book." —James Kauffman, Christian Science Monitor

"Longgood's enthusiasm for his subject is infectious. He supplies a fund of unfamiliar information about a changeless civilization buzzing about its business just outside our attention." —Walter Clemons, Newsweek

"The remarkable complex social order of bees leads the least speculative to speculate, and Longgood's speculations, leavened with quiet wit, are of a high order of stylish imagination." —Los Angeles Times

"A beautiful book about one of nature's most industrious, 'work-or-die' insects. . . . Fascinating reading." —Rocky Mountain News

Explore close-up the fascinating lives of insects.

Why do fireflies glow? How do a cricket's chirps differ from a grasshopper's? At what time of day are dragonflies most active? This information-packed guide explains the behavior of the insects around us-and raises the curtain on an exciting drama taking place before our eyes. Illustrated throughout with pen-and-ink drawings, the Stokes Guide to Observing Insect Lives tells how, where, and when to observe the most intriguing activities of more than 60 common insects in their natural habitats. The species covered range from ants, bumblebees, and silk moths to June beetles, snow fleas, and monarch butterflies.

The bright colours and fascinating ways of this small but important group of insects attract immediate attention. Cicindelidae, or tiger beetles, are frequently encountered, but they are difficult to capture, since they are alert and elusive, and still more difficult to identify. This intensive study of the distinguishing characteristics, geographical distribution and variation, and habits and habitats of tiger beetles in Canada - the culmination of the author's main interest for many years - will provide a much-needed reference work. Studies of insect families are scarce, and professional and amateur entomologists alike will find this book a most useful aid in their investigations and a stimulus to further research.

Ticks are among the most competent and versatile vectors of pathogens and are second to mosquitoes as vectors of a number of human pathogens. They are the most important vector of pathogens affecting cattle worldwide. Problems with tick-borne diseases were related to the introduction of improved breeds of cattle into tick-infested areas because of their greater productivity compared to well-adapted indigenous breeds. The global loss due to ticks and tick borne diseases (TTBDs) was estimated to be between $13.9 and $18.7 billion annually while in India the cost of controlling TTBDs has been estimated at $498.7 million/annum. Also, cattle infested with ticks and infected with tick-borne disease agents were moved into areas where these tick species had not previously existed. This book is written by an international collection of tick experts of prestigious organizations and covers in-depth information on different aspects of ticks i.e. biology, acaricide resistance, tick-borne diseases, tick management strategies etc. It is a valuable resource for students, academic researchers and professionals because it covers the whole range of ticks and tick-borne diseases. This handbook was assembled through the efforts of five editors and the book chapters' authors, each of whom contributed to different components of the handbook.

Welcome to the strange and dangerous world of the VENOM DOC. Imagine a three-week-long first date in Siberia catching venomous water shrews, and later a wedding attended by Eastern European prime ministers and their bodyguards wielding machine guns. Then a life spent living and working with snakes. Lots of very, very poisonous snakes and other venomous creatures ... everything from the Malaysian king cobra to deadly scorpions. Welcome to Bryan Grieg Fry's world. In this action-packed ride through Bryan's life you'll meet the man who's worked with the world's most venomous creatures in over 50 countries. He's been bitten by 26 poisonous snakes and stung by three stingrays - and survived a near-fatal scorpion sting while deep in the Amazon jungle. He's also broken 23 bones, including breaking his back in three places, and had to learn how to walk again. But when you only research the venom you've collected yourself - the adventures, and danger, will just keep coming ... Dividing his time between scientific research and teaching at the University of Queensland, and TV filming and collecting expeditions around the world, Bryan and danger are never far from one another.

With their beautiful wing patterns and colours butterflies immediately catch our attention. Of all creatures, they exemplify metamorphosis with the creeping caterpillar transforming into a soaring butterfly. But they have also come to be creatures of science, revealing much to biologists about evolution and the ecological processes and historical accidents that have generated the diversity of life on Earth.In Butterflies leading expert Dick Vane-Wright provides a complete introduction to the biology, natural history and classification of this major group. Using examples from around the world and eye-catching photographs, he explores what it means to be a butterfly, from how the yellow birdwing finds a mate to why the African gaudy commodores produce adults of different colours.Fully revised and updated with new photographs and the latest reserach, this reformatted edition offers an overview of the biology and diversity of the major group of day-flying Lepidoptera.