What a Bee Knows
Exploring the Thoughts, Memories, and Personalities of Bees
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
For many of us, the buzzing of a bee elicits panic. But the next time you hear that low droning sound, look closer: the bee has navigated to this particular spot for a reason using a fascinating set of tools. She may be using her sensitive olfactory organs, which provide a 3D scent map of her surroundings. She may be following visual landmarks or instructions relayed by a hive-mate. She may even be tracking electrostatic traces left on flowers by other bees. What a Bee Knows: Exploring the Thoughts, Memories, and Personalities of Bees invites us to follow bees’ mysterious paths and experience their alien world.
Although their brains are incredibly small—just one million neurons compared to humans’ 100 billion—bees have remarkable abilities to navigate, learn, communicate, and remember. In What a Bee Knows, entomologist Stephen Buchmann explores a bee’s way of seeing the world and introduces the scientists who make the journey possible. We travel into the field and to the laboratories of noted bee biologists who have spent their careers digging into the questions most of us never thought to ask (for example: Do bees dream? And if so, why?). With each discovery, Buchmann’s insatiable curiosity and sense of wonder is infectious.
What a Bee Knows will challenge your idea of a bee’s place in the world—and perhaps our own. This lively journey into a bee’s mind reminds us that the world is more complex than our senses can tell us.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this enlightening outing, Buchmann (The Reason for Flowers), an ecology professor at the University of Arizona, takes readers "into the minds and lives of bees." He explains the critical role bees play as pollinators—"about 35 percent of the world's food supply that isn't derived from wind-pollinated cereal crops" stems from bees' services—and provides an intimate look at how bees experience their environment. Describing some of the insects' extraordinary capabilities, he discusses research that has found bees can count to four, learn to use tools (they have been trained in studies to roll tiny balls for a reward), and "taste" via hairs on their legs and antennae. More provocatively, Buchmann argues that bees can feel pain and might have a "limited form of consciousness," as demonstrated by studies that found bees can likely practice selective attention and "interpret reality in relation to themselves." Fascinating trivia abounds, and the eye-opening material on bees' interior lives complicates conventional wisdom about which animals are capable of emotions and consciousness (one study found that "anxious" bees "avoided being around other bees" and had lower than normal levels of dopamine). Readers fearful of bees may well gain a new perspective, while those who are already fans will find more to celebrate.
