Bee Lessons

Howard Scott brings 30+ years of beekeeping experience to this easy to read guide with more than 40 lessons on honey bee behavior!

Examples of the lessons include:

• Lesson 11: Mooching Doesn't Pay. The drones do no work, but gorge themselves on honey. Getting fat and ungainly, they continually bump into workers. By summer's end, the workers, realizing they've been supporting these idle slobs, throw the drones out of the hive. Pulling them out by force, they often tear off a leg or rip a wing, spelling doom for these party boys.
• Lesson 30: Nothing conveys a message like dance. On the combs inside the hive, a forager bee does a dance. It's a wiggling, gyrating motion called a waggle dance. This movement is more than entertainment. It communicates the whereabouts of nectar finds. Through her gyrations, the bee spells out, in Morse code-fashion, how to get from here to there in the air.
• And 40 more lessons!

Howard Scott is a 30-year beekeeper, who has written extensively for Bee Culture and American Bee Journal, the beekeepers' magazines. He has also written for Yankee, The New York Times, American Way, Working Woman, and the Boston Globe.