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gilda_elise
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.
Filled with insightful and intriguing information, the book is nevertheless easy to read. Chapters lead the reader from the bee’s short but remarkable life to its awareness, so different from ours.
I thought I knew something about bees, but it turned out that there was so much I didn’t know. I didn’t know that the majority of bees are solitary, ground nesters who do not live in hives. They are the rule, not the exception. I didn’t know that their color vision, being shifted to the ultra violet of the spectrum, bees don’t see reds. I didn’t know that bees (and flies,) easily avoid being swatted because motion doesn’t become motion for them until the rate of 200-250 frames per seconds. For humans it’s 20 fps, which is why motion pictures are run at 24 fps. I didn’t know that there are cuckoo bees that, just like the cuckoo bird, lays its eggs in another bee’s nest, where it will hatch first and cannibalize the host’s young.
I could go on, but best to allow interested readers to find out for themselves.
Mount TBR 2025 Book Links
Links are to more information regarding each book or author, not to the review.
1. The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War by Erik Larson
2. The Silence of the Girls (Women of Troy #1) by Pat Barker
3. Withered + Sere (Immemorial Year #1) by T.J. Klune
4. The Traitor's Son by Wendy Johnson
5. All That Heaven Allows: A Biography of Rock Hudson by Mark Griffin
6. You Like It Darker by Stephen King, Thomas Hayman (Illustrations)
7. The Fireman by Joe Hill
8. The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein
9. Lark Ascending by Silas House
10. Memorials by Richard Chizmar
11. The Russo-Ukrainian War: The Return of History by Serhii Plokhy
12. Clytemnestra by Costanza Casati
13. The Border by Robert McCammon
14. The 2084 Report: An Oral History of the Great Warming by James Lawrence Powell
15. Stone Blind by Natalie Haynes
16. All Over the Town by R. F. Delderfield
17. The Last Days of Richard III and the Fate of His DNA: The Book That Inspired the Dig by John Ashdown-Hill
18. Somewhere Beyond the Sea (Cerulean #2) by T.J. Klune
19. Blood of the Children by Alan Rodgers
20. For Fear of the Night by Charles L. Grant
21. We Used to Live Here by Marcus Kliewer
22. America First: Roosevelt vs. Lindbergh in the Shadow of War by H.W. Brands
23. American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House by Jon Meacham
24. The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
25. A Beginning at the End by Mike Chen
26. Lost and Found by Marilyn Harris
27. Strange Weather: Four Short Novels by Joe Hill
28. Three Wild Dogs by Markus Zusak
29. Full Throttle by Joe Hill
30. Lost in a Good Book (Thursday Next #2) by Jasper Fforde
31. Elder Race by Adrian Tchaikovsky
32. Hearts in Atlantis by Stephen King
33. Pearly Everlasting by Tammy Armstrong
34. The Women of Troy (Women of Troy #2) by Pat Barker
35. The Conjurers by Marilyn Harris
36. The Regulators by Richard Bachman (Pseudonym), Stephen King
37. Islands of Abandonment: Nature Rebounding in the Post-Human Landscape by Cal Flyn
38. The Nun's Story by Kathryn Hulme
39. The Bones Beneath My Skin by T.J. Klune
40. They Thirst by Robert McCammon
41. Blue World: And Other Stories by Robert McCammon
42. Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens by David Mitchell
43. Run by Blake Crouch
44. Babylonia by Costanza Casati
45. What a Bee Knows: Exploring the Thoughts, Memories, and Personalities of Bees by Stephen Buchmann
SEP - “Birds, Bugs, Botanicals”
Read a book with birds, bugs, or botanicals that are on the cover, in the title, or part of the story.
What a Bee Knows: Exploring the Thoughts, Memories, and Personalities of Bees by Stephen Buchmann
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Date: 2025-09-29 04:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-09-30 03:47 pm (UTC)I certainly think so! I planted some Russian Sage last spring and they've gone crazy for it. I might add a couple more bushes of it next year. And the bumble bees in particular love my Rose of Sharons.