Honeybee Democracy Kindle Edition

If you have trouble falling asleep keep this by your bedside and you’ll be making zzz’s in a page or two.All kidding aside, it’s a fascinating yet tediously written book and Thomas Seeley made some brilliant research that uncovered what we understand about swarms, specifically how they find a new home.Chapters 1-4 I enjoyed, I learned some new stuff about swarm traps and how waggle dancing scouts find and report on new home locations. Chapters 5-9 were densely packed with scientific and academic jargon that I just skimmed through. Chapter 10 was an concise and readable conclusion.This book will not make you a better bee keeper. It will not make you better at catching swarms. It’s not a “fun” read for the average person but if you’re ready to learn about velocity vectors and Nasonov pheromones then this book is worth an exploration.

My wife was the first to give a read. I can’t wait for her to put it down so I get a turn.

This book was recommended to me, I was a bit skeptical when I read the book description but it has been the best book I've read about honey bee ecology to date! Captivating!!!

A great gift for beekeepers or bee enthusiasts. Learn how about the "hive mind".

I love this book. It is hard to put down.

This is a wonderful book! It's like reading a story while learning everything there is to know about honeybees. Would highly recommend!!

I am a scientist by nature and trade, though I am a geologist with no level of expertise or knowledge in regards to insects. After hearing another story about colony collapse disorder on NPR, I researched the available books on honeybees at Amazon (was surprise at how few there are) and settled on Dr. Seeley's book. Great read! I found the structure of the book well thought out, each chapter leading into subsequent chapters. Each chapter also dealt with a discrete topic and flushed out the details thoroughly. Also - I enjoyed the fact that his writing style was easily accessible for the laymen. Some books of this ilk get caught in up what level of jargon or detail to use, but Dr. Seeley found a very reasonable position on this. Being an analytical type person, I really enjoyed how each theory was tested and described. The reader will see for example the criteria bees use for siting new hives, how they test some of those criteria, and of course the main topic - how the scouts tell the colony about their searches for new homes and then how the colony reaches a consensus amongst the various choices the scouts bring back.The reader should understand that this is not an all-encompassing book on bees, there is not much in here on hive construction or life cycles or how foragers do their thing. But there was enough on those topics for a novice like me to understand the context of what Dr. Seeley was writing about. At the end, I was not entirely convinced of using the bees "democratic" style in real life human situations. But it was good that Dr. Seeley gave real anecdotal examples from his university meetings and from New England town hall meetings to discuss it - other authors may have simply made the theoretical premise and left it at that.I look forward to reading his other book - Wisdom of the Hive - to read up on the foragers. Just wish the price would come down some! We get spoiled on the $5-$10 cheap paperbacks and are lamentably surprised at the price of niche scientific books. But Dr. Seeley does a great job here.

A must read for beekeepers or anyone managing others. We can learn a lot from bees. Fascinating how they consistently make the best decision on where to build new homes without any leadership. The queens role is as a passive observer. Bees make decisions similar to the New England Town Meeting process.Well written. My nephew is a beekeeper and recommended I read it (the only thing I have to do with bees is put honey on toast!). Wish I'd read this before I retired as a business manager. I realize now some the mistakes I'd made directing others and would have been a better leader if I had lead less. Read the book and you'll see what I mean!

I had a huge Bees nest in our house siding (Well on investigation it was under the floor of small bedroom).One of Ontarios top BeeKeepers came to remove it. When he lifted a 2 foot square of the floor - We(HE) found hewas confronted with a nest 10 times the size. IT WAS Amazing. The experience I am trying to write about. But I Purchasedthis book in the next couple of days and it really explains how intricate Nature is (and really how we humans are related to these Incredible insects and how very important to Our Human existence. The Author(s) are part of, if not, top of the of theWorlds Bee Keepers. There is a LOT to learn - but is better than science fiction. It is LIFE fact!Oh! Just a Rider note. We had around 2 million Bees, the Bee Keeper got stung through his suit many times over the three day event. I got stung 6 times. He saved the Queen and has two new Magnificent colonies in his Apiary. I have 275lb ofincredible honey which is up to 38 years old.This Book explains it

I rather suspect that the author had two aims while writing this book. It is not only a great book about our insect companions on the planet, and for those of us who love the bees it is a magnificent read, but rather like others before him, such as Bernard Mandeville, he has a second agenda. He reminds us that we humans are a mass of cells all collaborating to make us the person that we are. The word "democracy" in the title ought to be a hint. A bee colony is a single unit in which many thousands of 'individuals' work in collaboration to achieve an end - the survival of their colony.Many years ago a book "Getting to Yes" described a method of negotiation in which two 'sides' collaborate to reach a defined outcome. The system was known as the 'Harvard negotiation strategy'.Essentially, Seely shows us how a decision to move to a new location is reached by the colony of bees in a 'rational' decision making process. If only human 'democracy' was as simple.

If you happen to have read the lives of bees by the author, a substantial part of the material might look repetetive. Nevertheless, a good read.

Fascinating, well written book. It is not only a description of the author's vast knowledge about bees, which in itself would be worth reading the book. But even more importantly, Seeley also provides detailed insight into the scientific process: an infinite loop of arising curiosity, formulating questions, coming up with hypotheses, carefully designing experiments, and analyzing successes and failures.Many of the questions investigated in the book struck me as so simple, yet they never occurred to me before, and are far from straightforward to answer. How is it possible, that a single bee scout is able to accurately measure the size of a prospective home for the colony? How can the colony together achieve goals that are impossible for individual bees? The author sets the scene for such questions gradually and progresses in a careful, detailed, and logical manner. He also does not give the answers right away, which keeps the reader interested throughout the book.

Admittedly, this book requires the reader to have some background information about insect societies in places, but even for the beginner, this book is highly readable, offering as it does not only the scientific findings gleaned, but also describing the problems and difficulties involved in obtaining the information, some of them quite comical (for example bees selecting a stove pipe as the site of their new colony rather than a bee box only a few metres further on). Seeley manages to combine the personal with scientfic analysis that makes the reader want to stick with the book to the very last page.In addition, he does not forget to mention the other scientists who were also involved in research and the discoveries they made, on which his own work is based.Finally, this book may well have the reader look at bees in a much different way, not only as producers of honey, but as organisms which still offer many discoveries in future.