This A-Z book provides for beekeepers of all levels of experience a comprehensive reference work, bringing together information on honey bees and beekeeping throughout the world. Its subject matter ranges from the life and ecology of the honey bee to the management and care of these insects, and the processing and marketing of their honey. It is illustrated with photographs, drawings, and diagrams.--[taken from introduction].

How do bees communicate? What does a beekeeper do? Did you know that Napoleon loved bees? Who survived being stung by 2,443 bees? This encyclopaedic book answers all these questions and many more, imparting masses of information with a light, humorous touch, and in scorers of vibrant illustrations. Piotr Socha tracks the history of bees from the time of the dinosaurs to their current plight, examining along the way the role bees have played in history and in the rest of the natural world.

A clearly written, practical start-up guide to every aspect of establishing and maintaining a hive, written for rural people in developing countries. Beekeeping requires little, if any, financial aid and bee products have a good export market. They also provide nutrition for the hive owner. This book is easy to understand, and the text is well supported with clearly- labelled black-and-white drawings and diagrams. There are also numerous colour and black-and-white photographs.

A comprehensive review of the honeybees of Africa on a subspecies as well as by country basis. Includes an updated multivariate analysis of the subspecies based on the merger of the Ruttner database (Oberursel) and that of Hepburn & Radloff (Grahamstown) for nearly 20,000 bees. Special emphasis is placed on natural zones of hybridisation and introgression of different populations; seasonal cycles of development in different ecological-climatological zones of the continent; swarming, migration and absconding; and an analysis of the bee flora of the continent. The text is supplemented by tables containing quantitative data on all aspects of honeybee biology, and by continental and regional maps.