With informed and passionate prose, Candace Savage invites readers to get up close and personal with the familiar yet wondrously odd bee, whose life span barely exceeds five weeks. She considers the diversity and biology of bees, including their peculiar sociosexual arrangements, their quirky relationships with flowers, and their startling mental abilities.

Guiding this exploration are audacious and ingenious scientists, from the bees’ own Nobel Laureate Karl von Frisch in the 1900s to the Honeybee Genome Sequencing Consortium of the present. This must-read for conservationists, gardeners, and nature lovers also features:

• a report on the recent catastrophic losses of the honeybee;
• opportunities for conservation of pollinators; and
• cultural sidebars that include historical illustrations and works of art spotlighting bees in myth, poetry, and other writings.

Co-published with the David Suzuki Foundation