Bee Garden


Elke Schwarzer Haynes Publishing, 2020. 127 pages. £12.99


Bee Garden, a new book in the Haynes manual series, looks at ways we can garden to help solitary bees, bumblebees and honey bees.


The compact and well-illustrated book begins with several short and rather insubstantial chapters about how and why we should garden with bees in mind before featuring a number of more satisfying sections that focus on particular types of bee and their requirements.


Solitary species such as the hairy-footed flower bee (Anthophora plumipes), the ivy bee (Colletes hederae), the wool carder bee (Anthidium manicatum) and bumbles, including the garden bumblebee (Bombus hortorum) and the buff-tailed bumblebee (Bombus terrestris), are profiled in reasonable detail with very good photographs. A number of pages consider plants that are recommended especially for each of those bee species. Sadly, the honey bee is missed out altogether. Each plant species is given its own page with a large photograph or two (oſten featuring a bee) along with growing advice, flowering times, information about recommended cultivars and ideas for planting companions. This approach works well and the majority of the popular plants that you might consider planting for bees are included. However, because the book chooses to focus on the requirements of just a few (albeit fairly common) bees, it does feel as if there are a great many bee species whose requirements we are not learning about. An appendix with a brief description of other key bee species and their requirements would have been nice.


The second half of the book features two sections that concentrate on plants alone. ‘Hotspot Plants’ details a selection of what are considered the very best all-round plants for atracting a wide range of bees to your garden. I was glad to see that the Korean evodia or bee tree (Tetradium daniellii) receives a mention as it is a much-overlooked late source of forage for honey bees. ‘Filler Plants’ gives ideas for bee friendly plants that might occupy difficult-to-fill places such as shady corners.


This is a well-designed book that will satisfy beekeepers interested in atracting a wide range of wild bee species to their garden without necessarily wanting to learn about those bees in detail.


Richard Rickit Bee Craſt April 2020


Honey Bee Drones Specialists in the field Graham Kingham Northern Bee Books, 2019. 82 pages. £15.00


This beautifully produced book by Graham Kingham, a Devon beekeeper and microscopist, is richly illustrated and packed with drawings, photos of dissections and stereomicroscopic images of drones, the male honey bee.


Every aspect of the drone’s life is described in great detail. There are chapters on internal and external anatomy, production and development, behaviour, their role in the hive and genetics. A huge amount is packed into this most informative book.


The main role of the drone is of


course to mate with a virgin queen, and this is given full recognition by having almost 20 pages dedicated to extremely detailed explanations of the reproductive anatomy and mating behaviour. If you’ve ever struggled to fully understand the way that honey bee mating actually works, here you will find a comprehensive chapter on the mating process – some of it based on the work of Professor Jerzy Woyke. Step-by-step descriptions, accompanied by detailed drawings and photos, reveal the astonishingly complex physical processes that happen in that split second of mating. Richly illustrated with drawings from Dade’s Anatomy and Dissection of the Honey Bee, the book is also packed with photos of stereomicroscope images captured by the author.


No book on drones would be complete without a chapter on drone congregation areas (DCAs), an aspect of drone behaviour which is still rather mysterious and commonly misunderstood. Kingham acknowledges that we still have a lot to learn about DCAs but quotes some interesting research, including that by Donald F Peers that showed an impressive 16-kilometre maximum drone flight range.


There is also a chapter on honey bee genetics and in particular the role of the drone. The final chapter concentrates on some of the problems encountered within the hive – diploid drones, varroa, drone infertility, and disease transfer. All this is supported with a useful glossary of terms.


This is a useful book for any beekeeper who is interested in learning more about the oſten-ignored honey bee drone, as well as those studying for the BBKA modules and the microscopy exam. As someone who feels it is important to ‘stand up’ for drones, I am glad to see that this book has been published.


Lynne Ingram, Master Beekeeper 33


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