Brian R. Johnson

The most comprehensive and up-to-date general reference book on honey bee biology Honey bees are marvelously charismatic organisms with a long history of interaction with humans. They are vital to agriculture and serve as a model system for many basic questions in biology. This authoritative book provides an essential overview of honey bee biology, bringing established topics up to date while incorporating emerging areas of inquiry. Honey Bee Biology covers everything from molecular genetics, development, and physiology to neurobiology, behavior, and pollination biology. Placing special attention on the important role of bees as pollinators in agricultural ecosystems, it incorporates the latest findings on pesticides, parasites, and pathogens. This incisive and wide-ranging book also sheds vital light on the possible causes of colony collapse disorder and the devastating honey bee losses we are witnessing today. The study of honey bees has greatly expanded in recent years and there is more interest in these marvelous creatures than ever before. Honey Bee Biology is the first up-to-date general reference of its kind published in decades. It is a must-have resource for social insect biologists, scientifically savvy beekeepers, and any scientist interested in bees as a model system.

On April 6, 1941, German troops along with Italian, Hungarian, and Bulgarian military units invaded the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. In less than two weeks the Kingdom would be defeated, setting the stage for a bloody civil war that the occupying Axis forces desperately tried—and needed—to control. Based on years of research, this book provides a distinctive account of what happened in the relatively unknown and under-researched Yugoslavian theatre of conflict in World War II. Based on the detailed diaries of Gottfried Weber, a naïve patriotic teen from a small town in Saxony who is willingly drafted into the German Wehrmacht and sent to Yugoslavia for occupation duty. This is the story of an emerging adult struggling to keep a sense of youthful normalcy during war, balancing friendships and romance with his daily life in combat and trying to stay alive. But the book is more. Weber’s accounts are woven into the historical record, while personal interviews from his comrades and enemies that he fought against provide the reader with first-hand accounts of the horrors and humanity of common foot soldiers in WWII Yugoslavia. Combined with an extensive number of photographs, some of which were taken by Weber, the people, land, and war that the Axis and Allied fighters were exposed to is brought to life. Weber’s war-time travels are also re-traced in the 21st century to connect the past with the present, revealing that the scars and memories of WWII are still present with the peoples and land that Winston Churchill coined the soft underbelly of Europe.

The most comprehensive and up-to-date general reference book on honey bee biologyHoney bees are marvelously charismatic organisms with a long history of interaction with humans. They are vital to agriculture and serve as a model system for many basic questions in biology. This authoritative book provides an essential overview of honey bee biology, bringing established topics up to date while incorporating emerging areas of inquiry.Honey Bee Biology covers everything from molecular genetics, development, and physiology to neurobiology, behavior, and pollination biology. Placing special attention on the important role of bees as pollinators in agricultural ecosystems, it incorporates the latest findings on pesticides, parasites, and pathogens. This incisive and wide-ranging book also sheds vital light on the possible causes of colony collapse disorder and the devastating honey bee losses we are witnessing today.The study of honey bees has greatly expanded in recent years and there is more interest in these marvelous creatures than ever before. Honey Bee Biology is the first up-to-date general reference of its kind published in decades. It is a must-have resource for social insect biologists, scientifically savvy beekeepers, and any scientist interested in bees as a model system.