Bee Dance

In Bee Dance, follow a foraging honeybee as she searches for food and returns to the hive to share the news in a honeybee dance! A honeybee searches for nectar, then returns to the hive to tell the other bees. She does a waggle dance, moving in a special figure-eight pattern to share the location of the foodsource with her hivemates. With vivid and active images, Rick Chrustowski brings these amazing bees to life!

“A triumph of science writing, a well crafted, deeply researched story of politics, ethics, and the fascinating lives of humans and bees.” —Jonathan Eig, New York Times–bestselling author We think of bees as being among the busiest workers in the garden, admiring them for their productivity. But amid their buzzing, they are also great communicators—and unusual dancers. As Karl von Frisch (1886–1982) discovered during World War II, bees communicate the location of food sources to each other through complex circle and waggle dances. As Tania Munz shows in this exploration of von Frisch’s life and research, this important discovery came amid the tense circumstances of the Third Reich. The Dancing Bees draws on previously unexplored archival sources in order to reveal von Frisch’s full story, including how the Nazi government in 1940 determined that he was one-quarter Jewish, revoked his teaching privileges, and sought to prevent him from working altogether until circumstances intervened. In the 1940s, bee populations throughout Europe were facing the devastating effects of a plague (just as they are today), and because the bees were essential to the pollination of crops, von Frisch’s research was deemed critical to maintaining the food supply of a nation at war. The bees, as von Frisch put it years later, saved his life. Munz not only explores von Frisch’s complicated career in the Third Reich, she looks closely at the legacy of his work and the later debates about the significance of the bee language and the science of animal communication. “Will surely become a classic in the literature on the history of biology in the twentieth century.” —Thomas D. Seeley, author of Honeybee Democracy

How honeybees make collective decisions—and what we can learn from this amazing democratic process Honeybees make decisions collectively—and democratically. Every year, faced with the life-or-death problem of choosing and traveling to a new home, honeybees stake everything on a process that includes collective fact-finding, vigorous debate, and consensus building. In fact, as world-renowned animal behaviorist Thomas Seeley reveals, these incredible insects have much to teach us when it comes to collective wisdom and effective decision making. A remarkable and richly illustrated account of scientific discovery, Honeybee Democracy brings together, for the first time, decades of Seeley's pioneering research to tell the amazing story of house hunting and democratic debate among the honeybees. In the late spring and early summer, as a bee colony becomes overcrowded, a third of the hive stays behind and rears a new queen, while a swarm of thousands departs with the old queen to produce a daughter colony. Seeley describes how these bees evaluate potential nest sites, advertise their discoveries to one another, engage in open deliberation, choose a final site, and navigate together—as a swirling cloud of bees—to their new home. Seeley investigates how evolution has honed the decision-making methods of honeybees over millions of years, and he considers similarities between the ways that bee swarms and primate brains process information. He concludes that what works well for bees can also work well for people: any decision-making group should consist of individuals with shared interests and mutual respect, a leader's influence should be minimized, debate should be relied upon, diverse solutions should be sought, and the majority should be counted on for a dependable resolution. An impressive exploration of animal behavior, Honeybee Democracy shows that decision-making groups, whether honeybee or human, can be smarter than even the smartest individuals in them.

Cathy Cain, like a bee to flower, gathers thought from one encounter with nature to another. She speaks from many perspectives -- as tree, as mushroom, as goddess-hero, or as herself. Sometimes playful, even mystical, Cain is deeply honest as she confronts the state of our relationship with the natural environment, with technology, and with what it means to be human. EARLY PRAISE for BEE DANCE: "Thrumming with a wise and generous curiosity, the poems in Cathy Cain's Bee Dance are bright signposts pointing a way forward through a difficult age." Annie Lighthart, author of Lantern and Iron String "A roadmap to abundance, Cathy Cain's poetry expresses the impulse to reinvent ourselves outside of cyber noise and instead define ourselves within the boundaries of sentiencies around us." Tricia Knoll, author of How I Learned to be White and Broadfork Farm

In Bee Dance, follow a foraging honeybee as she searches for food and returns to the hive to share the news in a honeybee dance! A honeybee searches for nectar, then returns to the hive to tell the other bees. She does a waggle dance, moving in a special figure-eight pattern to share the location of the foodsource with her hivemates. With vivid and active images, Rick Chrustowski brings these amazing bees to life!

Julia Bland's children's messages are popular with pastors, Sunday school teachers, and parents all across the country. That's because children love them and learn from the stories, drawings, and activity pages. Her work has been translated into Spanish and used by churches in Mexico and South America. The six lessons in this booklet, all based on Ephesians 4:32--5:2a, provide a perfect series for Vacation Bible School, a retreat, or a summer series for children. Using the busy, productive life of a honey bee as a metaphor for the life of a Christian, Bland offers these charming lessons: Bee Kind Bee Tenderhearted Bee Forgiving Bee Forgiven Bee Like Jesus The Honey Bee Dance This series of stories written by Julia Bland will catch the interest and imagination of children of all ages through the creative use of the honey bee. The children will enjoy, as I did, getting to know many facts about the honey bee as well as participating in the many art and instructional activities provided. Rev. James H. Iwig former District Superintendent Kansas West Conference United Methodist Church Julia Bland's stories are wonderful... I don't see why anybody wouldn't want to use them. Sara Coover During her 46 years as a pastor's wife, Julia Bland has taught church groups of all ages from children through senior adults. She has been active in United Methodist Women and served as district chairperson of Global Concerns as well as Publicity and Public Relations. Bland's award-winning oil, watercolor, and pen and ink artwork has appeared in private and public collections.

A beautiful hymn to nature featuring haikus, set in a quiet corner of Japan. An old lady and her granddaughter enjoy strolling through the countryside in the middle of summer. The grandmother explains to the little girl all about the wonderful world of bees, and why these beautiful insects are so important for life on our planet. Years later, the granddaughter returns with her son to the place where her grandmother's house once stood, and thanks to the dance of the bees, discovers something they'll never forget.

The honey bee waggle dance communication is a complex, unique, at times controversial, and ultimately fascinating behavior. In an elaborate figure-of-eight movement, a returning forager conveys the distance and direction from the hive to resources, usually the nectar and pollen that is their food, and it remains one of the most sophisticated, known forms of non-human communication. Not surprisingly, since its discovery more than 60 years ago by Karl von Frisch, the dance has been subject to investigations that span from basic biology through human culture and neurophysiology to landscape ecology. Here we collate recent advances in our understanding of the dance.

Karl von Frisch, in January 1946, deciphered the dancing language of honeybees. Over the previous summer, he had discovered that the bees communicate the distance and direction of food sources by means of the dances they run upon returning from foraging flights. The news of the discovery, which led later to a Nobel Prize, quickly spread across Europe and beyond. The Dancing Bees is a dual biography on the one hand of von Frisch as one of the most innovative and successful scientists of the twentieth century and, on the other, of his honeybees as experimental and especially communicating animals that play a rich role in human culture."