I got this handsome hardcover at Barnes and Noble. It's about the lives of honey bees, with many fascinating facts, some accounts of the author's more unusual hive-acquisitions (she had to remove one from inside the fuel tank of a boat!), and with a number of increasingly-challenging "find the queen bee" photos. [These last are detailed photos from actual hives, page upon page solid with bees, and I admit that I did not have a very good score! Even with the help of the solution-images at the end of the book, I often found it impossible to tell the queen from the other bees. The author suggests that young children may do better at this than adults, which wouldn't surprise me...]

I knew some things about bee keeping, swarming activity, etc., but I did learn more from this book - including the rather juicy bit about "virgin death matches", when multiple queen bees are hatched and engage in a vicious fight to the death, as with bees There Can Be Only One. [Or, well, sometimes two, but under different circumstances; apparently, when the reigning queen starts to age, the workers create a replacement, and there doesn't seem to be a death-match instinct between a virgin queen and a - well, non-virgin one. Most of the time the workers will snuff out the older queen, but not always, and it seems there are a number of situations where the old queen and the new will both work to populate the hive, for as long as the older queen survives...

I left this book in the Little Free Library inside the mall; hope someone enjoys it!

[See other recent releases in NH here.]

*** Released for the 2019 Royalty release challenge. ***

*** Released for the 2019 April Showers/May Flowers release challenge, for the clover and other flowers on the cover. ***