Honeybee Ecology: A Study of Adaptation in Social Life

For many years, research on the social life of bees focused mainly on the physiological processes underlying their social system rather than on the ecological factors that have shaped their societies. Thomas Seeley's landmark book unites both approaches, emphasizing ecological studies of the social behavior of bees while offering new perspectives on their behavior and communication.

It covers a wide range of topics, from the adaptability of worker sterility and the economics of nest construction to food foraging in information centers, individual selection versus colony-level selection, the evolution of sex ratio, colony thermoregulation, the evolution of colony defense, and the adaptive radiation in colony design. Bee Ecology presents bees as a model system for investigating advanced social life among insects from an evolutionary perspective.

Highlighted Features:

• Analyzes the social life of bees from an ecological and evolutionary perspective.
• Explores communication and collective behavior in colonies.
• Includes detailed studies on the organization and adaptation of bees.
• Written by Thomas Seeley, an expert in bee biology.