A Sting in the Tale: My Adventures with Bumblebees Hardcover – April 29, 2014

A book that never ceases to fascinate your curiosity from start to finish.

A Sting in the Tale would frustrate Dragnet's Sergeant Joe Friday. Author Dave Goulson recounts more than "just the facts" about bumble bees in his engaging and highly informative book. He confesses to much formative pet-keeping and nature-collecting during his youth. He conveys the reader through revealing field studies in England, Scotland, New Zealand, and Tasmania. He introduces colorful doctoral students who collaborate with him on interesting experiments. Throughout, Goulson accessibly explains fascinating aspects of the biology and conservation of bumble bees.Dr. Goulson, a scientist and professor who has taught at universities in England and Scotland, continues a century-long British tradition of affection for bumble bees and leadership in research about them. In his first book, the scientific treatise Bumblebees: Behaviour, Ecology, and Conservation, Goulson documents the current worldwide body of research. With A Sting in the Tale, he appeals to non-scientists to understand and appreciate his favorite animal.Goulson devotes chapters to especially notable bumble bee characteristics. In "The Bumblebee Year" chapter, plant enthusiasts will see parallels between bumble bee colonies and annual plants. Analogous to a seed, a mated queen overwinters alone in loose soil or leaf litter. In the spring, she emerges, finds a nest site, lays a first batch of eggs, and provides pollen and nectar to the larvae, all of which develop into female workers. The workers take over foraging and nest duties, while the queen lays more eggs. When the worker population becomes sufficiently large, the colony produces new queens and males. After a new queen mates with a male, usually from another colony, and builds up fat reserves, she finds a place to overwinter alone, repeating the cycle. The old queen, workers, and males all die. In contrast, analogous to perennial plants, honey bee colonies use their sizable honey stores to sustain their queen and thousands of workers throughout the winter.In "The Hot-Blooded Bumblebee" chapter, Goulson summarizes the research of American Bernd Heinrich, author of Bumble Bee Economics, into endothermy. A bumble bee's thorax temperature must be at least 86 degrees Fahrenheit for the bumble bee to fly. Bumble bees raise their internal temperature by shivering their flight muscles.In the "Ketchup and Turkish Immigrants" chapter, we learn that bumble bees can "buzz pollinate", vibrating as they grasp a flower, unleashing a shower of pollen. This ability makes bumble bees exceptionally effective pollinators of nightshades, like tomatoes. Greenhouse growers now employ commercially-reared bumble bee colonies. But shipping colonies spreads disease and introduces species outside of their native ranges. Many researchers believe that commercially-reared colonies transported to the U.S. in the 1990's spread exotic diseases to wild populations, causing dramatic declines in once common U.S. species like the Western Bumble Bee (Bombus occidentalis).In 2006, Dr. Goulson founded the Bumblebee Conservation Trust in Great Britain to promote preservation and restoration of suitable habitat as well as celebration of this amazing animal. The Xerces Society supports similar goals in the U.S. for all invertebrates.While British fauna and flora predominate Goulson's account, the biology and substance apply to North America. A Sting in the Tale offers a stirring chance to listen to one of the world's leading authorities candidly describe his life's work and essentials of what we know about this wonderful creature. I heartily recommend it.

This is a quite superb book. Written by a scientist who has that rare ability not only to impart knowledge about an at times complex subject, but also to do it in an interesting and often very amusing manner. A great fan of bumblebees myself, I learned a great deal more about them, particularly those in Britain and the serious reduction in species numbers in both Britain and the United States. As a New Zealander I found the account of Goulson's sojourn in New Zealand looking for short haired bumble bees (and sampling the country's pies) quite priceless. The only criticism I have is that Goulson wrote that foxes had been introduced to New Zealand. I'm pleased to say that despite introducing a plethora of species including (but by no means restricted to) pigs, goats, deer,rabbits, stoats, weasels and ferrets, foxes by some happy mischance were not included. Never mind, with all the alien species we are now host to, what's a missing fox or two between friends? If you are interested in insects in general and Bumble Bees in particular, get a copy of this book. It will hopefully act a spur for you to do what you can to help the survival of these fascinating little beasts and you'll get a good laugh into the bargain. We need all the bumble bees we can get and authors as talented as Goulson to write about them.

I'm a dedicated gardener, and I bought this book, because I've seen many a bumblebee in my gardens and wanted to know more about them. The author is a Brit and is an academic whose life and career have been devoted to studying bumblebees in Great Britain and all over the world. I did learn many things about bumblebees that I didn't know, and the book has given me some ideas of things I can do in my garden to perhaps attract more and help them in their short lives. The book doesn't just describe and explain bumblebees. It also has chapters with bumblebee-related topics. For example, the author tells us about his purchase of a farm in France, where he rehabs the house and slowly rehabs the land so it will be a better bumblebee habitat. The author started a bumblebee conservation society in Great Britain, and there is a chapter devoted to that tale. The book is easy to read, and the author writes well. There is, of course, some bumblebee-related science, but it is not intimidating and it is easily understandable. I liked it a lot.

Amazing book about bees. Well written and easy to understand.

Reading this book was a great pleasure! It was both funny and informative. I really enjoyed reading about Goulson's childhood and his adult adventures as a bumblebee researcher. There is so much to know about bumblebees, and his is a tale of discovery. This book is meant to engage and inform, and it does both admirably. I highly recommend it! One reviewer laments the lack of bumblebee photographs in this book, but this book is in no way meant to be a field guide -- there are at least 4 field guides to bumblebees available that I know about, and perhaps others -- good ones for the United States are available for low prices, published by the USDA Pollinating Insects Lab, and another one, also very good, is available from Amazon.

My wife was excited to get this at Christmas but within seconds, she was passing the book around the family to "feel that paper". It was the kind of thin, cheap, fragile feel I see in well-used bargain bin soft-covers in foreign second-hand bookstores. To quote her, it sounds like great content but no way are we have going to let that kind of sub-paperback cost-reduced stuff into the collection. As a guy that owns a company that has put out tech products since the early 90's, I can picture exactly the kind of meeting of cubicle meat that feels they can make another 4 cents per book by sliding this sort of implementation downgrade into the build. Too much of that going on already. Not supporting it. 2 stars which includes a bone as the topic seemed to merit a careful writing effort and I think that may have occurred.

Bought this book in the hope of putting the names to the different bees in our garden. Only read the first few reviews before I ordered it which all said how great it was (I should have read the more critical ones with less stars). Only when I received it through the post did I realise that the only pictures were those on the cover and though there is a list of the Latin name for the bees in the book it doesn't refer to any pictures on the cover or give the common names. How someone who purports to know so much about bees and wants to tell people about it thinks they can do so without any pictorial guide is beyond me. Moral-Don't buy a book on the looks of the cover, or the reviews of the ones who liked it, or you will be disappointed. I know I was.

I can't imagine how anyone who chose to read this could give it less than 5*. It's delightful, personal, scientific and funny.Dave Goulson is passionate about bumblebees and wildlife in general. He conveys this in his writing, which to me is reminiscent of Gerald Durrell and Bill Bryson. He makes it personal by taking us through his developing childhood interest, through his academic studies to his project in rural France. He talks affectionately about people he's worked with, describing their quirks alongside their passion and tenacity.His insights into the way science works is fascinating, both for scientists and others. His writing is widely accessible, unlike other "popular science" writing which is often unsatisfactory to either the lay person or to fellow scientists.Don't expect to come to the end with an ability to recognise any species of bumblebee. He directs us to other resources for that. However some photos would have been good, not just of the bees but of the characters and landscapes he describes. What you can expect to come away with it a greater understanding of the importance of bumblebees and a desire to read "A Buzz in the Meadow".

It is hard to categorise this wonderful book: a mixture of autobiography, ecological field guide and experimental science account.I do not think it an exaggeration to say that Professor Dave Goulson probably knows more about bumblebees than any other living person, but he writes with an engaging blend of humility, candour and humour. Other reviewers have done an excellent job of precising the book contents which I will not repeat here. I enjoyed every page but I was eager to get to the final chapters where Goulson talks about founding the Bumblebee Conservation Trust and initiating the project to reintroduce the Short-Haired bumblebee to England.On this last aspect, it is deeply irritating that the publisher's dust-jacket editor could not be bothered to read the book thoroughly enough to comprehend that these Short-Haired bumblebees are actually being sourced from Sweden and not New Zealand. The latter, sadly, turned out to be an ecological dead-end. The myth that New Zealand is these bees' last remaining habitat is perpetuated by Amazon and other online suppliers in their descriptions of the book and it nearly deterred me from buying as I knew it was blatantly untrue.Notwithstanding this gross error however, the book should appeal to anybody who wishes to learn more about bumblebees in an entertaining and well-rounded account.

Dave outlines his enthusiasm for the natural world in an engaging and lively manner, that will strike a chord among those who have a similar passion for natural history and should catch the interest of those who would like to know more about the world around us.The chapters are nicely arranged to cover different aspects of bumblebees and each is an engaging read in it own right. You will find out a lot of about biological processes and systems in a very palatable manner, and if you wish to delve more deeply into the science, then he has written more academic works on Bumblebees. You are also able to gain some insight into the most enjoyable aspects of academic profession, as Dave's enquiring mind and focused ambitions have enabled him to gain the finance to travel the world and expose some fascinating new insights in conservation in general and bumblebees in particular. Who would ever have guessed that Bumblebees would make 'weeds' more damaging in Tasmania, or that Honey bees have the potential to reduce biodiversity ? Lots of fascinating insights, highly recommended !

Whilst the book is mainly about bees, it is written in a novel style, as you follow the story of Dave Goulson's interest in bees from a young age and the funny mistakes he makes along the way, like thinking he could dry the drenched bees in the over! Very funny and full of fascinating research which would appeal to everyone, especially environmental students or people who love bees. Highly recommended.