Honey bees carrying pollen are a familiar sight to anyone who has watched them collecting it from flowers or bringing it back to a hive. But which kinds of pollen do they use, how do they find it, and what do they use it for? Environmental pressures on all pollinating insects, including honey bees, mean that questions like these have never mattered more.
This book follows a colony of bees for a year through their pollen landscape, explaining what they do and why, and showing how the microscope reveals the beauty and variety of the different kinds of pollen they collect.
Dr Joss Bartlett is a former lecturer in ecology. He now keeps bees and collects pollen in the North Wales landscape of the book.