Saving Our Native Bees: A Look Into North America's Endangered Pollinators and the Fight to Protect Them

Orangefrog: Everyone should read this book. This book gives you a clear idea of how the bees are so important and why we should be seriously doing our part to help them. I learned a lot about bees!! I have a much bigger respect for all our pollinators.

United States on Oct 20, 2022

Kate: "Our Native Bees"
(North America's Endangered Pollenators And The Fight To Save Them)🐝

By: Paige Embry

This book is genuinely one gardeners passion to another. It contains plant and insect humor that only us gardening nerds would chuckle at and memorable experiences that only a lover of nature would understand the value of. The pictures and drawings are nicely done and well explained. The book is not so much for bee identification, rather a biography on the unsung heroes of the bee world. Some might find the tile misleading since the book often refers to the imported Honey Bee. Paige explains the importance of this, "Yet I can't leave the honey bees out. They may have come from Europe, but they've been here long enough to get their naturalization papers, and they work awfully hard to keep us fed. Plus, this whole book began because of what they can't do. So before I delve into the world of of our native bees, I need to talk about the honey bees....."
For me personally, this settled any issue at the mention of honey bees. Did you know that we have native bees smaller then a grain of rice? Or that honey bees can't pollinate a tomato plant? Or what organic...

United States on Aug 02, 2022

readsalot: Many wonderful pictures of the many types of bees, their nests, and flowers. Symbiosis is an evolutionary magnet where two lifeforms find each other and diversify. All flowering plants came about trying to attract other species as partners to more effectively transact sex. Another touching book is "Made for Each Other: A Symbiosis of Birds and Pines" by Ronald Lanner

United States on Sep 04, 2021

Ricardo Anguiano: Es un libro hermoso con fotografías excelentes e información muy interesante.

Mexico on May 14, 2019

from rain city...: Our Native Bees is a fantastic read and an eye-opener. The next time you look at a busy patch of flowers in bloom, take a few minutes (or more) and watch its visitors very closely. The eye-catching bumbles and familiar honeybees are accompanied by bees of many sizes and colors, from metallic blue to midnight black to bright emerald green, and the visitors vary by the day and by the hour. It's a diversity that's always been there, right under our noses, if only we'd stop for a closer look.

But this is not an identification book, though it does detail some fascinating representative species. This is a story, the story of all our bees, and we're right in the middle of it - changing their world, watching entire species spread and adapt, or like the elusive Franklin, quietly disappear.

Paige Embry, in the midst of her wonder, reminds us that the little bees matter. We can't stand by while they fade away. Read her book, and fall in love with a diversity of bees.

United States on May 24, 2018

Marzie: My fascination with bees dates back to my childhood. My mother's family were gardeners and my mother lavished special garden-love on pollinators. Thus, I was lucky to have seen a variety of bees that were not the common honeybee from an early age. My favorites were the leafcutter bees, neatly excising circles from rose leaves, flying away laden with their prizes. I could spend hours watching bees zoom around our garden, getting steadily more loaded with pollen. I remember declaring at age eleven that I wanted to have my own beehive (scoffed at by my father due to my bee sting allergy issues) but it wasn't until much later that I realized most of my favorite bees were actually solitary ones. I was lucky to have seen a variety of native bees that were not the common honeybee. But sadly in recent years they've been harder to find.

In the past decade we've also seen conflicting reasons given for the sudden disappearance or die-off of millions of honeybees that we need to pollinate our country's food crops. Actual causality (pesticides, viruses, parasites, cell phones, global warming) has been confusing, contradictory and has often been minimized. What has become clear is that...

United States on Mar 17, 2018