The more we learn about bees, the more extraordinary they seem. They have five eyes. Their fertilized eggs hatch as females; unfertilized eggs become males. They beat their wings at a rate of almost 200 cycles per second, but fly at only 10 or 15 miles per hour. In the course of a lifetime, a typical worker bee will produce less than a tenth of a teaspoon of honey, yet a single hive's population can produce as much as 2 pounds of honey a day. A queen bee, in a single day, will lay her weight in eggs - as many as 1,500 in an uninterrupted 24-hour period. And to communicate with each other bees do make sounds, but mostly they dance in order to share information on the distance and direction to the nearest food source.This book provides the newcomer a first view into the extraordinary and surprisingly complex and highly organized world of bees. The book describes their evolution, and explains the differences between wild bees and honey-bees. It also sheds light on bee society, with its amazing rituals related to work, reproduction, defense of the hive, and most amazingly, communication. The author also explains the critical role that bees and beekeeping play for human society, and offers advice for those interested in raising bees themselves.Dr. Karl Weiss is an entomologist and the director of the Bavarian Institution for Beekeeping at Erlangen, Germany. He is engaged in theoretical as well as applied apicultural research. Weiss is the author of numerous scientific and popular publications on bees and is considered one of Germany's foremost authorities on apiculture.