A Century of Honey Bee Anatomy Books

How very far we have come in the last 100 years or so. If you haven’t thought about that fact lately, compare Anatomy of the Honey Bee by R.E. Snodgrass (1910) (or Cornell University Press, 1985), – parts of which are available at Extension.org – with the ultra-modern Bee by Rose-Lynn Fisher, with a foreword by Verlyn Klinkenborg (2010, Princeton Architectural Press).

Featuring an outstanding series of scanning electron microscope photos, Bee is a visual treat. As you can see from Fisher’s examples on her website, this is a mite’s view of a honey bee where eye hairs look like forests and pollen grains resemble boulders. It is a world Snodgrass could only dream of glimpsing.

The text that accompanies the photographs is sparse, but to the point, which is direct contrast to the text-heavy Anatomy of the Honey Bee.

Anatomy of the Honey Bee, however, still remains relevant. It covers far more than just external structures, including development and internal anatomy. Carefully labelled cut-away and exploded views make identification of individual structures much easier.

In fact, these two books complement each other nicely. A serious student of honey bees will want to look at them both ways.

Bees_Collecting_Pollen_2004-08-14
Bees Collecting Pollen 2004-08-14” by Jon Sullivan – Licensed under Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Doesn’t comparing these two books make you wonder what the next 100 years will bring?

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