Bombi Natura

Welcome with a couple of recommendations

I would like to open our blog with two books published this year, each focusing on one of two of the most visible groups of pollinating insects, the bees and the hoverflies.

The first of these is "Solitary Bees" by Ted Benton and Nick Owens, a 598-page volume on the ecology of solitary bees in the UK published by William Collins. The book takes a thorough and comprehensive look at the natural history of solitary bees, covering topics such as reproduction and life history, the varying degrees of subsociality and, in the case of bumblebees, full sociality, as well as the relationships between flowers and bees, between bees and their parasites and, of course, the crucial aspect of solitary bee conservation, in this case in the UK.

The book makes use of numerous examples and case studies in its narrative, with a large number of colour photographs and schematic illustrations, diagrams and informative tables. Although the main focus of the book is on ecology and natural history, or the "how" and "why" of the life of bees in their environment, it will familiarise the reader with a number of genera and even some of the species present in the UK. For the reader focused on Iberian fauna, the book fully fulfils its purpose as a more than adequate introduction to the fascinating life of these animals.

Finally, the layout and physical quality of the book is fully satisfactory, so I can only recommend it highly as a reference work on its subject, and a highly topical one at that.

The second book I would like to mention is totally different, both in its subject matter and in its approach to it. It is "Hoverflies of Britain and North-West Europe: A Photographic guide" by Sander Bot and Frank Van de Meutter, a book published by Bloomsbury Naturalist.

In most of its 400 pages we find descriptive sheets of each and every one of the species of syrphids in the study area, accompanied by high quality photos of complete individuals of each species as well as the specific details necessary for their identification. Of course, these are not natural photographs but collection specimens, although the colours and appearance of the animals are excellent for the book's purpose. Of course, at the beginning there is a species identification key with the necessary explanation of the morphological terms in use.

I had been waiting for the English edition of this book, originally published in Dutch, for some time, and now that I finally have it at hand I have to make another clearly positive recommendation. Unfortunately, the book will be of considerably less use outside northern Europe, but for the Iberian reader it will still be a useful reference for familiarising oneself with many genera, recognising a good number of species, and having an example of what constitutes a well-done syrphid identification work on your bookshelf.

Both books are currently available at very reasonable prices through Amazon, among other possible online retailers.

Before concluding this article, I would like to mention that, of course, there are already many other books on both bee ecology and identification of syrphids, and all of them have their pros and cons compared to these two new books.

As a complement to the work of Benton and Owens I refer to the monumental "Die Wildbienen Deutschlands" by Paul Westrich, an invaluable source of information on the particularities of specific species, even more photographic than "Solitary Bees" but, of course, only available in German.

With regard to the "Hoverflies of Britain and North-West Europe", the key by M. P. van Veen, reissued in 2010, which covers the same geographical area and presents all the graphic information in the form of black and white drawings, may well be more or less obsolete from now on. Another excellent book, Stuart Ball and Roger Morris's "Hoverflies of Britain", is about to be reissued in 2024, and will no doubt follow in the footsteps of its second edition as one of the best identification guides to any animal group I have yet seen.

What are your favourite books about bees and hoverflies? Don't hesitate to let us know, and in the meantime have fun observing the behaviour of bees or trying to identify a sieving fly (although right now is not exactly the best time of year...).