Field Guide to the Bees of Great Britain and Ireland By Steven Falk

 

Illustrated by Richard Lewington Hardback £50.00 Softback £35.00

 

British Wildlife Field Guide series Published by Bloomsbury

 

Pages 432 ISBN 978 1 910389 03 4

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the last few years we have seen some amazing new field guides to wet the appetite of bird watchers to try new groups of species as they travel the countryside and even in their own gardens. Bees join hoverflies, dragonflies moths and butterflies to give you a good chance of understanding what is around you. here we have 270 species presently found with 25 now extinct but new reintroductions may well reduce this list. The book is full of great pictures and drawings to help you. Habitats, predators, keys and individual write ups help you gain confidence to try your eye in this subject.  May be you could start with the commoner bumble bees and work onto the other groups. Even this year I have been shown a leaf cutter bee! Now I know there are 7 species and 1500 worldwide! Distribution maps may well be out of date by the time everyone gets into this subject and even this year I found Tree Bumblebee while watching the Bee-eaters in Cumbria bringing them in as prey well off the map as they were! Another great edition to the book case!