The first edition of this book was published in 2002, four years before the term "Colony collapse disorder" was coined to describe the widespread and growing crisis of honeybee population loss. Yet this decrease in the honeybee population has been ongoing from at least the mid-twentieth century; and as we approach the third decade of the twenty-first century, with each passing year the situation becomes more dire.

Gunther Hauk does not offer a "magic bullet" solution (there is not and cannot be one), but instead provides the straightforward basis for thinking of the honeybee crisis in a...