"This book opens up the natural and cultural world of the bee, relating its complex role in the art, politics and social thought of human cultures, and drawing on the large body of literature consequent on man's age-old search for honey. It is noteworthy that one recent shift - the traditional image of the beehive as the home of civic virtue now demonized into one of destruction, exemplified by the swarms of killer bees in Hollywood horror films - has happened just at a time when science warms us to consider our own technologies of obstruction. With so many fascinating facts, fables and arcana from art, science, literature and apiculture, Bee offers a compelling meditation on the fortunes of nature's workaholic."--Jacket.