This book is a concise account of the honeybees, the most important group of pollinators that have profoundly shaped the planet for the past 110 million years. It is rich with interesting and humbling facts: bees can count, they can vote, and honey has potent medicinal properties, able to work as an anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, anti-fungal, antioxidant, even an antiseptic. The fate of the bees, whose numbers have been beleaguered most recently by colony collapse disorder, lies firmly in the hands of humankind.