Mating Biology of Honey Bees is one of the most thorough books on honey bees. Complex and deadly acrobatics mark the climax of a successful drone's life. Though the honey bee is one of the most broadly and extensively researched insects, the function of the drone and the activities beyond the hive have long eluded all but the most determined of researchers.

Gudrun and Nikolaus Koeniger are two such determined researchers who have, in these pages, built upon the most vital works of their predecessors and contemporaries in the context of their own studies. In a career spanning five decades, the Drs. Koeniger are continuing to push the understanding of honey bee behavior outside the hive in this new millennium.

Mating Biology of Honey Bees (Apis mellifera) represents the culmination of human understanding of the honey bee. With the assistance of Dr. Jamie D. Ellis, Associate Professor of Entomology and honey bee researcher with the University of Florida, and Dr. Lawrence John Connor, prolific writer, researcher, publisher and former commercial bee breeder, Drs. Koeniger reveal to the reader their discoveries made in isolated regions in the Alps, Drone Congregation Areas that are decades old, and across extensive plains to establish, with precise and painstaking practices, the biologic preferences and motivations of the honey bee and the extent of our ability to influence them for their benefit and our own. With nods and respect to the other vanguards of bee research, the text of this book will challenge what you think you know about these industrious insects and put you on the razor's edge of honey bee research.