Bøger af Alan Wade

Around 50 years ago, Carl Sagan said: "We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology." the situation is even worse today. This is a book about misconceptions, about putting the record straight, restoring the balance. Many people I come across, including some scientists, have a somewhat peculiar idea about the meaning of the word science. They know what science is because of what they were taught during their education and what they read in the media. They associate technology and science as if they were one and the same thing. Science is not technology and technology is not thanks to science. Technology usually turns out to be the work of dedicated amateurs without scientific qualifications. The book explores the history of many modern technologies, together with a parallel history of science, specifically, it's contribution to technology. The conclusion is somewhat surprising, if only for its lack of academic scientific input. There is evidence that academic science has, on occasions, deliberately delayed, pseudo-debunked or even killed-off new technologies and that the trend continues unabated.

Alan Wade is a research scientist and has kept bees for well over forty years. In Highways and Byways of Beekeeping he ventures down some of the many back roads beekeepers have taken. He explores the limits of our knowledge and understanding of honey bees while introducing us to some of the lost arts of beekeeping practice. Highways and Byways also explores the world of bees not amenable to being kept in hives.Highways focuses on the overarching life cycle of bees: the queen in the hive and the colony mission to reproductively swarm, elements of bee proclivity that the beekeeper needs to master. It then segues to hive management and hive construction practices that have enhanced their keep.Byways courses a broader view of what we know about the twelve or so species of honey bee and their many opportunistic foes. It also sketches the contributions of lesser known but exemplary beekeepers who have so fundamentally influenced the way Alan keeps bees.Highways and Byways of Beekeeping is a discursive take on the social life of bees and the way we interact with them. It calls for progressive beekeeping practice while avoiding a prescriptive approach to setting up and operating bee hives. Highways and Byways scopes the biology of honey bees and the very remarkable ways that beekeepers have kept them.