> _The_Forgotten_Pollinators_ by Stephen L. Buchmann and Gary 
> Paul Nabhan (may have) painted honeybees in a poor light.  
It's been a while since I read it, but it was a great read and I thoroughly enjoyed it.  I don't recollect honeybees as being cast in a particularly bad light.  I think they called a honey bee a honey bee (or a spade a spade).  Honey bees are not native.  But they're here, they're qu..., eh, not native, deal with it!  I don't recollect honey bees being cast as villains who have displaced native pollinators or pushed the home team out of their native turf.  If anything, my recollection of the true villain is man, who has cut up ecosystems to such a degree that the native pollinators are hard pressed to keep migration routes between starting and ending point because there are not enough fueling stations alone the way.  Another point made in the book is the concept of endangered relationships (as opposed to endangered species).  For example (and I apologize because I do not remember the species) is a flower that grows on cliffs in Hawaii that may become extinct because the pollinator that evolved along with the flower to be its sole pollinator is in major decline and in jeopardy of extinction.  Without the pollinator, the plant perishes.  My recollection is the pollinator is in decline, the plant is following the declining path, and in an attempt to save both volunteer rock climbers are repelling down the cliffs with paint brushes to make sure the plants get pollinated to keep the cycle going.  I know it's in the BEE-L archives because I wrote about it when I read the book.  Anyway, the endangered relationship is a commonly examined phenomenon throughout the book.
 
No, I don't recall honey bees being vilified in the book, I remember an inspection of the other players in the pollination game, or as the title says, the forgotten pollinators.
 
> on the committees, native pollinator people outnumber honeybee
> people.  To me, that means that we beekeepers aren't doing our job
> as well as the native pollinator folk are doing theirs.
Out finessed again!
 
Aaron Morris - thinking I've forgotten _The_Forgotten_Pollinators_!

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