A Sunday Times bestseller Shortlisted for the 2013 Samuel Johnson Prize Dave Goulson has always been obsessed with wildlife from his childhood menagerie of exotic pets & dabbling in experimental taxidermy to his groundbreaking research into the mysterious ways of the bumblebee & his mission to protect our rarest bees Once commonly found in the marshes of Kent the short-haired bumblebee is now extinct in the UK but still exists in the wilds of New Zealand descended from a few queen bees shipped over in the nineteenth century A Sting in the Tale tells the story of Goulson's passionate drive to reintroduce it to its native land & contains groundbreaking research into these curious creatures history's relationship with the bumblebee the disastrous effects intensive farming has had on our bee populations & the potential dangers if we are to continue down this path