** watch future Linda Hall Library lectures live at new.livestream.com/lindahall ** September 8, 2016, in the Main Reading Room of the Linda Hall Library About the lecture: The bees are dying. And what normally goes unremarked comes into stark relief – humans depend on these insects for much of their food supply, and that which threatens the insects also very much threatens our species. But this isn’t the first time humans have made a concerted effort to solve the bees mysterious dying. During WWII, a bee plague devastated central European bee populations and Germany, especially, was waging a war of attrition that critically centered on food. The situation was so dire that a scientist by the name of Karl von Frisch would be able to successfully argue to keep his research position, despite having been declared one-quarter Jewish by the Nazi government. He re-trenched his work in an effort to help solve the mystery of the dying bees. And he would do some of his most important work during the period – he discovered the honeybee dance language – with funding from the Nazi Ministry of Food and Agriculture. But in the face of such dazzling insect and scientific accomplishment, the dire situation from which these findings arose is all but forgotten. It all started with the dying bees. About the speaker: Tania Munz is Vice President for Research and Scholarship at the Linda Hall Library. Previously, she was a lecturer at Northwestern University and a research scholar at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. She holds a PhD in the history of science from Princeton University. Video produced by The VideoWorks of Roeland Park, Kansas.

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