I read Sue Hubbel's Book of Bees and learned a bit about bee behavior- I'll certainly need to reread if I ever get another colony. It's written in an autobiographical style, covering beekeeping over the course of a year, so captures most of the major points in starting and keeping bees, and processing honey. Ms. Hubbels methods are more geared toward commercial production, but she clearly has a naturalist's inclination.
Also read both the books on my list covering Biosphere 2. The Allen one was not impressive, but I enjoyed Poynter's book and have already posted on many of the things I gleaned from it.
I decided to read Manmade Closed Ecological Systems by Gittelson, Lisovsky, and MacElroy in lieu of Eckart's Spaceflight Life Support and Biospherics (which I have also ordered). Still reading, but so far very impressed with the depth of research covered on CELSS. Have already learned of some new efforts to look into including the European MELISSA work.
The last one on my list is Cowan's Microbiology book. I have not even procured it yet, but am excited about it. Everytime I have run into a design problem and asked myself how nature does it, I've come up with great ways to solve the problem. I'll have much more to say about biomimicry in a future post.