My daughter has been asking to read about bees. She is fascinated with bugs and insects (when she can get over her fear of them). She knows that bees are important to flowers and especially for fruits and vegetables and that bees don’t really want to sting you. On one of our frequent trips to the library we picked out a few books on bees. I chose one and she chose one. This is the one she chose and quite frankly I liked it better than the one I picked at least for her age group.

Deborah Heilifman does a good job of telling us in honeybees how honey is made and the different stages a bee goes through such as worker bee, nurse bee, guard bee and forager bee. Although no pictures of actual bees are in the book, we really liked Carla Golembe’s illustrations a lot which were done using gouache on watercolor paper. I think the book does a good job of explaining the life of a honeybee from birth to collecting nectar and defending the hive from robber bees. Who knew bees stole from each other? The book also has an experiment at the end about using body language to communicate as many bee experts believe bees communicate by doing special dances. It’s a fun experiment at the end pretend to be a bee and talk about how bees use their senses compared to how humans use our senses.

I would recommend this book for anyone who has children around ages 4-8 as a great introduction to the life of bees.

Deborah Heiligman’s website is here and the Carla Golembe is here.