The Buzz on Bees

COUNTRY BEES, CITY BEES

	In Laurie Krebs’s catchy rhyming picture book The Beeman (Barefoot Books, 2008), a little boy describes the work of his grandfather, the town beekeeper. (“Here is the queen bee/Who does her job well/and lays tiny eggs/in a six-sided cell.”) For ages 4-7.
	Patricia Polacco’s The Bee Tree (Puffin, 1998) is a clever cumulative tale in which Mary Ellen and her Grampa search through the Michigan woods for a bee tree filled with honey. (There’s also a nice lesson at the end about the benefits of reading.) For ages 4-8.
	Lela Nargi’s The Honeybee Man (Schwartz & Wade, 2011) is the picture-book story of Fred, who keeps beehives on the rooftop of his apartment building in Brooklyn. Readers learn about the busy life inside the hive, the process of foraging for nectar, honey-making and honey harvest, and end with a neighborhood honey feast. For ages 4-8.
	The theme of Maggie de Vries’s Big City Bees (Greystone Books, 2013) is pollination. Sophie and Matthew have planted pumpkins in their city garden – but there’s no chance of pumpkins if the blossoms aren’t pollinated by bees. Are there bees in the city? And will the bees find their pumpkin patch in time? For ages 5-8.
	Brian McCallum and Alison Benjamin, Bees in the City (Guardian Books, 2011) is an urban beekeeper’s handbook, with accounts of beekeeping projects by schools, businesses, and communities, and how-tos for city environments.

 MYSTERIES WITH BEES

In Gertrude Chandler Warner’s The Honeybee Mystery (Albert Whitman & Company, 2000) – one of the Boxcar Children series – the four Alden children and their grandfather head to the Sherman farm for honey – only to find that there’s no honey to be had. Something is wrong with the bees. Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny learn about bees and beekeeping, while solving the mystery (and saving the farm). For ages 7-10.

The heroine of Laurie R. King’s The Beekeeper’s Apprentice (Picador, 2007), set in 1915, is orphaned teenage heiress Mary Russell, bright, gawky, and unhappily living with her guardian, a nasty aunt. Then, out for a walk, she meets the elderly Sherlock Holmes, now retired and devoting himself to the study of bees. Impressed by Mary’s sharp wits, he decides to tutor her in investigative techniques. In this, the first of a series, Mary and Holmes tackle a mystery that involves a kidnapping, a master criminal, and a threat to both their lives. For teenagers and adults.

BEE MOVIE

In the animated Bee Movie (Dreamworks, 2007), bee Barry B. Benson (voiced by Jerry Seinfeld)  – recently graduated from college – is discouraged by his sole job option: making honey. Off he goes to New York, where he becomes friends with a florist named Vanessa – and discovers that humans eat honey. Outraged, he decides to sue the human race.  Rated PG.