Brilliant Bee Books, This Time for Kids!

As you might know from recent posts, the Land Library is partnering with the Denver Botanic Gardens on a new Book Club devoted to Bees & Beekeeping. We’ve had a lot of fun looking over all of our bee books, and along the way we realized just how many wonderful books we have for kids on bees, beekeeping, and honey. Here’s more on one of our favorites!

Stephen Buchmann is a beekeeper and a professor of entomology at the University of Arizona. He is the author of two books for adults, The Forgotten Pollinators, and Letters from the Hive: An Intimate History of Bees, Honey and Humankind. Looking to the next generation of naturalists (& beekeepers!), Buchmann has written a fun new book for teens: Honey Bees: A History of Bees and Honey. Actually, this is one of those books that even an adult can greatly benefit from. In less than 200 pages Buchmann gives us an entertaining primer on bees, honey, and the centuries-old traditions of beekeeping.

For a younger audience, there’s Linda Oatman High’s Beekeepers, a lovely picture book about the gentle guidance a grandfather gives to his granddaughter. The young girl accepts the challenges of beekeeping (‘the hum of the bees’ wings grows louder and louder, and my heart races with the sound“), and in the end Grandpa knows he has trained “a fine keeper of bees“.

Doug Chayka’s illustrations have a warm honey glow, and we especially loved his depictions of the bee yard, the wooden hives, the beekeeper’s veiled, long-sleeved overalls, and all the beekeeping equipment, including the metal smoker used to calm the agitated hive.

Some of our favorite shelves at the Waterton Canyon Kids Nature Library are the ones devoted to insects. Kids seem to have an endless curiosity about the world of bugs. Over the years we have tried hard to keep pace with their natural curiosity — especially when it comes to bees! Here’s a few favorite titles from our shelves:

Brilliant Bees by Linda Glaser & Gay Holland, The Life and Times of the Honeybee by Charles Micucci.

Honey in a Hive by Anne Rockwell & S.D. Schindler, How Bees Make Honey by Louise Spilsbury, Honey Bees and Hives by Lola M. Schaefer.

The Hive Detectives: Chronicle of a Honey Bee Catastrophe by Loree Griffin Burns (part of Houghton Mifflin’s excellent series, Scientists in the Field).