This book is causing quite the buzz! Flying in for inspection: Turn This Book into a Beehive! And 19 Other Experiments and Activities that Explore the Amazing World of Bees (Workman, $19.95), an indispensable guide with a removable book jacket and tear-away paper nesting tubes that turn into a home for mason bees, with each “room” providing space for 10 to 12 mason bee babies!
Honey, bees abound. Most of us are familiar with the honeybee, a keystone species revered for its supreme pollinating skills and feared for its notorious stinger . . . a damn stinger that under my dog’s collar and stung poor Oona! (I killed that damn bee . . . with relish.)
But what about the mason bee, the unsung hero of the insect world? The mason bee pollinates as many flowers in a single day as 100 honeybees, and mason bees don’t sting, making them nature’s non-aggressive super-pollinators. So, how can we help sustain the lives of these friendly buzzing bees?
Packed with 19 sensory-driven experiments and activities that offer a deeper understanding of what it’s like to be a bee, this nifty book provides an early introduction to environmentalism and offers inspiration for burgeoning conservationists. Readers can make a buzzer that replicates the noise made by a bee’s wings, trace back the ingredients and materials in their favorite foods and clothing to see just how closely mason bees influence our daily lives, and create safe sprays that will make everything from urban gardens to open yards a welcome, healthy environments for these super-pollinators.
Readers will even learn how to plant a bee-friendly garden!
The book also introduces readers to the complex social hierarchy of the honeybee world by showing how integral each player is to the beehive, from the forager scout responsible for tracking down flowers and other food sources to the esteemed queen, the largest bee in the colony responsible for laying all the eggs—about 2,000 in a single day! May we suggest that after you make a beehive, use the remaining portion of the book to kill those honey horrors?