Bee Best: 18 Buzzworthy Bee Books for Readers of All Ages
This content contains affiliate links. When you buy through these links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
If owls are the most bookish animals, then bees must be the most bookish insects, right? They are intelligent, self-sufficient, and know how to focus on the task at hand, finishing a book in a day producing honey and pollinating flowers. Plus, bees make the world go ’round, and we are nothing without them. I don’t know about you, but now I’m itching to read all the bee books I can about these magnificent creatures.
This list includes children’s literature and fiction books geared toward teen and adult bee lovers, but bee lovers of all ages can probably enjoy any book listed below. Although this roundup of bee books may feel like it has everything a bee lover could desire, one thing this list lacks is books written by authors of color. So…this is an official call to publishers to give us bee stories by authors of color!! On a more positive note, the majority of the books are written by women! Now, on to the bees…
This picture book highlights the plight of the bee while offering a message of hope. A young girl befriends a honeybee that takes her on an eye-opening journey where she learns of the importance of bees within the natural world. Bee & Me also includes plenty of facts at the end for young eager bee-loving minds!
Buzz is a spunky bumblebee who loves to fly, but stops flying when she comes across some terrible news in a newspaper on a park bench declaring that bees can’t fly. What will it take for Buzz to find the courage to fly again? Buzz is the perfect picture book for a young reader who loves a story with a good message starring a bee.
The bee in this story learns the very valuable lesson that it is possible to have too much of a good thing. Being both selfish and greedy, this bee spends the day slurping all the nectar and pollen. As he feasts on flower after flower, he also keeps growing until he is unable to fly home.
In the year of 2036, honeybees are nearly extinct and the world’s crops are disappearing. Melissa’s origami honeybees may be the key to saving them. Set in the present and the past, on a small island off the coast of Crete and in Texas Hill Country, this YA novel shows that young people can overcome adversity by realizing the strength within themselves.
Lily Owens lives with her abusive father and their maid Rosaleen, who acts as a surrogate mother to Lily. After Rosaleen is arrested, Lily helps her escape, and they decide to leave for Tiburon where Lily is introduced to the world of beekeeping and honey making from a trio of eccentric sisters.
nightmare? dream? experience when he expects to switch bodies with fellow classmate Barry, but is instead turned into a bee.
It’s the last day of seventh grade. While her classmates are celebrating, Zinnia is in the vice principal’s office serving detention for yarn-bombing a statue of the school mascot. When she rushes home to vent to her older brother and best friend, Adam, she discovers he’s left home with no explanation. To make matters worse, a colony of honeybees has mistaken her hair for a hive.
This original poetry collection is inspired by a beekeeping journal that follows a bee colony for one year. Live the cycle of life and death of nature through the eyes of a veiled observer with unusual intimacy full of wonder and revelation.
This The Handmaid’s Tale meets The Hunger Games debut makes one Rioter’s list of top books about bees. Flora 717 is a sanitation bee born into society’s lowest class. She cleans her orchard hive and lives to serve the Queen. However, Flora has talents that are not typical of her kind, and her instinct to serve is overshadowed by an overwhelming and forbidden desire.
The small Mexican town of Linares is forever changed when Nana Reja finds an abandoned baby under a bridge. Simonopio is disfigured and covered in a blanket of bees, but Francisco and Beatriz Morales happily adopt him. As Simonopio grows, his uncanny gift of visions and his protective swarm of bees become a cause of wonder to the Morales family.
