A Swarm of Bees by Claire Caprioli, is a fact filled book covering basic information about bees. Written for children 5-7 years old and in grades kindergarten to 2nd, it focuses on honeybees and their colonial life style but notes that there are 20,000 kinds of bees. Young readers learn about the roles of different honeybees in the hive, their life cycle, food, body parts and habitat. Further information is given about honey production, the job of a bee keeper, the survival threat that bees face, and how we can help. A glossary and index conclude the work.
With a simple writing style and excellent close up photographs, the book highlights the life of honeybees in terms that young readers can grasp and enjoy. Some of the delight photographs include a worker bee feeding a larva and the inside of a hive with queen cells, brood cells and honey cells labeled. Throughout the book fun facts appear in offsets; we learn, for example, that a hive can contain up to 80,000 bees, only female bees have stingers, and a worker honeybee makes enough honey in her life time to cover only the nail of a child’s pinky. A Swarm of Bees is an excellent introduction to bees.
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Karen