WOW Review: Volume XVII, Issue 4 • Page 8 of 12 • Worlds of Words

Honeybee: The Busy Life of Apis Mellifera
Written by Candace Fleming
Illustrated by Eric Rohmann
Neal Porter Books, 2020, 40 pp (unpaged)
ISBN: 978-0823442850

Candace Fleming’s fact-filled narrative combines with Eric Rohmann’s detailed illustrations to create an outstanding and fascinating account of the life of a honeybee. The writing and illustrations provide many details about honeybees that will interest readers from first grade through middle school. This text is an example of how a seemingly simple picturebook can be packed with information that provides knowledge and appreciation for an insect that is vital to our lives. As Fleming writes in the back matter, “Most people sitting down to dinner don’t realize the important role honeybees played in preparing that meal.”

The text and illustrations start before the title page with two pages showing the emergence of a brand-new honeybee into the nest. Then each stage of that worker bee’s life is carefully described and illustrated. Readers learn that honeybees have a scientific name, Apis mellifera. This narrative is a story of one bee’s life and she is referred to as Apis for short.

Apis performs many jobs. First, she must tend to the hive’s nursery. Next, she moves on to tend to the larvae, then on to queen tending, comb building, food handling, guarding the hive, and finally on the twenty-fifth day of her life, “she leaps from the nest and … Flies!” Four sections of a fold-out page show the bee zooming out into a flower filled, colorful landscape. Readers discover how Apis searches for sweet nectar and pollinates the flowers. Then she returns to the hive where she dances to give directions to the other bees about where she found the sweet nectar.

Apis continues to gather nectar for ten days until, on the thirty-fifth day of her life, “Apis stills.” Readers learn that “She has visited thirty thousand flowers. She has collected enough nectar to make one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey. Her work is done.” However, that is not the end of the book. The last two pages echo the first two pages, showing a brand-new honeybee emerging from her solitary cell to begin a new life cycle.

Fleming explains how we can help bees recover and survive with actions and ideas for children to implement. For example, she advises readers to write to their Congresspeople and Senators to urge them to support funding for honeybee research and to spend money on habitat enhancements. Also, she offers a way that readers can support bees by seeking out local beekeepers and buying their honey.

The last pages of the book contain a section titled, “Bit More Buzz,” which offers more facts about honeybees and online resources. The author also includes a list of other books about bees. These titles could be combined with this picturebook to create a text set. Honeybee has won several awards, among them the Robert Sibert Award for the most distinguished informational book in 2021 and an NCTE Orbis Pictus Honor book. The Sibert Award Committee noted that Honeybee is “scientifically accurate and emotionally satisfying.”

Books that would pair well with Honeybee include books about this insect. Bees: A Honeyed History (Piotr Socha, 2021) includes both scientific and cultural information, describing the role bees played in earlier historical times. The King of Bees (Lester Laminack & Jim LaMarche, 2018) is a fictional story about the importance of bees and beekeeping. Other informational books by Fleming and Rohmann like Polar Bear (2022) and Giant Squid (2016) are excellent choices for children to discover more about the style and creative process of this author and illustrator. Fleming and Rohmann have collaborated on other books (Bulldozer’s Big Day, 2015; Oh, No!, 2012). Each of them has also produced a number of outstanding picture and informational books independently.

Candace Fleming is an award-winning author, known for her biographical informational books. Fleming won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award for The Family Romanov: Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia (2024) and The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary (2008). More information can be found on her website.

Eric Rohmann has been awarded both a Caldecott Award for My Friend Rabbit (2002) and a Caldecott Honor for Times Flies (1994). More information can be found on his website.

Marilyn Carpenter, Eastern Washington University

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