Plant some Flowers for Your Pollinators!

 

My Pollinator Garden: How I Plant for Bees, Butterflies, Beetles, and More (Books for a Better Earth) 

by Jordan Zwetchkenbaum; illus. by Kate Cosgrove 

40 pages; ages 3-6 

‎Holiday House, 2025

theme: garden, pollinators, ecology

My garden is full of flowers. I like the pretty colors. I like that they smell good.

Those lovely flower smells attract animals that take pollen from one plant to another, so the flowers can make seeds. And those animals, from bees to birds, butterflies to bats, are called pollinators.  Spread by spread readers learn how flowers attract pollinators and how different pollinators carry the pollen. At the same time, we are introduced to a diversity of native bees, butterflies, moths, hummingbirds and bats, flies, beetles, and wasps.

What I like about this book: It’s fun to look at the different pollinators and flowers on each page. There are short-tongued bees and long-tongued bees. Some bees shake the flowers to release the pollen. There’s a fun fact about each of the featured pollinators: what colors they see; whether they fly during the day or night; what attracts them to a particular flower. Back matter includes and author’s note, how to plant for pollinators, a short glossary, sources, and an index to pollinators and their plants.

Beyond the Books: 

Plant some pollinator flowers that are native to your region. You can find a list of plants for your region here at XERCES. If you don’t have a large space for a pollinator garden, plant a way station. A way station flower spot could be as big as the area inside a hula hoop or a few pots on the balcony.

Make sure to have a watering spot for your pollinators. I use a shallow dish with rocks in it. The rocks serve as landing islands once I pour in water. Make sure you keep it filled, especially on hot and sunny days. 

Today we’re joining Perfect Picture Book Friday. It’s a wonderful gathering where bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's website. Review copy provided by the publisher.

Keeping Count of Pollinators

 

The Great Pollinator Count (Community Science Counts!) 

by Susan Edwards Richmond; illus. by Stephanie Fizer Coleman 

32 pages; ages 4-8

Margaret Quinlin Books/Peachtree, 2025

One of the things I do every summer is count pollinators for the Great Sunflower Project, a community science project that I’ve been participating in since … oh, my - 2009! So I was really, really looking forward to Susan Richmond’s newest book about pollinator counts, and she doesn’t disappoint.

Mellie and her friends are part of a science club and they’re planning to count pollinators. The science club advisor, aptly named Ms. Bombus (awesome nod to buzzy sounds and bumblebees!) pairs Mellie with a kid who loves dinosaurs and hates stinging insects. As they count, readers are introduced to honeybees and small bees, carpenter bees and bumblebees, flies and wasps and even a hummingbird moth. Back matter highlights the insects in the book and lists the flowers in the school’s pollinator garden.

Back around Earth Day, Susan joined a bunch of us for “The Fifth Annual GROG Arthropod Roundtable” where we chatted about bugs we love (and those we don’t). She talked a bit about why she wrote The Great Pollinator Count.

“Young children are eager to explore their environment and are natural scientists,” she said, adding that many children (and adults) are afraid of bees and wasps. While respect and caution are a healthy response towards stinging insects, Susan wanted folks to appreciate all pollinators, not just the butterflies. A perfect reason for writing a book … but what’s the hook?

“When I learned that Georgia conducted an annual insect pollinator census, which includes schoolchildren, I knew this would be my gateway!” What better than a pollinator count! Pollinator counts are becoming more common, and what began as a Georgia community science project, The Great Southeast Pollinator Census has now expanded to include four more states: North and South Carolina, Florida, and Alabama. 

“May this notion of promoting a healthy pollinator population continue to grow!” Susan says.     

Pollinator Week Activity: visit a flowery meadow or a garden and count the pollinators you see in 10 minutes.

Susan is a member of #STEAMTeam2025. You can find out more about her at her website at www.susanedwardsrichmond.com  

Explore Outdoors ~ local pollinators

 This is Pollinator Week!  Pollinators, like people, come in all shapes and sizes. Those visiting my garden include bumblebees, carpenter bees, sweat bees and tons of other bees I don't have names for (yet), syrphid flies and other flies, wasps - from bald-faced hornets to paper wasps to tiny wasps, butterflies, skippers, hummingbird moths, beetles, and hummingbirds. I'm sure I've left some out. 

 

Here are a few  of the pollinators visiting my garden and the "weeds" along the road.

Who do you see pollinating your flowers?

 

 

Pollinators are Very Buzzy!

 

The Buzz on Wild Bees: The Little-Known Pollinators that Keep Our Planet Humming 

by Kira Vermond; illust. by June Steube

40 pages; ages 7-10

‎ Owlkids, 2025  

Do you know what bees look like? It’s OK if you don’t. There are more than 20,000 different species of bees on our planet, and most people can only identify a honeybee. This book introduces different kinds of wild bees: leafcutters, oil-collecting bees, cellophane bees, sweat bees and vulture bees and even bees that scrape the fuzz off plants and rolls it up like fluffy wool. It also shows the sorts of places wild bees live, and discusses why they’re so important to the other plants and animals in the environment (including humans).

But … wild bees are in danger and need our help. So this book shares a bunch of ways we can help them thrive, from planting native flowers to ditching pesticides. 

Pollinator Week Activity: Create a wild patch for wild bees! Get permission to let part of your yard go wild and weedy for a month (or the summer!). All you need to do is make sure no one mows that patch. Document the flowers and wild bees that you see in your wild flower patch. Ways to document: draw, paint, photograph, write notes about, write haiku or poetry.  

Welcome to Pollinator Week!

I’m celebrating pollinators all week with books and activities. Pollinators come in all shapes and sizes, from teensy bees to big flappy bats. One thing a lot of them have in common is wings, so I’m starting the week off with…

Wonder Wings: Guess Who’s Flying 

by Rebecca E. Hirsch; illus. by Sally Soweol Han 

40 pages; ages 4-8

‎Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2025   

Wings can soar and wings can skim…

Rhyming clues ask readers to guess whose wings these are. For example: wings that buzz and pollinate – and fly back to a hollow tree. Or what about wings that make a thrumming sound, that beat so fast all you can see is a blur? What about colorful wings that drift and float? Or wings that swoop through twilight sky?

Pollinator Week Activity: Make some wearable wings using recycled cardboard and markers, colored paper, and yarn or twine to attach them to your back. This video from the Smithsonian shows one way you can do it.

Pollinators at Work

 

Explore Outdoors ~ Bees are Still Busy

Summer is winding down, and everyone - trees, flowers, animals - is getting ready for fall. The roadsides are filled with yellow and purple flowers, goldenrods and asters, with a few bright orange jewelweed blooms tucked here and there. Berries are ripening and leaving purple splots on the road where they fall.

The bumblebees are busy, too, out slurping nectar and getting pollen all over their legs and faces. Which is great for these late-bloomers that will be going to seed in a couple weeks.

This week, take a few moments to watch the bees - and enjoy the late summer blooms.

• what color are most of the flowers growing along your roadsides?
• what kinds of bees do you see?
• how is the landscape changing as summer comes to a close?
  

Explore Outdoors ~ Contrasting colors

One of the things that attracts me to gardens is color. Bees are attracted by color, too! They appreciate yellow and orange and blue and purple flowers. So whenever I walk by a garden, I take a peek at who's visiting the blossoms. This time I was rewarded with a contrast in colors: the bright green of the bee against the brilliant purple of the coneflower.

 

 

This week as you walk by gardens, look for contrasting colors. It might be a brilliant pink flower against bright green leaves. It might be tiny black bees on white daisy blossoms. Or it might be colorful bees - or butterflies - and their blooms.

Explore Outdoors ~ Nomad Bees

Earlier this month I was watching the bees in my garden and saw this one collecting nectar from chive flowers. At first glance it looks like a wasp: thin waist, not very hairy, brightly colored, not collecting pollen. But it’s not a wasp; it’s a nomad bee (Nomada). Any other Wednesday I’d be sending you off on a 5-minute field trip, but I wanted to know how to tell the difference between nomad bees and wasps. 

So I asked entomologist and writer, Roberta Gibson. She wrote the very fun book, How to Build an Insect 

Me: So how do we tell the difference between nomad bees and wasps?

Roberta: There are a few clues, including their unique behavior. They are called nomad bees because they roam around close to the ground, searching for mining bee nests. Also, nomad bees have relatively small mandibles since they only use them to drink nectar and to hold onto flowers while sleeping. Many wasps have much larger mandibles that they use for catching caterpillars or spiders. Finally, if you have access to a powerful microscope, all bees have at least a few hairs with many side branches (also called plumose). Wasps have simple, straight hairs. 

Me: Nomad bees are pretty to look at, but I hear they are sneaky thieves in the bee world.

Roberta: Yes, they steal from mining bees (Andrena sp.). Mining bees dig tunnels in the soil, then visit flowers to gather pollen and nectar. When they return to the nest, the mining bee mixes pollen and nectar together to form a ball of food (bee bread) and lays her egg on top. Her larva will eat that food, grow, pupate and eventually emerge as an adult mining bee. 

Those sneaky nomad bees find the nests of mining bees and lay their own egg on the mining bee’s bee bread. The nomad larva hatches first and kills the mining bee egg. Then it eats the mining bee’s food. 

This behavior – stealing food that another organism has caught or stored – is called cleptoparasitism (also spelled kleptoparasitism). Because the nomad bee lays its egg in the nest of another bee, people sometimes call them cuckoo bees, similar to the cuckoo birds lay their eggs in the nests of other kinds of birds.

Me: Should I be concerned about seeing nomad bees – or other cuckoo bees – in my yard?

Roberta: Probably not. Some types of mining bees are good at hiding their nests, closing up their nests, and keeping vigilant against nomad bees. Cleptoparasites only do well if their hosts (mining bees) are doing well. There are far fewer nomad bees than mining bees. If you want to help bees, the best thing to do is to plant a diverse selection of wildflowers so all bees have a good supply of pollen and nectar throughout the growing season. 

Thank you, Roberta! And I agree, planting more flowers is something we can all do. Check out Roberta's blog, Growing With Science. She has observed different kinds of cuckoo bees visiting her flowers, and posted about them here and here.

Explore Outdoors ~ Go on a Bee Walk

 One of the best ways to get to know your local pollinators is to go outside and meet them. So today let's head out and meet some bees. 

First, a bit about what bees look like. They have three body parts (head, thorax, abdomen), long slender antennae, large multi-faceted eyes, two pair of wings (that's 4 wings in all!) and, if they're female, a stinger at the end of their abdomen. 

Chances are you're familiar with your neighborhood bumble bees and honey bees, and you may have met a few shiny metallic green sweat bees. For this bee walk, take a notebook and pencil - or a camera - so you can take notes, draw pictures, or take photos of bees you see along the way.

Things to observe on your bee walk:

• how big is your bee?
• what colors does it have on its abdomen?
• what is the pattern of the colors?
• does it have longer antennae than other bees?
• is its abdomen flattish?
• what sort of sound does it make?
• what flowers does it visit?
• also note the date, time of day, and basic weather observations

If you are looking for bee guides, you can find a short North American Bee Identification Guide (free) at Pollinator Partnership. They have some state guides as well. They have a longer Beginner Bee Field Guide available for free download as well.

Happy Bee watching!

Celebrate Pollinator Week with Pie!

This week is Pollinator Week! If you like food - especially pie - you've got pollinators to thank for making them possible. Same for watermelon, pickles, and chocolate.  The birds, bats, and bugs that pollinate plants are responsible for bringing us one out of every three bites of food.

So, Three Cheers for Pollinators! And let's celebrate by making pie! It doesn’t matter what sort of pie you want – strawberry-rhubarb, peach, apple, blueberry, pumpkin – if you want pie, you need bees. So when I was writing The Pie that Molly Grew, I knew I wanted to include the important work of bees in the book.

Apples,  peaches, strawberries, blueberries – they all depend on bees to pollinate the blossoms which then ripen into yummy fruits. Pumpkins too. And yes, pumpkin is a fruit even though it when it’s baked and smooshed and slathered with butter it looks like a sweet potato. And while peach and apple and strawberry flowers have everything they need in one blossom to produce a fruit, pumpkins don’t.

When pumpkin plants flower, they produce male flowers and female flowers. The male flowers make the pollen and the female flowers, once pollinated, make the fruit. There’s a problem, though: pumpkin pollen is too heavy to be carried by the wind. So pumpkins depend on bees to move the pollen from the male flowers to the female flowers.

Fortunately there are plenty of native bees that will do that job: bumble bees, carpenter bees, squash bees, cuckoo bees, longhorned bees, and sweat bees. And you’ll even find honey bees hanging around pumpkin flowers, too!  

I'm celebrating pollinators all week, so drop by and check out pollinator patches, bee guides, and more!

The Pie That Molly Grew should hit bookstores around August 15, but you can pre-order a copy at Riverow Bookshop in historic downtown Owego, NY.

The Buzz about Bee Books

If you’re a longtime follower of my blog, you know I am passionate about bees. I spent a summer at the Rocky Mountain Biological Lab (RMBL) near Crested Butte, Colorado following - and tagging -bumble bees. So I’m ending Pollinator Week with a couple of picture books that focus on bees. 

theme: bees, mystery, nonfiction

Honeybee Rescue: A Backyard Drama

by Loree Griffin Burns; photos by Ellen Harasimowicz 

40 pages; ages 5-8

‎Charlesbridge, 2022

This is Mr. Connery, and that is his ramshackle barn… a few days ago, on the way to his vegetable garden, Mr. Connery noticed that the rickety old structure was buzzing.

When he looked inside, he discovered that honeybees had taken up residence in a corner of the barn. Now, Mr. Connery raises bees, so he knew that this was a new colony. And he wanted to save it. This book tells the story of how a honeybee rescuer removes the colony of bees from the barn and relocates them into a hive. There is mystery. There is adventure. There is a honeybee vacuum!

What I like about this book: I like how Loree Burns turned a swarm of honeybees into a tale of drama and suspense. Why are the bees in the barn? She explains swarming. How will Mr. Connery get them back into a hive? Loree introduces a beekeeper who specializes in rescuing honeybee swarms – whether they’re in a church steeple or the wall of a house or, as in this case, clinging to the rafter of a derelict barn. 

We get to see the insides of a honeybee hive and meet the queen. We see a Honeybee Sucker-upper in action! And there is a wonderful interview with the bee rescuer, plus lots of great back matter.

Not only does Loree write amazing books for kids, but she is also a scientist. So I had to ask her One Question.

Me: How is writing a book for kids like being a scientist?

Loree: I’ve begun to think about writing as being like a scientist in its iterative nature.

When I was doing bench research, I designed experiments that I hoped would help me understand how something worked. (In my case, how do cells regulate the expression of genes inside their nuclei?) Once I’d done my experiment, I usually had a bit more information about how cells achieve that regulation … but I didn’t have the whole answer. Just enough to think about how to design a new set of experiments that would expand on what I’d learned even further. And so on and so on until a story began to emerge, ever so slowly, about the ways that cells regulate their genes.

Similarly, when I’m writing, I go through a long process of incremental progression. I have an idea for a story I want to tell, and I draft it on paper. Once it’s all written out, I put it aside for a hot minute. When I’m ready, I pull it out to re-read, scouring the storytelling for sentences and paragraphs and pages that work … and also for ones that don’t. Then I revise. With each revision, as with each set of experiments, I get closer to telling the whole story in the right way. It’s all trial and error, fits and starts, bit by bit.  But eventually I get there!

One of the skills I picked up during my summer at RMBL was how to identify bees by their sounds. So I was intrigued by this book.

After the Buzz Comes the Bee: Lift-the-Flap Animal Sounds 

by Robie Rogge; illus by Rachel Isadora 

32 pages; ages 2-5

Holiday House, 2022

After the buzzzzzzzzzzzz… (lift the flap) comes the bee.

Each spread presents a sound: ribbit-ribbit, ah-ah-ah, munch-munch-munch. But you have to lift the flap to reveal who makes that sound. A frog, for sure, but ah-ah-ah? Who could that be? And what’s fun is that the inside of the jacket cover is a poster.

Bee-yond the Books:

Listen to the sounds bees make as they fly by and as they visit flowers. Write down the sounds you hear and see if you can create your own list of buzz-words for pollinators visiting your yard or neighborhood. Check out this article to learn more about why bees buzz and hear two different bees.

Go on a Pollinator Scavenger Hunt. Here's one list you can use to inspire your discovery adventure.

No Bees, No Picnics. Here are some of the foods we eat that depend on bees for pollination. How many do you eat?

Apples, apricots, avocados, beans, blackberries, blueberries, cantaloupes, cherries, cocoa, cranberries, cucumbers, grapes, lemons, limes, mangos, nectarines, peaches, pears, peppers, plums, raspberries, strawberries, tangelos, tomatoes, walnuts, and watermelons  

More books about bees:

Turn this book into a Beehive

Where Have All the Bees Gone? Pollinators in Crisis

Begin with a Bee

books about pollinators for emerging readers

The Queen Bee and Me by Gillian McDunn

and another by Loree G. Burns, Hive Detectives: Chronicle of a Honey Bee Catastrophe

Loree Griffin Burns is a member of #STEAMTeam2022. You can find out more about her at her website. 

Today we're joining Perfect Picture Book Friday, an event where bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's website. Review copies provided by the publishers.

Bugs are in Danger!

One last bug book for the month!

Bugs in Danger
by Mark Kurlansky; illus. by Jia Liu
176 pages; ages 8 - 12
Bloomsbury Children's Books, 2019

“If we care about the health of our planet, we can’t choose which animals’ lives we want to save,” writes author Mark Kurlansky. “We have to care about them all.” And that includes insects, because they play an important role in the earth’s ecology. But there’s a problem: populations of fireflies, bees, butterflies, and ladybugs have been declining.

Kurlansky divides his book into four parts. In part one, he introduces the insect world, shows how bugs fit in and highlights their diversity. He talks about the biggest threats to insects: habitat loss, invasive species, pollution, and climate change. Then he talks about how insects evolved with plants – not just bees, but butterflies, beetles, and flies. And he shares the secret of why it’s so hard to sneak up on a fly.

Part two focuses on bees. There are a lot of kinds of bees, he writes. About 25,000 bee species have been catalogued and scientists have discovered another 40,000 that have yet to be named. He takes a close look at bee life, focusing on honey bees – which were introduced into North America in 1622 by Europeans.  At that time there were somewhere near 5,000 native bee species. Unfortunately, Kurlansky doesn’t address the impact of introduced honey bees on native bees. This is a shame, because native bees pollinate many of the crops we eat.

In the third part, Kurlansky introduces beetles as pollinators and beneficial (pest-controlling) insects. Native ladybug populations are in decline even as gardeners and farmers seek alternatives to insecticides. Even fireflies are vanishing.

Part four is all about the leps: butterflies and moths. He highlights monarchs, introduces endangered species, and discusses efforts to save butterflies. In the final chapters he mentions more insects that are endangered: dragonflies, grasshoppers, stoneflies. Individual insects may be small, but their impact in ecological systems is profound. A decline in insect population affects entire food webs.

The biggest problem, by far, is the impact of humans on natural ecosystems. There are, fortunately, things everyone can do to keep the world a safe place for bugs:

1. stop squashing bugs when you see them!
2. grow flowers to attract pollinators.
3. if you have fireflies, turn off floodlights at night.
4. Stop Using Pesticides!
5. leave leaf litter and twigs on the ground beneath trees.

Thanks for dropping by today. On Monday we'll be hanging out at Marvelous Middle Grade Monday with other bloggers. It's over at Greg Pattridge's blog, Always in the Middle, so hop over to see what other people are reading. Review copy provided by the publisher.

Welcome to Pollinator Week

This week is National Pollinator Week ~ a time to celebrate pollinators and spread the word about what you can do to protect them.

Pollination happens when pollen is moved within a flower or is carried from one flower to another of the same species. It leads to fertilization which leads to apples or tomatoes or...

Here's the stuff you need to know: pollination is necessary for healthy and productive native and agricultural ecosystems.

Did you know that:

• About 75% of all flowering plant species need the help of  animals to move their heavy pollen grains from plant to plant for fertilization.
• About 1,000 of all pollinators are vertebrates such as birds, bats, and small mammals.
• Most pollinators (about 200,000 species) are beneficial insects such as flies, beetles, wasps, ants, butterflies, moths, and bees.

You can learn all about pollinators over at the Pollinator Partnership website where you can also download this cool poster.

And download fact sheets and more.

Explore Outdoors ~ Bees!

This month, Archimedes is focusing on bugs ... I mean, insects! So slip on your exploring shoes and head out to a garden - or anywhere that flowers are blooming - and spy on some bees. Just stay far enough away that you don't bother them.

 

 

Bees are a diverse group, as you can see here. When you find bees at work, remember: don't crowd them. See how many different kinds of bees you can find: 

• loud buzzing bees
• metallic bees
• tiny bees
• huge bees
• bee covered in pollen
• bee with pollen on its legs
•  bees that crawl inside flowers
•  bees that hang out on sunflowers

If you like to watch bees, think about becoming a Citizen Scientist. You can help scientists by counting pollinators for the Great Sunflower Project.

As always, if you have a camera, capture bees in photos. Or draw some pictures and share them with your friends.

What's the Buzz?

This month, Archimedes is focusing on insects of all types. Today it's one of my favorites: BEES!

Where Have All the Bees Gone? Pollinators in Crisis
by Rebecca E. Hirsch
104 pages; 12 - up
Twenty-First Century Books/Lerner, 2020

Bees are disappearing, and it’s not just honey bees. Bumble bee populations are in decline, too. For those of us who like to eat, this is a problem because bees pollinate 75 percent of the fruits, vegetables, and nuts grown in the United States – about $3 billion worth of crops each year. Plus, they pollinate plants and fruit trees that provide food for birds and other wildlife.

In this book, Rebecca E. Hirsch dives right into the pollinator crisis. Sure, there are lots of animals that pollinate plants – birds, bats, beetles, and butterflies – but bees are the most efficient. And that pollinating efficiency is important to farmers and gardeners. Some flowers, such as tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants hold onto pollen so tightly that only bumble bees can shake it loose using a high-pitched buzz.

What would gardens and orchards look like without the work of native pollinators? Hirsch describes apple orchards in Sichuan, China, where decades of pesticide use has killed off the the natural pollinators. Now orchardists have to pay people to climb ladders and hand-pollinate the blossoms.

She devotes a chapter to the research on bumble bee decline and another chapter to the problems that neonicotinoids presents to wild bees. Even at low doses, neonics are harmful because they are long-lived and mobile. Bumble bees exposed to neonics in farm settings produced fewer queens, and another type of wild bee laid fewer eggs.

Hirsch includes a chapter on bee evolution and a chapter on bee diversity, highlighting a year in the life of a bumble bee. She concludes with two chapters devoted to bee conservation and positive action people – and kids – can take: plant gardens for pollinators; engage in citizen science bee counts; and encourage organic farming and gardening. Back matter includes a list of online resources and links to citizen science projects.

You can read an interview with Rebecca here - and look for an upcoming interview in STEM Tuesday next month.

Here are some ways you can Bee active:

Get to know your local bees. Most bees are so intent on collecting pollen that they won’t notice you, so you can get close enough to get a good look. If you have a camera, click bee pics so you can identify them later. Make sure to jot down notes: Is the bee as big as your thumb? Smaller than your pinkie nail? Skinny or fat? Smooth or furry? Striped? And definitely note time of day, as some bees are early risers. 

Create a bee-friendly spot for local pollinators. The easiest way to help native bees and other pollinators is to plant flowers that provide nectar and pollen. Just as important: eliminate the use of pesticides. Here’s a quick guide to bee plants, and – surprise! – some may already be growing in your lawn (a great excuse to not mow): asters, bee balm (monarda), cornflower, cosmos, dandelions, elderberry flowers, forget-me-nots, goldenrod, hyssop, harebell, indigo (wild), joe-pye weed, jewelweed, knotweed (aka: Pennsylvania smartweed), lupine, mints, mullein, nasturtiums, oregano, purple coneflower, poppies, queen Anne’s lace, red clover, sunflowers, thistles, violets, wild mustard, ox-eye daisy, yarrow, and zinnias.

Become a Citizen Scientist. You can help scientists learn more about native bees by counting bees and other pollinators in your yard or neighborhood. Bumble Bee Watch is a collaborative effort to track and conserve bumble bees in North America. The Great Sunflower Project relies on volunteers to count the number and types of pollinators visiting plants (especially sunflowers). Learn more about pollinator conservation at the Xerces Society.

Wednesday Explorers Club ~ pollinators

While out looking for bees, I came upon this guy. Not a bee at all - look closely and you notice that it has only one pair of wings. A flower fly. Look closer, and you see another, off to the right, caught in flight.

About a half hour later, tiny bees headed out on pollen-gathering trips.

There were a couple of butterflies and a hummingbird flitting about the area, too. What sort of pollinators visit the flowers in your yard and garden? Look closely. Take a photo if you can, and then see if you can find out what kinds of butterflies, bees, wasps, or flies are visiting the flowers in your neighborhood.

Wednesday Explorers Club ~ Who's visiting dandelions?

I don't worry too much about the dandelions sprinkled over my yard. They fit in, mixed among violets, strawberries, buttercups, and hawkweeds.

Plus, dandelions provide a pollen source for a number of insects. A couple weeks ago I watched skinny black wasps, tiny green bees, and different flies visit the flowers. Sometimes I find beetles on the flowers.

Who is visiting your dandelions?

The Buzz on Bee Books

Spring is here. Trees are flowering and dandelions are blooming, providing pollen for the native bees and honey bees. So this week I'm focusing on bees. And drop by on Sunday for Earth Day!

theme: bees, nature, environment

Turn this Book into a Beehive!
by Lynn Brunelle; illus. by Anna-Maria Jung
192 pages; ages 8-12
Workman Publishing, 2018

Bees... whether you love 'em or hate 'em, we need bees for our survival.

That may sound over-dramatic, but the truth is that bees are a keystone species. That means, writes author Lynn Brunelle, "plants and animals in an ecosystem depend on them for survival." That dependence includes us - because one third of the food we eat depends on bees for pollination. Think: blueberries, apples, almonds, cucumbers.

But there's a problem. Bee populations are in decline. Not just honey bees, but the hard-working native pollinators that provide millions of dollars worth of free labor to fruit farmers. If you've followed this blog for long, you know I am passionate about pollinators - especially bees. Bumble bees, carpenter bees, mason bees, leafcutter bees, digger bees...they are all too important to lose.

What I like love about this book: It introduces us to bees, pollination, and then invites us to make friends with two kinds of bees: mason bees and honey bees. It includes 20 activities and experiments that provide children and families a safe way to learn about our busy, buzzy neighbors. And BEST of ALL - you can turn the book into a beehive for native bees. Durable cover and instructions included.

The King of Bees
by Lester L. Laminack; illus. by Jim LaMarche
32 pages; ages 4-8
Peachtree Publishers, 2018

Henry and Aunt Lilla lived deep in the Lowcountry, where South Carolina reaches out and mingles with the saltwater for form tidal creeks and marshes.

Henry and his aunt live in a small house with a vegetable garden, a hen house, and beehives. He can't wait until he is old enough to help care for the bees. Henry wants his own coveralls and bee hat. He also loves the bees, their humming, and the stories Aunt Lilla tells about how the sister bees work together.

"Don't they have any brother bees?" Henry asks. Then one day the bees begin to swarm and Henry decides he'll help guide the bees to the new hive box Aunt Lilla is getting ready. Things don't go as planned and he has a closer encounter with bees than he expected.

What I like about this book: The warm, inviting illustrations that are so luscious I just want to walk into the scenes. The lyrical language and the gentle pace of the story - it is told on bee time, not fast human time. And the loving relationship between Henry and his aunt.


Buzzing Beyond the Books:

Go on a bee walk. Look at plants in yards and gardens, weeds growing along roadways... how many different kinds of bees do you see? Here's a "gallery of bees" over at the Great Sunflower Project. Just click on the photos to learn more about each kind of bee. Also check out this article at National Wildlife Federation - there's a great photo of different kinds of native bees.

Let part of your yard go wild - many of the plants we consider "weeds" provide pollen for native bees: asters, dandelions, yarrow, violets, mints, mullein. Or plant some native flowers for the bees - here's a link to get you started. You can find pollinator-friendly plant lists for your region at the Xerces Society site.

Learn more about Mason bees here.

And check out a video of honeybee waggle dance here. Then practice the steps so you can use the waggle dance to tell someone how to find the best flowers in your neighborhood.

Construct your own honeycomb of paper hexagons. All you need are some paper towel rolls. Here's how.

Today we're joining the STEM Friday roundup - and we're also joining others over at Perfect Picture Book Friday, an event in which bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's site. She keeps an ever-growing list of Perfect Picture Books. Review copies from publishers

More BUG Books!

One can never have too many books about bugs! Here are a few more from my book basket:

There's a Bug on my Book!
by John Himmelman
32 pages; ages 4-7
Dawn Publications, 2017

The best thing about summer is reading outside. That's what this book is all about: sitting on the grass with a ...
"Hey! there's a bug on my book! It's a beetle."

Okay, we can handle that. Just puff a breath of air on it to get it moving. Now, back to reading. Yikes! now there's a snake slithering across the page.

What I like about this book: it invites readers to tilt the book (so the snake slides back into the grass), to nudge a bug, to be patient while a slug meanders across the page. At the same time, John Himmelman shares observations about the insects, spiders, worms, and other .... what's that? A frog just plopped onto the page! Another thing I like about this book is the back matter. Four Pages! That's where you learn more about each critter that slithered, slimed, hopped, wiggled, and plopped across the pages of the book. There are also activities that explore how bugs move, habitat, and "design a bug". You'll find more buggy activities at the Dawn website here.

Explore My World: Honey Bees
by Jill Esbaum
32 pages; ages 3-7
National Geographic Children's Books, 2017

"Look, a honey bee!" Easy to read and understand, the text describes the life of a honey bee. There's nectar-collecting, loading up the pollen baskets (which, we learn, can be a messy job), and carting the food back home. The hive is a busy place, with so many sisters and a queen, and there's lots of work to do in hive as well. We see the bee life cycle, meet a newly emerged bee who is immediately given a task: clean your room! Back matter includes more details about honey, pollination, the waggle dance, and a maze.

You might wonder why NGK writes "honey bee" rather than "honeybee". That's because they're following the rules of entomology: a honey bee is a kind of bee, just like a house fly is a kind of fly. On the other hand, a dragonfly (one word) is not a fly at all.

Incredible Bugs (series: Animal Bests)
by John Farndon; illus. by Cristina Portolano
32 pages; ages 8-12
Hungry Tomato, 2016

This is a fun, browsable book with a table of contents so you can find what you're looking for fast (if you want). Sections include smartest bugs, communication, special senses, builders, tool users, teamwork, migration, and special skills. You'll discover maze-solving spiders, dragonfly flight instruments, and which bug can leap tall buildings in a single jump. Text is accompanied by cartoons and photos.

Drop by the STEM Friday blog for more science books and resources. Review copies from publishers.