How to be a bee
Every day is a BEE-you-tea-full day. Our little bees could use your awareness and support, even if it’s just one plant you plant that attracts pollinators, the bees (and the butterflies) will be drawn to it. There are some planting suggestions in the back of How to be A BEE.
How to be A BEE (picture book for ages 5-10) written by singingsuebee and illustrated by Marie Sabatino Goodwin with the most glorious pen and ink grey wash illustrations. The end page holds a BIG surprise when the bee discovers just who he is and why he’s here! Original song to accompany this story recorded by singingsuebee.
This story is about a BEE in search of himself. It came to me before the song how children contemplate the questions about who they are, why they exist, and what they might want to discover about themselves as their days fly by. The BEE is naturally curious about all things, and every other creature he meets that is not like himself, he wants to know – what do you do, and how am I to be? He asks and he asks some more, until… he discovers what it means to be a BEE.
•Bees are precious to our food chain and we need to protect them by planting plants that help them pollinate – “pollinator pathways” we call them to support bees along their journey – so there is an educational component to this story as well that will open the discussion about how to help our Mother Earth, and its little creature the bee. This in turn help us, too.
Did you know:
•Bees communicate by dancing!
•A honey bee can fly for up to six miles, and as fast as 15 miles per hour.
•Most flowering plants – and most fruits, vegetable and nut trees - on Earth need help with pollination, so WE need bees for this.
•There are about 180,000 different plants that relate to our very food source, so the bees play a part in 1 out of every 3 bites we eat.
•The average bee visits 50-100 flowers during a pollen collection trip.
•Bees must gather nectar from two million flowers to make one pound of honey.
•Bees don’t actually have knees.
•Bees wings are so light they defy the gravity of the bees body, their left and right wings flap independently.
•Beekeeping dates back 4,500+ years.
•The honey from bees has healing, and antiseptic properties.
•The work this regional volunteer organization does is wonderful: Pollinator Pathway Northeast
•Globally here’s an organization who is active is helping to keep bees buzzing forever: Comvita Bee Rescue