Bee Books for Kids
Bees are such an important part of our world and they are fascinating! This list of books about bees for kids is a great way to help children learn about these amazing creatures. The picture books about bees on this list cover just about everything you want to know about bees. In the pages of these books you will learn about how bees develop from egg to adult, how they find flowers, how they dance to communicate, how they make honey, and lots lots more! These children’s books about bees are an excellent way to start a unit study on bees. They are also great for inspiring nature study. My kids and I read all of these books and they are kid approved! I hope you enjoy the books on this book list as much as we did!
Books About Bees for Preschoolers
The bee books for kids on this part of the list are short and sweet and just right for the attention span of a preschool child. Your preschooler might be ready to enjoy some of the longer books in the other sections of the list, so feel free to explore the other selections. I hope your little ones enjoys these books about bees for preschoolers!
You Are a Honey Bee! by Laurie Ann Thompson
This adorable kids’ book is one of my favorite books about bees for preschoolers. The story makes the reader the main character, which is a worker bee, so the world of bees really comes alive for children as they imagine themselves doing all the things that worker bees do. There is a lot of great information about how honey bees take care of baby bees, maintain the hive, gather nectar, make honey, defend the hive, and more, all given in a way that makes learning natural and effortless. The illustrations are darling. I highly recommend this book for younger children, though older children will enjoy it too.
Flight of the Honey Bee by Raymond Huber
In this excellent picture book about bees, we follow Scout, a worker bee, who is in search of nectar. We fly with her and as she finds a beautiful meadow of flowers, gathers nectar and pollen, and does a bee dance to show her sister bees where to find the flowers. We learn all about how she gathers the nectar with her tongue, how she fans the nectar to dry it out and make honey, and how she navigates dangers like wasps, birds, and rain. This book is full of fascinating facts about bees and is told in an engaging way that will hold the attention of young children. This is one of the best bee books for kids that we read – highly recommend!
The King of Bees by Lester L. Laminack
This is a lovely story about a little boy who loves bees. He wants to help his bee keeping aunt take care of her bees. There is lots of great information about honey bees woven into the story in a natural way, which makes this bee book a perfect choice for younger audiences. Beautiful illustrations by Jim LaMarche (one of my very favorite illustrators!) accompany the text. This picture book is a delight to look at as well as to read.
The Bumblebee Queen by April Pulley Sayre
This story follows a bumblebee queen as she wakes up in the spring. The story follows her as she starts a new colony. It continues as the seasons change and the colony changes with them. The story is concise and simple. It gives us lots of good information about bumblebees in a way that is interesting and easy to understand. The simple text and story format make this nonfiction picture book about bees a good choice for young children preschool age and up. This is a great book for learning about bumblebees!
The Bees of Notre Dame by Meghan P. Browne
This is the true story about the bees that lived on the top of the Notre Dame cathedral and somehow miraculously survived the fire that burned the roof in 2019. The story is light on information about bees, but it is interesting and has a lovely lyrical text. I also really enjoyed the beautiful pictures. A worthwhile read!
Children’s Books About Bees for Kids in Kindergarten and Up
These bee books for kids are a little longer than the books above. Many preschoolers will enjoy these books as well.
Begin with a Bee by Liza Ketchum, Jacqueline Briggs Martin, and Phyllis Root
This picture book about bumblebees is full of fascinating information! It starts out by showing us a bumblebee queen, who is hibernating for the winter in a hole in the ground. It shows us how the queen lays her eggs in the spring and keeps them warm by sitting on them and shivering. She starts an entire colony of bumblebees by herself and the story shows how the colony grows and progresses and then prepares for another winter. The story is told in rhyming verse form and is very interesting and engaging. Most children’s books about bees focus mainly on honey bees, so this book is a great addition to your study of bees!
Honeybees by Deborah Heiligman
This is a fantastic picture book about honey bees! The story is a perfect introduction into the world of honeybees. There is so much great information in this book, including a detailed description of the life cycle of bees, and the development of eggs to larva to pupa; an explanation of different roles of bees including queen bee, drone, nurse bee, worker bee, guard bee, and forager bee. We learn all about how bees collect nectar, make honey, construct their hive, and even how they ward off robber bees! The illustrations are complementary and add clarity and interest to all the interesting information in the text. This is such a great children’s book about bees! Highly recommend!
If Bees Disappeared by Lily Williams
This children’s book about bees does a good job of explaining Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and how it is a real threat, not only to bees, but to the food chain, and many of the foods people love to eat. There is information in this book that I haven’t come across in many other children’s books about bees, such as an explanation of bees as superorganisms, bees as a keystone organism, and the role of bees in plant diversity. There is also a long illustrated list of many different types of bees, many of which I have never heard of. One thing I would recommend is being prepared to explain the concept of plant diversity because the term is used in the book but isn’t really explained. This is a great book for kicking off a conversation about bee conservation.
The book is rich in scientific information about bees. There is quite a bit of text – the book is about 70 pages long. This book is probably most appropriate for older children and kids who are really interested in bees and bee keepers. It is a great choice for one book that covers lots of aspects of bees and bee keeping.
Give Bees a Chance by Bethany Barton
This non-fiction picture book pretty much covers it all! It includes different bee species and what makes them unique, bee anatomy, how bees make honey, the role of bees as pollinators, and threats to bee population. The book covers these topics in a comical and conversational way in a dialogue between a bee lover and a bee skeptic. This is a fun, informative, and engaging read.
The Honey Makers by Gail Gibbons
Your little ones will be bee experts after reading this book! This is one of the more comprehensive nonfiction children’s books about bees on this list. The information is given in a concise, simple, and engaging way, which is typical of Gail Gibbons. The book covers the different types of honey bees, caring for baby bees, building and caring for the hive, pollen and nectar gathering, honey collection, bee keeping, and more!
This is an excellent book that is dense with information about bees without being too long or wordy. It might be a little long for a read-aloud to preschool children, unless they have a long attention span. I recommend breaking it up over two or three sittings if you want to share it with really young children. My three year-old stayed attentive while I read it though. It probably helped that I read it while he was eating lunch! Another hit by Gail Gibbons! One of my favorite books about bees for kids!
Honey in a Hive by Anne Rockwell
This picture book about bees is full of great information! It is written in a concise and interesting way that is easy to understand. It covers all the basics of bees – how they gather nectar and make honey, how they communicate with the bee dance, how a new bee colony is formed, how the queen bee becomes the queen, and lots more. This is a good informative book about bees from the Let’s Read and Find Out series.
Children’s Books About Bees for Kids in Second Grade (ish) and Up
These bee books for kids require just a bit longer of an attention span than the titles above. Younger children might still enjoy them though!
The Bee Book by Charlotte Milner
Author and illustrator Charlotte Milner did a great job of combining information with illustrations in this fact-packed picture book about bees. There is so much to learn in the pages of this book, and Charlotte Milner does a great job of delivering the information in a way that is easy for children to absorb. The graphics in the book are colorful and eye-catching and do a great job of illustrating the facts. Because the book is not in story form and the format does not lend well to reading aloud, I would say that this book is most suitable for a child to explore independently. This is probably my top pick for books about bees for kids to study independently. There is so much to learn in this book!
How Would You Survive as a Bee? by David Stewart
This book is full of great information. There is more detail included in the facts than most of the books on this list. It is written in an entertaining way, but it is text heavy, so this book is probably best for children with longer attention spans. I’d say this children’s book about bees is suitable for about second grade and up.
You Wouldn’t Want to Live Without Bees by Alex Woolf
The title of this picture book sounds like it is focused on what the world would be like without bees. While it does cover this, it has much more information. The book covers a lot of aspects of bees such as the parts of a bee, bee predators, different types of bees, how bees pollinate, life in the hive, how bees make honey, bee keeping, and lots more! This book is jam packed with information, is interesting to read, and fun to look at. It is a bit text heavy, so I would save this one for kids with long attention spans.
Bruno the Beekeeper: A Honey Primer by Aneta Frantiska Holasova
This is a great educational kids’ book for learning about bees, beekeeping, and processing honey. The illustrations are sweet and do a great job of illustrating the information. Some of them are a little humorous and add a fun and light-hearted touch to the story. For example, there are illustrations demonstrating the different jobs of a worker bee that show a bee sweeping, giving a baby bee a shower, feeding baby bees with a spoon, etc. There is some detailed information about the mating behavior of the queen. It mentions the sperm of the drones, which the queen saves in her sperm sac, and other such information. Preview the book to make sure it is appropriate for your child and being prepared to answer questions that may arise on this topic.
I hope you enjoyed this list of books about bees for kids! I hope that it helped you and your children in your exploration of bees. Thank you for visiting! Please come again soon!
Feel free to check out my other book lists for more great children’s books that help kids learn!
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