Honeybee: The Busy Life of Apis Mellifera by Candace Fleming (review)

Even if the shelves sag with primary-grade books on the life cycle of the honeybee, make room for this exceptional offering. Oversized trim and a text artfully attuned to reading aloud work in harness together to rivet listeners as they follow Apis mellifera, nicknamed Apis throughout, as she "squirms, pushes, chews through the wax cap of her solitary cell and into … a teeming, trembling flurry." Job one is eating and strengthening her muscles. Is she ready to fly? Not yet. Every page turn brings a new task to complete as a team player in a busy hive, followed by the ever-delayed expectation, "Flying?" Not yet. There's tidying to be done, then nursing the larvae, tending the queen, building the comb, transferring food from a forager. These activities seem a bit mundane, but guard duty is something else again, especially when robber bees arrive and the battle is on. "The two grab hold of each other's legs. They curl their abdomens. They roll and grapple. Apis buzzes, bites, burrows. She is willing to give up her life to protect her nest and its honey." Eventually she does indeed fly, visiting "thirty thousand flowers … to make one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey. Her work is done." Rohmann's much larger than life oil paintings of so eventful a thirty-five-day life leave the audience momentarily bereft at the end of their intense involvement with personalized, but not anthropomorphized, Apis. New life emerging within the nest implicitly continues the story, though, and four pages of extensive back matter, including a large diagram on bee physiology, are on hand to guide further exploration.