The Bumblebee Queen Book

Summary:
This informational story follows the life of a bumblebee queen; beginning from the time she emerges from the spring ground. Sprinkled throughout the story of the bumblebee queen are various facts regarding bumblebees, which are usual in knowing, as each fact relates somewhat to what is currently taking place in the life of the bumblebee queen. Nonetheless, the majority of the book narrows in on following the bumblebee queen. When she leaves the spring ground, her instincts tell her to go the perfect place to build her colony. Once the ideal location is found, she goes out in search of fresh flowers to drink nectar and gather pollen. From there, she creates her honeycomb, from some of her collected pollen. It is here that she lays her eggs. Her larvae eat pollen and grow until they are old enough to spin their own cocoons. 10 days later, the queen bee chews the cocoons open to help her baby birds be born. The queen continues to lay more eggs, and her colony becomes bigger and bigger. Each of the bees in the colony takes on a special job. Some become workers, others drones, and some will even become queen bees someday.
When fall comes, the bees that took on the role as drones go around to nearby fields and sprinkle special bee perfume. This attracts the new queens to follow the scent they've laid. The new queens and the drones mate. After drinking up some nectar, the new queens have to dig down in the ground to wait for springtime to come again. As for the old queens, 'they will not see next spring, but their female offspring will, as they live out their terms as queen bees, building colonies of their own.'

Response:
I listened and watched this story unfold via e-format on tumblebooks.com, and I found it to be a very enjoyable and engaging experience. On tumblebooks, readers had to maintain an active participant in the story even though there was someone narrating it, because after each page's completion, the reader had to click over to the next page, simulating the turning of a page in a print-format book. I found this aspect to be a strong one, and found that it would be particularly useful for beginning or learning-to-readers, because they are encouraged to follow along with the narrator in reading the story, so they know when to turn the page. Of course, there existed the option to click to the next page without having to wait for the narrator to finish reading, but I still found the feature overall to be useful and effective. On another note, I really liked the animated illustrations, particularly in the very beginning when the queen bee was shown buzzing around and searching for the perfect place to build her colony. I also really liked the aspect of the story that included various bee facts that were dusted in between the actual queen bee storyline. For myself, and for older readers, I think these additional facts kept my attention and gave me more useful informational knowledge about bees. Some examples of the included factual tid-bits included: "Bumblebees rarely sting, but they will sting in defense, and will sting more than once," and, " bumblebees nest in the ground or in sheltered, mossy, grassy places." Additionally, the entire storyline as a whole that chronicled the short but important life of a queen bee was entirely factual and portrayed very realistically in the texts and illustrations. Furthermore, this book reminded me in a way of the 2007 Bee Movie film, because of the kid-friendly way that the life of bees was presented. Though I think this book provided more reliable information and stayed more true to the truth, rather than how the movie embraced the cartoon bee characters and such. Moreover, I liked this book because it gave readers the chance to see bees in another light than we may view than in the real world. I am not a fan of bugs, insects, or other critters, especially bees. As a child, I was always afraid of bee because of the way their buzzing sound almost warns of impending zoom, and how just the thought of having a bee sting sounds awful. Perhaps if I would have been exposed to books like this one that show what bees do and how harmless they are to people unless you put then on the defensive or bother them, I would have been able to conquer my fear of bees a little sooner, and been a little more educated about them. With all of this in mind, I rate this award-winning book 5 stars as it is entertaining, educational, and due to this online version, interactive and engaging as well.

Classroom Connection:
One science classroom connection for this book would be to continue to expand students' knowledge regarding bees by having then conduct additional research. Nonetheless, one specific lesson relating to this was found on There is a visual representation of this project on the website, but this activity mainly consists of having students draw large-scale bee on a piece of paper, and then labeling the various body part of the bee, from the antennae to the stinger. I would deem this activity to be more appropriate for younger students, perhaps in k-2. For older students, perhaps 2-4, students could make a hexagon-shaped booklet, (like the hexagon shapes present in bee hives) as suggested on , with each hexagon piece dedicate to a different stage in the bee's life cycle. Each stage would be represented with a picture a brief description. Either activity mentioned would provide supplemental opportunities that connect with this book and expand students' knowledge of these very important insects.

Text Complexity:
This book's reported GLE as per scholastic.com is 3.4. Its guided reading level is F and its lexile measure is 670. It is intended to interest a k-2 audience. The guided reading level of F for this book indicates that students should be able to read this book independently by the end of 1st grade- beginning of 2nd, depending on the individual student. I think the text in this book is relatively simple and would be appropriate for this age range and beginning readers. I would highly recommend all students who are reading this book to engage in the experience I did by reading this book electronically on tumblebooks, because its narration would be useful and beneficial for beginning readers, and those who are still learning to read could follow along as the narrator reads along. Despite the intended interest level for this book being k-2, I would also think this book could be incorporated into an introductory lesson for bees for slightly older children, perhaps 3rd or 4th graders, though it wouldn't be appropriate for challenging them with vocabulary or expanding their comprehension skills, considering its reported levels are below those recommended for the 3rd and 4th grade levels.