Love Bees A family guide to help keep bees buzzing - With games, stickers and more

'If you're keen to get your children or grandchildren interested in the natural world, Love Bees could be just what you need to fire their imaginations.' - Waitrose Weekend

‘A great introduction to bees worldwide, Love Bees explains how much we need bees and how much more there is to bee-kind than just honey.’ - Gill Perkins, CEO, Bumblebee Conservation Trust

'Full of fascinating facts and practical projects, it's the perfect guide to inspire nature-lovers of all ages to love bees.' - Craig Bennett, Chief Executive, Friends of the Earth

'Without bees our world would be dull and our diet mundane, virtually no flowers or fruit for starters. Love Bees introduces why bees matter and how we can all help them survive in the modern world of many pitfalls perpetrated by Homo sapiens. A great read with content for all the family.' - BugLife

Bees need our love and attention! Help save bees and have fun along the way with Love Bees: A Family Guide to Keep Bees Buzzing.

Bee colonies are fast declining and our buzzing buddies need our help urgently if they are to recover and thrive. In this bright, bubbly book, full of activities for families to do together, Vanessa Amaral-Rogers focuses on how we can help our nectar-collecting buddies flourish — and why these important insects are so awesome — through a whole swarm of engaging facts and fun games.

Teach your kids that conservation is cool – and what the awesome rules are to become a bee’s BFF (Best Friend Forever). Find out together how to make a bee hotel or a wildflower window box, and play the Waggle Dance board game. 

Pull-out activities include:

• 64 colour stickers
• Make your own bee mobile
• Waggle Dance board game
• Bee-spotter's survey sheet
• Where do I live? wheel

With exciting lessons in natural history and gardening, from planting pollinator-friendly flowers to growing a green wall, this is a call to action with a positively sunny outlook.

If you like this book, you might like to take a look at Bees, Bugs & Butterflies for more fun ideas for young bug fans. . .

Prelims  1-5

Why we love bees  6-9
Why bees are important; which foods they pollinate; different species of bee (include ‘killer’ honeybees).

What’s inside a hive?  10-13
The queen, workers, and drones; how the queen controls the other bees through chemicals; the lifecycle of the hive; how bees tell their sisters about food with the waggle dance; swarming.

Bee products  14-15
The amazing properties of honey and other bee products—propolis, beeswax, royal jelly, bee bread, mead, bee pollen, bee venom.

Humans and honeybees  16-17
A brief history about how humans have lived with bees; how these incredible creatures have inspired poets, writers, and artists; how they’ve influenced science (for example, honeybees have been used to detect illegal substances at airports).

An introduction to beekeeping  18-21
From the equipment you need, to the different types of hives, to what you’ll need to do throughout the year to look after your hive. An introduction to urban beekeeping.

Different types of bees  22-25
It’s not just honeybees! Bumblebees (buzz pollination with tomatoes and blueberries); mining bees (who make nests in burrows and holes in the wall. Also other pollinators such as hoverflies, butterflies, and beetles: flies pollinate chocolate; wasps pollinate figs. 

Why bees love flowers  26-29
Why bees need pollen and nectar; how different flower shapes attract different bees; how color attracts. 

Why are bees struggling?  30-33
Threats to bees—pesticides, diseases, fewer flowers, having further to travel (fragmentation) to find good places to nest and feed; how climate change is altering our weather patterns and confusing the bees; the introduction of other nasty species such as the varroa mite. 

How we can help  34-39
Plant more flowers; leave areas bare; provide water, and nesting areas such as bare ground and compost heaps; go organic; make a bee hotel for solitary bees; guerrilla gardening and how to make your own seed bombs.

Plants for bees  40-43
Is it a weed? Year-long planting; plants that are bad for bees; favorite flowers; wonderful wildflowers; herbs and hedges.

Urban gardening  44-47
What to do if you only have a small garden or yard (using window boxes, hanging baskets, pot plants, or plant racks for space saving); and Thinking Big! (green roofs or community meadows).

Plus 22pp of extras including:
•  4 sheets of stickers;
•  Lift-up hive (revealing the secret life of honeybees);
•  Waggle-Dance fold-out game;
•  Pollinator bingo scoring sheets;
•  Honeybee Lovers’ Society membership cards;
•  And the Wheel of Honey (just turn the dial to discover the amazing properties of bee venom and bee bread!)