The Buzz on Honeybees

In a casual, conversational tone, Itty Bitty Betty, “the Storytelling Honeybee,” delivers facts and anecdotes about her fellow bees. Betty describes the process of pollination and the structure of a beehive, and additional details appear in “Beezness” sidebars. Betty also explains how a major league baseball game was once interrupted by a swarm of bees, and how 10,000 bees once landed on the wing of a parked airplane in Massachusetts. Despite a tone that vacillates between stodgy and corny (“[D]on’t worry, sourwood honey doesn’t turn me from Itty Bitty Betty to Bitter Betty”), Kaemmerlen provides some fun and informative details about honeybee behavior. Coates’s watercolor illustrations are uneven, with awkward compositions and stiffly rendered human figures. Ages 5–8. (Feb.)