Weekly Displays: Bee Books

We have bees!  Recently, one of our grade deans came up with the idea to purchase beehives for the school.  He recruited a student, who spread the word to a math teacher, who spread the word to a teacher in our department, and then we became completely obsessed--more so when the hives were installed right outside the library windows!

The Environmental Science class helped build the hive enclosure:

The Environmental Science class at work with the library wing in the background.

See that globe in the window behind the students?  That's one of the library windows!

Interested students and teachers (and Lizz) were on hand when the hives were delivered:

They delivered the bees at night because that's when bees sleep!  Who knew?

And now, nearly every day, one of us is likely to be seen peering through the enclosure and watching the busy bees at work:

Lizz watches at the bees as I take photos of her through our very dirty library windows.

One of two beehives and a few of the 6,000 bees.

And of course we had to do a display of bee books:

I highly recommend The Beekeeper's Apprentice and the entire Marry Russell series by Laurie R. King.

Bees must have been buzzing in the school consciousness for some time; we had no problem putting together a display about bees, insects, and books with "bee" in the title.  And this wasn't even everything in the catalog:  Clan Apis, an educational graphic novel about bees; The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest (sequel to The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played With Fire); and Robbing the Bees: A Biography of Honey were all checked out.  Other fiction tie-ins included The Beekeeper's Apprentice (a Sherlock Holmes spin-off) and The Secret Life of Bees.  We had four books additional books that focused on bees and the history of honey, and of course I couldn't resist adding an old VHS copy of episode three of David Attenborough's documentary The Secret Life of Plants called--you guessed it--"The Birds and the Bees."