The Hive Detectives: Chronicle of a Honey Bee Catastrophe by Loree Griffin Burns – review

Why should we love honey bees? After all, they sometimes sting people, and there’s not much fun in being stung, is there?

But they are only trying to defend themselves and their hives, which are their homes. Despite the fact that they might cause us a little bit of pain now and then, there are many reasons to love bees. We need them for honey, and to pollinate flowers, crops, and trees. Without bees, we would have far less variety in our diets, so we should wonder why bees are mysteriously disappearing. It’s a case that the world’s best detectives are trying to solve:  scientists. They’re hard at work to figure out what is causing honey bees to disappear, and what can be done to save them from becoming extinct, like the dinosaurs and dodos. So, if you love bees, want to learn more about bees, and like a good mystery story, then Hive Detectives: Chronicle of a Honey Bee Catastrophe is just the book for you!

This nonfiction book, aimed primarily at 5th-8th grade children, grabs your attention from the first line and holds it throughout the entire exploration of bees and what’s making them disappear. The author, Loree Griffin Burns, discusses the subject of beekeeping and raising bees in apiaries, or man-made beehives. She writes about a beekeeper, Mary Duane, and how her beehives, like most modern ones, “consist of several boxes, called supers, stacked one atop the other in a tower-like structure.” The bees use the removable frames as “a foundation on which the bees can build their wax honeycomb.” And why, you may ask, are the frames removable? Both to care for the honey bees better, and to get at their sweet honey and harvest it, of course!

The author goes into several contributing factors to colony collapse disorder (CCD), the term used to describe why so many honey bees are dying around the world. You’ll feel like an investigator, yourself, as you track down the clues and various reasons for the decline in the honey bee population. For instance, some factors are increased pollution, pesticides, a decline in the nutrition of honey bees, and Varroa mites. (The tiny mites attach themselves to the bees and feed on their blood, hiding “inside a honeycomb cell, usually underneath a growing larva.” They are, according to one scientist, Jeff Pettis, “still enemy number one.”) But there is another mite that also can kill honey bees. It’s called the tracheal mite. They settle into a safe spot, like a bee’s breathing tubes, and then suck the life out of the bee.

Still, though the mites are a problem for beekeepers, they are not the major causes of CCD. One major cause appears to be a virus called “the Israeli acute paralysis virus (IAPV).” It’s been found in many of the beehives suffering from colony collapse disorder. Also, the very pesticides that beekeepers use to kill the mites that harm honey bees could have delayed harmful effects to the bees, themselves. Scientists are continuing to investigate why the honey bees are disappearing, and the various causes of CCD.

I really liked the beautiful high-quality color photographs in the book, taken by the photographer Ellen Harasimowicz. There are close-ups of the honey bees, busy at work in their hives, and photographs of the mites, and the many investigators working to solve the mystery. Another great feature is that there’s a glossary in the back of the book to explain the terms the author uses. The scientists are profiled in a scrapbook-like format, and this same style is used to explain about the types of bees in a hive, the drones, workers, and the queen.

Books like The Honey Bee Detectives help give young readers insights into how scientists work to solve problems and also provide them with knowledge about a specific subject.  This volume will tell them all they want to know about honey bees, beekeeping, and why honey bees are so important to us. I highly recommend it–it’s one honey of a book!