QueenSpotting

Starred review from April 15, 2019
Few will be able to resist beekeeper Kearney’s master class in beekeeping, a delightful mixture of how-to tips, popular science trivia, and interactive challenges. Being able to find the queen bee, Kearney explains, is imperative for any beekeeper hoping to keep a hive healthy and productive. “If the original queen is not removed” after a new one hatches, the “worker bees will remain loyal to her and kill the newly installed one.” Kearney covers the logistics of turning nectar into honey, the trick to tracking the queen’s age (via a dab of bright paint on her back representing the last digit in her birth year), and the secret to creating those “bee beards” occasionally displayed by beekeepers (just apply some queen pheromones). As for the visual quizzes scattered throughout, the task is the same in each: find the queen in a photo of a horde of bees splayed across multiple pages. Solutions are provided, but, in a rather fiendish twist, Kearney waits until the end to offer tips. This all adds up to a spellbinding study of one of the world’s most important insects, and one with appeal for kids (through the puzzle component) as well as adults.