the Buzzing Adventures of Jamie and Secret Beekeepers

The house next door had been empty Jamie's whole life. Then the moving truck came.Out of it stepped Mr. Benson - a wide-brimmed hat, nine boxes of books, and four flat wooden boxes the movers flatly refused to touch. Boxes that hummed.By June, twelve-year-old Jamie has shaken a swarm out of a lilac bush and has fifty thousand bees of his own. By August, he has learned the parts nobody puts on a poster: the mite count you don't want to do, the dropped frame, the four minutes it takes for a furious hive to settle when you finally stop running.And by September, the neighbor across the street has written to the city.Dale Pruitt isn't a bully. He's a man whose six-year-old grandson carries two EpiPens and can't tell one yellow-and-black insect from another. There will be a hearing in January, and the council can vote to make every hive on Pearl Street disappear in ninety days.Then a kid goes down in the school courtyard, an ambulance parks out front with its lights on, and everybody says the word bee.Jamie can prove them wrong. He digs up the nest himself and photographs it. He has the temperatures, the stinger, the ground burrow - four separate ways to show it was a yellow jacket and not a honeybee at all.It doesn't help even a little.Because being right and being heard turn out to be two completely different things - and Jamie has three minutes at a microphone to figure out the difference.A middle-grade novel about bees, neighbors, and learning to make an argument instead of just winning one.Inside the book: - 26 chapters, one full year - April to April- 26 original illustrations, one for every chapter- A glossary of beekeeping words, from brood to varroa mite to flyway barrier- Real beekeeping, written by a beekeeper of more than thirteen years - including the parts that go wrongFor readers ages 9 to 13 who like a story with something true in it. About 21,000 words.The most useful thing most people can do for bees costs nothing at all. Plant something that flowers. Leave the clover & dandolions alone. Be patient with the bee who lands on your arm.