In this series, we’ll pick some of our favorite things about Minnesota and share some related book suggestions. (We’re open to your suggestions! Comment below or email us and tell us some of your favorite MN things!)

Favorite topic this week? Minnesota bees! Minnesota has nearly 400 species of native bees. Learn more from the Minnesota DNR’s website.

If Bees Are Few: A Hive of Bee Poems from the University of Minnesota Press
“An anthology of 2,500 years of poetry, from Sappho to Sherman Alexie, humming with bees, at a moment when the beloved honey makers and pollinators are in danger of disappearing.

Virgil wrote of bees, as did Shakespeare, Burns, Coleridge, Emerson, and Whitman, among many others. Amid the crisis befalling bees—hives collapsing, wild species disappearing—the poems collected here speak with a quiet urgency of a world lost if bees were to fall silent.”

The Winter Bees by Jill Kalz
“Behind each door of each small place in this collection of ten short stories, people mind their duties to keep a small town humming. The Winter Bees: Fiction introduces seemingly mundane lives lived in a rural Minnesota town and reveals journeys of personal discovery, meaning, love, and hope.”

A Photographic Guide to Some Common Wasps and Bees of Minnesota by Scott King
“A photographic guide to some common wasps and bees of Minnesota. Includes color photos and descriptions for over 125 species of wasps and bees observed in Minnesota. An excellent introductory reference to this interesting order of insects.”

Winter Bees and Other Poems of the Cold by Joyce Sidman
“In this outstanding picture book collection of poems by Newbery Honor-winning poet, Joyce Sidman (Song of the Water Boatman,Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night), discover how animals stay alive in the wintertime and learn about their secret lives happening under the snow. Paired with stunning linoleum print illustrations by Rick Allen, that celebrate nature’s beauty and power.”