The Magic School Bus Inside a Beehive

The Magic School Bus #8

by Joanna Cole

In their latest adventure, Ms. Frizzle and her class visit a beekeeper at his hive, and the bus mysteriously vibrates and shrinks, as the teacher and class journey inside the beehive to witness the extraordinary world of bees.

Genres: Science, Picture Books, Childrens, Animals, Nonfiction, Nature, Adventure

47 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1996

About the author

Joanna Cole, who also wrote under the pseudonym B. J. Barnet, was an author of children’s books who teaches science.

She is most famous as the author of The Magic School Bus series of children's books. Joanna Cole wrote over 250 books ranging from her first book Cockroach to her famous series Magic School Bus.

Cole was born in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in nearby East Orange. She loved science as a child, and had a teacher she says was a little like Ms. Frizzle. She attended the University of Massachusetts and Indiana University before graduating from the City College of New York with a B.A. in psychology. After some graduate education courses, she spent a year as a librarian in a Brooklyn elementary school. Cole subsequently became a letters correspondent at Newsweek, and then a senior editor for Doubleday Books for Young Readers.

Reviews

[Miranda Reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

"We had been studying about all different kinds of insects. Now Ms. Frizzle said she had found a beekeeper who would show us his honey bee hives."

Ms. Frizzle's class is so excited to visit the beekeeper, only to quickly realize that this field trip...is turning into a Frizzle Field Trip.

"...her elbow knocked a strange littler lever. The honey jar fell, and we heard a weird buzzing sound. It was the bus. It was vibrating, and getting smaller. So was everything in it - including us."

Yeahhhh, I have a feeling that they aren't going to be meeting the beekeeper any time soon.

"... the bus looked like a little beehive and we looked like real bees!"

Oh man, this was such a fun one! With the kids looking like bees, they decide to act like real bees by picking up nectar, pollinating plants, and going back to the hive to help the rest of the bees.

I feel like I'm learning so much with these stories. Definitely makes the long days feel shorter when there's so much to discover.

I really adore all the little details that Joanna Cole fits into these stories - like how man-made beehives have changed over the years - starting with straw or pottery and now (most often) being the wooden boxes.

I also enjoyed the B-plot of the hungry bear, every page he was getting a little bit closer!

[Jacobsen Boys · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love it I love it I love it so much. And I love it. All the time.

[Jeremiah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Can't we just have a normal five star review?

Solid kids book, solid science writing, solid illustrations.

The book goes deep into bee life, which is kind of Shakespearean/Revenge of the Sith, so keep in mind there's talk of bees killing each other (and their offspring) to seize the throne. But it's done in a Magic School Bus way and only one page of the book and natural fact.

My kids liked this one. I like humming the Ant-Man theme when the bus shrinks.

I found this on the giveaway shelf at the local library.

[Andy Zach · Rating 4 out of 5]

Now the Magic School Bus is a bee--and so are the children and Ms. Frizzle. But how will they get past the guard bees? Only by being bees--acting just like them.

Exercising their extreme creativity, author Joanna Cole and illustrator Bruce Degan thoroughly explore a beehive and the life cycle of bees: workers, queens, and drones.

You'll learn more than you expect.

[Anne Nerison · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had this book as a kid, and rediscovered it on a beekeeping suppliers' website. Of course I had to buy a copy. It's pretty accurate, and tells about the inner workings of a hive in a way kids can understand. The illustrations are fun, and I enjoyed all the extra information on the sides of the pages. This looks to be a great way to introduce beekeeping to kids.

[Ashley]

FS: "It all began when Ms. Frizzle showed our class a filmstrip about the human body."
LS:

(In notebook.)

[Shawbear · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was my favorite book to have read to me as a child. Revisiting it today reminded me how it helped me to fall in love with observing the world around me.

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't even care that I'm older, the Magic School Bus series is AWESOME. These are great for kids and just as cool for adults. I spent the greater part of a dinner with my boyfriend discussing how newborn queen bees kill each other until only one is left thanks to this book.

Seriously.

[Amanda Lynch · Rating 4 out of 5]

So my oldest loves this book, but it's pretty grim, featuring a fight to the death between two potential queen bees. I took a star off for the lack of warning label that this book goes all GAME OF THRONES.

[Marla Hux · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tried and true, a classic series! The Magic School Bus inside a Bee Hive is a great science fiction books to get first through fourth grade students hooked on science. In this book, Mrs. Frizzle takes her class on a field trip into a bee hive. The magic school bus transforms into a bee itself and the students get to experience life inside the hive first hand. The class learns about the hierarchy of the hives, the jobs of various bees and how to thrive and survive. The book includes great vocabulary while covering complex science topics in a way that is not so overwhelming for younger readers.
This book, and all those within the Magic School Bus series, provide a great introduction to a new science unit. It is exciting and filled with facts the students can gleam before diving deeper into the subject. During this time the students can pose discussion questions, fill out a class wide KWL chart, and build a strong word bank. Students can draw and label a bee hive, highlighting all the different bee jobs. They can also use it as a jumping off point to write their own experiences in the magic school bus while they explore another habitat or animal itself. This book is not very lengthy but provides great content to support a science lesson and also is very engaging for students. Mrs. Frizzle makes science seem way more creative and fun than most trade books or text book excerpts.

[Lindsay Caton · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love The Magic School Bus books! They are always so informational and fun. This one is no different. This book gives an in depth look at what is like in the daily life of a bee. It goes into everything from the bees out collecting pollen, making honey, to choosing a new queen.
I used this book to teach a vocabulary lesson in a 3rd and 4th grade special needs class. The kids really loved it. The book is a little dense and has a lot of information. Knowing these students, I chose to skip a few pages and I also did not read every part of the text. I did allow the students to look through the book on their own when I finished the lesson. It was clear that some of them probably could have stayed focused if I read the whole book, but it didn't seem worth losing others in the class. I used to to teach the words social, pollen, nectar, and pheromones. At the end of the lesson, my students were able to tell me what these words mean and use them in a sentence.
This book is an amazing tool that can be used for multiple lessons and just to sit and enjoy. I think these books have really fun illustrations and the stories are always so outrageous. In this one the students turn into bees and infiltrate the hive. It's such a fun way to teach a lesson about bees. I think understanding these insects will allow children to not be so afraid of them. It's a really great book that has multiple uses.

[Tanya Brown · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Magic School Bus Bee Hive by Joanna Cole, the genre for this book is Science Fiction. The audience is gear toward 3rd – 5th graders. Science Fiction is my favorite subject, I rated this book with five stars because The Magic School Bus with teacher Mrs. Frizzle and class gives detail descriptions of, as Mrs. Frizzle said, “a Bee dazzling process,” what its actually like to be a Bee and develop and process honey in the Bee hive. The plot, Mrs. Frizzle takes her class on a field trip to experience how Bee’s make honey. Mrs. Frizzle and children changed into Bees to experience first hand the life of a Bee and the process of finding nectar to make honey in a Bee Hive. The realize that the process of finding nectar from flowers isn’t an easy task for the Bee because flowers had been depleted of their nectar by other Bees when it’s late In the season. The illustration was colorful with lots of pictures on each page with dialog boxes and specific drawing of the settings. The main setting took place in the air where they were Bee’s flying around looking for flowers to make nectar and then produce honey for the honey cone. Theme: Bees make Bee hives and the book was very easy to read. Magic school bus Bee Hive would appeal to the young reader because of the detailed illustration and simplistic use of language.

[Caroline Ray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ms. Frizzle takes her class on yet another exciting field trip, this time to a beekeeper. With every book they have to shift into something new to fit in and the bus becomes a hive with the students and Ms. Frizzle as bees. One of the first requirements was to bring pollen to the guard bees in order to be let into the hives. In order to get pollen, they sprayed themselves with pheromone to allow them to communicate. After giving the guards their pollen, they were able to explore honeycombs, queen bees, the transformation process from nectar to honey, and how pees grow. With detailed illustrations are funny but pretty accurate and detailed to give a mostly realistic picture about the topic of discussion in the story. The illustrations also show reports from the students about bees which help to further explain the information. Before they change back into the school bus and go back to school, a bear attacks the hive to eat some honey, which scares Ralphie. Ms. Frizzle saves the day and they are immediately back to normal. These books are a great and fun way to learn new and valuable information as opposed to reading a textbook. This would be a good book for readers 6-10. This would just be useful in the classroom to share information about bees before students select an insect/ animal to do research a create a small report/factual story on.

[Ally Ferring · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Magic School Bus Inside a Beehive is an amazing informational book by Joanna Cole. The class took a field trip to visit a beekeeper and his bee hives because they had just studied different types of insects. On the way to the beehives suddenly, the bus shrunk, and the class looked like bees and the bus was a beehive. To be able to get into the hives, they had to get bee food, pollen. They sprayed bee pheromone on themselves, gave the pollen to the guard bees, and could get in. They explored the beehive and saw how the bees communicate, saw how beeswax was shaped into comb, saw how the nectar was turned into honey, saw how they tended to the queen, fed the larvae, learned the transition from egg to adult bee, and they saw how queen bees come to be. After all of this, a bear attacked the hive, and so they left the beehive, and when they got back to school, the bus became full sized. Overall, I thought this book was great to teach all about bees and beehives. Not only was the text informational, but the illustrations by Bruce Degen, also are informational. The illustrations are very detailed, and have notes, dialogue, and drawings the children did that has tons of information throughout the story. This would be great for children age 7-12.

[Set · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting book full of fun facts about different insects, specifically Honey Bees. They go in an adventure into the beehive and learn the inner workings of a bee colony. We have honey bees, bumble bees and carpenter bees in my neighborhood. Paper wasps are always trying to sneakily create hives in the corner of my porch. Bumble bees are always burrowing into the ground. And Carpenter bees are eating the wooden parts of my house. Hence, we have lots of local honey and honey black bears in Pensacola, Fl. "In a honey bee colony, there are three castes, or kinds of bees: 1. The Queen: Her job is to lay eggs, eggs, and more eggs! 2. The Workers: They are all female bees that usually do not lay eggs. Workers do almost all the jobs in the hive. 3. The Drones are all male bees. A male bee's only job is to mate with a queen."

[Skyla Thompson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another fabulous Magic School Bus book!! This one is all about the bees. It gives you all the information on a bee, its life cycle, its job in the hive, the job in the community, and so much more. Such a great book for a lesson on bees and insects. The pictures are also amazing; they are drawings but they are so life like and beautiful. Something I love about these books is that they give you the text, which is so informational, but they give you extra information. For example, they give you essays the class has written and pictures of things that go along with whatever the text may be indirectly talking about. These books are just absolutely magical and the people that have create them have just done a miraculous job.

[Sean Harding · Rating 3 out of 5]

More Magic School Bus after a days hiatus and this time they go inside q bee hive, hence the title I guess, so no spoilers there!!
Anyway another blend of the fictional school and bus with educational information this time about bees and honey.
Again very wordy, with lots of stuff happening on every page, but this would give the younger reader time to pore over the book and read it over and over again and learn more about the subject.

[Courtnay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read this with my kindergarten nieces today. One of them had signed it out of the school library. Ironically she is absolutely terrified of bees, but hopefully this will make her less scared of them in the long run. I learned quite a bit myself. I occasionally watched the show with my baby sister when we were kids but had never read any of the books before today. Might get them a few as presents going forward. I quite enjoyed it, and I think they did, too.

[Ashley Denton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading these books in school. In elementary school, this was one of my favorite series and television series to watch. It always had a deep meaning behind all of Ms.Frizzles lessons to her students. She convinces her students that she is magic and bring so much joy and energy to all of lessons. I think she does a great way at trying to convince her kids to take chances even if they may not be sure.

[Karin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another Magic School Bus book...my kid has a one track mind on library day. I was happy to see she found one of the original books this time, with so much extra info about bees. The story is great but being able to dig deeper really meets her inquisitive needs. I was a bit surprised by the fight to the death and infanticide page but she just rolled with it. We were talking about nature and facts of life and she was just happy to learn.

[J. · Rating 3 out of 5]

I definitely don't remember these books being so busy! Nevertheless, it's nice how much information is packed in, I love the Magic School Bus world and Ms Frizzle's depiction, and it's easy to grow with the book. This time around, I just read the main story out loud with snippets of other areas of the pages (and a quick modification to the queen bee death fight.) As my toddler's attention span increases, I will expand how much is read.

[SaraKat · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great facts about the bee hives. I thought it was a little less informative than most of the other MSB books, and the humor was more sparse. This was my least favorite of the series so far. And this book is too early to include anything about colony collapses and I think any book on bees nowadays needs to have some information about bee conservation.

[Megan Nauman · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this story, the whole class shrinks down to the sizeof a bee to learn more about them! This adventure pulls you right along with them as the explore the inside of a beehive. The illustrations are wacky as always, and the story itself is so much fun. This one definitely pulls you in, while teaching you something in the process.

[Kallie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Science Fiction
Grade K-3
Magic School bus is a CLASSIC! I remember watching it as a kid before going to school. This book is labeled as science fiction because, although there are facts in this book, kids cannot really turn into bees and visit a beehive. This is a fun spin on teaching about bees, though! The book is FILLED with facts about bees and other insects.

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

The magic school bus book was very informative about bees and how they help the world and the type of bees there are. book can be used when doing a lesson about bees. playful book and informative. Book should be used with older children since it is longer and a lot of words.

[Benedict Randhawa · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is about Honey Bee and Queen of bee . How she is very important role making honey. She is very strong. And the book have some good picture.

[Amanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

People of all ages can enjoy and learn from this series.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book because I like Magic School Bus books. I did not like this book because I did not like the part when Ms. Frizzle and her class went into the beehive. I do not like bees.

[Lili · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was ok

[John Boggala Benedict · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book for children.