Review: OMFG, Bees! by Matt Kracht
Title: OMFG, Bees!
Author: Matt Kracht (
Published: 28th March 2023
Genre: Non-Fiction / Humour / Science
Age: Adult
What’s it About?
As the title might suggest, bees! This short little adult non-fiction is packed full of information about bees. It includes information about their behaviour, what is and is not a bee, how they make honey, and why bees are so vitally important to the planet and us humans. If you’ve ever wanted to know more about the furry little friends who bumble around our gardens every summer, this is the book for you.
Opinions:
I picked up OMFG, Bees! purely to fulfil a prompt from a 2024 reading challenge to read a book about bees (a prompt I happened to set, but that’s beside the point). As it happened, I couldn’t have picked better. This short, funny, and beautifully illustrated book was exactly what I needed to understand more about the little flying visitors who arrive in my garden every year.
First of all, this is a laugh-out-loud funny book, as the quote below will hopefully illustrate. This chatty writing style made it easy to take in all the information without it ever coming across as dull or dry. I was especially fascinated to learn just how bees communicate the precise location of particularly good food sources to one another via dance, something I’ve known they can do since I was a kid but had no idea how it happened. Maybe I always assumed it was just bee magic?
What is a Bee?
A scientist would probably tell you that bees are flying insects that collect pollen and nectar. They are known for their pollination of plants and, in some cases, for producing honey. There are possibly as many as 20,000 individual species of bees, and they are considered a clade called Anthophila, which belongs to the superfamily Apoidea of the order Hymenoptera.
A bee would probably say, “Hey, what’s your problem, science guy? How come you so-called ‘scientists’ are always trying to act like you get to label us? You don’t know me!”
I also loved the watercolour illustrations that featured on nearly every page. From beautiful drawings of different kinds of bees (there are many) to diagrams that help you understand things like the geometrically ideal hexagonal construction of hives and the aforementioned dance-based communication, the book is packed full of these illustrations and they help every interesting fact and witty comment jump from the page.
Reading this book made me want to go straight outside and start making my garden more bee-friendly than ever. We already participate in No Mow May and leave a strip of our lawn unmowed to allow for plants to flower there, but this year I plan to build a bee watering station and plant bee-friendly flowers in my borders as well. I encourage you to pick up OMFG, Bees! to learn more about these amazing insects and why we need them. Many thanks to Abrams and Chronicle and Edelweiss for the ARC.
Rating: 4/5