Learning about bees
Our lesson about bees was inspired by The Bare Necessities song from the Jungle Book cartoon: “The bees are buzzin’ in the tree, to make some honey just for me…”.
Our exploration began with learning about bees and their anatomy from the book “Bees (Creepy Critters)” by Rebecca Rissman.
Did you know that bees don’t have a photoreceptor for red?
Then we learned about the different roles bees play within a colony. A bee colony typically consists of a single queen, drones (males), and worker bees (females). The queen bee is the largest. The queen’s primary role is to lay eggs and maintain the unity of the colony. Worker bees perform various tasks such as foraging, nursing the brood, and maintaining the hive.
The life cycle of a bee starts with an egg laid by the queen in a cell within the hive. The egg hatches into a larva, which is fed by worker bees. After a period of growth, the larva pupates and eventually emerges as an adult bee.
I utilized a Rebus Puzzle to introduce the term ‘pollination’. We learned that pollination is a very important process for the plants and trees to produce fruit. Bees play a crucial role in pollination, transferring pollen from male to female flower parts, which fertilizes plants and allows them to produce fruits and seeds. Many crops, including fruits, vegetables, and nuts, depend on bee pollination for reproduction.
To illustrate the process of pollination, I created a few bees using yellow pom-poms, a clear lid from a cookie container, a black string, a piece of felt, and a glue gun. Which classic Star Wars movie character do they remind you of?
I cut flowers out of paper and glued a soft fabric in the middle. To imitate pollen I used green glitter on some flowers and blue glitter on others. Then we had fun playing with our bees. They ‘collected’ pollen from one flower and transferred it to another on their legs and belly. After the ‘pollination’ process, we could see that the flowers had both green and blue glitter on them.
After learning about bees and pollination, we visited the local apiary (bee farm). There, they showed us the queen bee laying eggs and the worker bees attending to her. We also had the opportunity to taste different flavors of honey. It turns out that the flavor of honey depends on the nectar source.
Please see the link to the “Learning About Bees” activity book that I created for our lesson.