The “pencil lead bees” responded right away.

We call these tiny bees “pencil lead bees” because they are only the size of a pencil lead.

They are actually sweat or digger bees.

Do you think they are collecting nectar or pollen?

(Hint:  remember what the yellow structures are in the flower.)

Wonder why they are called pollinators?

You may have heard on the news that honey bees are disappearing. The Hive Detectives follows the research of four scientists trying to figure out what is going on, as well as discussing a lot of general information about honey bees.

In the 1990’s I co-authored a set of lesson plans about honey bees, called “Africanized Honey Bees on the Move” for the University of Arizona. At the time the Africanized honey bees had just moved into Arizona, and many people were concerned about them. The lesson plans have a number of hands-on activities to do with many aspects of honey bee biology. If you go to a grade level, it will list appropriate lessons. Each lesson has links to activity and information sheets. Many of the lessons can be adapted to mixed-age groups.

Here are some honey bee-related activities and links:

1. Gardening for bees

Honey bees require pollen and nectar from flowers in order to survive. One simple activity is to investigate what kinds of bee-friendly plants grow in your area and have your children design and plant a bee garden.

You may wonder if encouraging honey bees to visit flowers in an area with children might be dangerous. It turns out that bees collecting food, called foraging bees, are not likely to sting unless they are stepped on, caught or otherwise threatened. This might not be an appropriate activity, however, for children who are allergic to bees.

(The first two websites were recommended in the book).

Pollinator.org has planting guides to help you find appropriate plants.

The Haagen-Dazs help the honey bees website has simple instructions for a bee garden, as well as funny videos.

What can the layperson do to help the honey bee has a lot of practical information about gardening for honey bees and other things you can do to help honey bees.

And don’t forget the Great Sunflower Project mentioned in a previous post.

These flowering plants help all kinds of pollinators, not just honey bees.

2. Honey bees and water

Any idea what these bees are doing?

Honey bees need a lot of water, especially in the summer. They use the water to cool inside the hive, to prevent the wax honeycomb from melting. You can see the tongue, called a proboscis, sucking up the water at the edge of this lily pad.

Getting water can be dangerous business for a honey bee. Honey bees often end up falling in, like the ones you see in swimming pools. Can you design a safe place for honey bees to gather water to add to your garden?

3. Honey bee communication and dances.

One of my favorite lessons was always doing the honey bee waggle dances as a way of learning how honey bees communicate.

Dancing under a polarized sky also has a lot of information about honey bee dances.

4. Honey bee senses

Honey bees perceive the world in a way that is very different from humans.

Honey bee senses lesson

What a bee sees

5. Honey bee and other bee nests

Investigate where honey bees live, where beekeepers keep bees and what it is like inside a hive.

The Insect Architects post has a some information about honey bee homes.

You can supply nest sites for other kinds of bees.

I don’t know whether you can read it, but the sign says “Digger Bee Nest Site.” We have left a patch of soil for the tiny digger bees to nest in.

The solitary and social bees lesson has a explanation of the different kinds of bees and how to construct an orchard mason bee nest.

There are a lot of ways to use honey bees as examples for science and nature lessons. Please let me know if you would like more information about any of these activities or if you have found a great website that helps children learn about honey bees.

Books to help you find out more:

In addition to The Hive Detectives,

you might be interested in these other books about bees from a precious post:
For young children you might want to try The Magic School Bus Inside a Beehive

Are you a Bee? is an intriguing book that compares humans and honey bees in an informative and gently humorous way.

The Bumblebee Queen by April Pulley Sayre (Author), Patricia J. Wynne (Illustrator) is a positively gorgeous book, chock full of good information. Any child who is interested in bees will love this book.

A Country Year by Sue Hubbell has some interesting tidbits on keeping honey bees, although it is about many other aspects of the natural world as well. A few of the chapters can some information that could be considered adult, such as she briefly discusses her divorce. You might want to read it first to determine if it is suitable for your older children. I have to say my son and I love it and I read it to him almost every summer (a summer tradition).

Book of Bees by Sue Hubbell contains a lot more technical information about beekeeping. There are many other books about beekeeping available, but this one warms my heart because it also shows more of the human side of the experience.

Note: the book that inspired this post was found at our local library.

Spring is here!

Lupines have quite complex flowers.

The honey bees seem to like them, though.

And so do the carpenter bees.

Have you stopped to smell the flowers lately?

The sunflower project involves growing a specific type of sunflower, Lemon Queen, and recording the types and how many bees come to visit the flowers.

This year the organizers are asking the participants to buy their own seeds because they can not fulfill the orders for the huge number of requests they received last year.

If you are interested in participating, the first step is to go to the website and register.  You will  find more instructions there and get future newsletters with information and updates.

The sampling protocol has been simplified a bit. This year you and your children will:
1) count the number of flowers on your plant with pollen;
2) record all bees (not just the first 5) your sunflower for 15 minutes; and
3) enter the data online.

Our family participated last year. I have to say I hadn’t had much success growing sunflowers before, but these Lemon Queen variety seeds grew beautifully.

We had quite a few bees visiting, although no honey bees.

Did you participate last year?

Let us know, we’d love to hear from you.

Any idea what these honey bees are doing?

If you look very closely, you might find a clue.

The hole is a sign that something is living inside. When we opened one of the stalks recently we found:

The pithy center of the stalk had been hollowed out and a small carpenter bee had made cells for her offspring.

The bee would have started by creating a cavity. She would prepare a small ball of bee bread, a mixture of pollen and nectar. When the bee bread was ready, she would lay an egg on it and close the end with a plug of plant material. (It looks like sawdust here). Then she would make some more bee bread and repeat the process until the cavity was full. Within each cell, a larva would hatch from the egg, eat the bee bread, pupate and then become an adult bee. Eventually the new bees emerge from their chambers.

The adult small carpenter bee ( Genus Ceratina) is dark blue, greenish or black. It is much smaller than the regular carpenter bee, hence the name.

You might wonder if the tunneling by the bee harms the plant. It turns out that the living part of the plant is in the outside tissue that is not disturbed. Because a hollow tube is very nearly as strong as a solid one, the stalks are no more likely to break. Bees, like small carpenter bees, are important pollinators and should be encouraged whenever possible.

Like these busy native bees working our sunflowers.

The pint-sized pollinators have been coming in a constant stream since the sunflowers opened.

They leave each flower with yellow pollen-laden legs loaded to overcapacity . How do they even fly?

Thanks to these bees we have a heavy crop of sunflower seeds. Go, bees, go!

The sunflowers we planted for the Great Sunflower Project have started to flower.

The bees can hardly wait.

A few days ago these bees were sleeping on a nearby milkweed plant.

Long-horned bees (tribe Eucerini in the family Apidae) are named for the long antennae present on males. They have a habit of clustering in groups to sleep overnight on plants.

I’m not sure what species these particular bees are. There are over 30 genera in the tribe Eucerini, including Melissodes (the long-horned bees), Peponapis and Xenoglossa (squash bees), and Svastra (sunflower bees).

Hopefully we’ll be seeing bees on the sunflowers soon.