May 20 is World Bee Day, but we can celebrate bees any day with hands-on STEAM activities.
1. Visit the World Bee Day website for detailed information about the importance of bees (and other pollinators). Look for why the organizers chose May 20 for the date. The right sidebar contains many links to other informative websites, including the beautifully designed and engaging Buzzing with Life.
2. Tohono Chul Gardens has put together an amazing collection of lessons about bees and other pollinators. Created to cover a week’s worth of activities, it includes instructions for gardening and art. If nothing else, download the bee homes activity (PDF).
3. To get a glimpse of the diversity of bees (and some other insects), check out the photographs at the USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab Flickr page. Seriously. Click on the photographs to learn the scientific names of the bees and more about them. For example, our little long-horned bee in the photograph above is a Melissodes trinodus.
4. Make a honey bee model (previous Growing with Science post).
5. See our collection of honey bee science activities as well as all our posts in the bee category.
6. Visit our growing list of children’s books about bees at Science Books for Kids.
