Honeybee Pollination

Objectives: Students will review the process of plant pollination and be able to describe the relationship between honeybees and flowers.

Materials: chalk, cotton balls, ‘Flower Power’ worksheet

Background:

The honeybee is important to agriculture. One third of the food we eat is pollinated by honeybees. Pollination is taking pollen from one plant to another plant. Pollen can be transferred by way of insects such as honeybees or wind. This allows fruiting plants, like watermelons, pumpkins, squash, tomatoes and strawberries, to make fruit. When the honeybee finds pretty flowers, she goes back and tells her friends. Since the honeybee can’t actually talk, she communicates by doing a little dance that tells the other bees to follow her. The honeybee takes nectar from flowers and makes honey that is sweet and good for humans to eat. Honey is the honeybee’s food. Honey is the only food people eat that is made by insects. By pollinating fruits and vegetables, a worker bee makes 1⁄2 teaspoon of honey in its 45-day life. A beekeeper places

wax foundations in frames and stacks them near a crop to help bees build their honeycombs faster. There are several different honey flavors that provide quick energy to athletes, supply vitamins to people, and honey fights certain types of diseases.

Procedures:

1. Use background to lead a discussion about pollination and the importance of bees to our food supply.

2. Provide a worksheet for each student along with a piece of colored chalk (in different colors).

3. Have students color the flower petals with crayons and then color the centers with the chalk.

4. Explain to students that you will be the bee. Show students a cotton ball, and explain that the fine hairs on the bee’s legs and body act like the fine fibers on the cotton ball to pick up pollen from one flower and deposit it on another as it moves from flower to flower gathering nectar.

5. Move from flower to flower with the cotton ball, picking up “pollen” from one flower and depositing it on another flower.

6. Show students the cotton ball after you have touched all the flowers with it. Ask students how they think the bee looks after visiting many flowers.

7. If you have extra time you can:

Let students take turns being the “bee” and pollinating the flowers.

Information from busybarnsfarm.com