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Picture Books

Flight of the Honey Bee by Raymond Huber and Brian Lovelock follows the life of Scout, one of approximately 50,000 female bees in a hive. Scout's job is to locate and communicate the location of flowers with nectar so the hive can survive the winter. This picture book includes an index and suggestions for helping honey bees.

The Case of the Vanishing Honeybees: A Scientific Mystery by Sandra Markle covers some of the same material in more detail and the book focuses on Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) and examines possible causes: change in habitat, overwork, mites, fungus, and neonicotinoid pesticides. It features many photographs, has a glossary, and recommends other books and websites.

Lessons & Activities

Africanized Honey Bee Education Project is a collection of eight lessons for K-3 students covering honey bee anatomy, behavior, songs and stories, and more.

Get the Buzz on Honey Bees is a unit for grades 3-5 that develops skills in and is aligned with national standards in science and geography. Critical life-science skills from the fascinating world of bees are presented along with geography activities that literally "put bees on the map".

PollinatorLIVE: A Distance Learning Adventure features lessons for grades 4-8 correlated to National Science Education Standards. Among dozens of lessons and activities, students participate in a Bee Hunt! and BeeSpotter research projects.

In Trouble in the Hive: Researching the Decimation of Honeybee Colonies, students in grades 6-12 learn about the ongoing decimation of honeybee colonies across the country, discuss its possible causes and potential solutions, and participate in a citizen science project to census honeybees in their neighborhoods.

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Picture Books Flight of the Honey Bee by Raymond Huber and Brian Lovelock follows the life of Scout, one of approximately 50,000 female bees in a hive. Scout's job is to locate and communicate the location of flowers with nectar so the hive can survive the winter.

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Have you been outdoors at any point during the past few weeks? Of course, you have! So, of course, you've encountered at least one of them.

They are small, a little bit fuzzy, nattily clad in black and yellow-like miniature Pittsburgh sports fans, and get a bad rap because of the whole stinging thing.

Yep, bees are everywhere this time of year but there are fewer of them than ever. And believe it or not, that's not a good thing. Sure, your next picnic may be more peaceful but bees are incredibly important to ensuring you've got tasty fresh food to fill your picnic basket! Still not sure if bees are essential to the natural world? Allow The Not-Its! to convince you that bees are, in fact, the bee's knees...naturally!

Bees are incredibly fascinating creatures that the world desperately needs. Without bees doing their pollinating work, a gigantic portion of our fruit, nut and vegetable supply could disappear completely. How bees find their way from plant to plant to pollinate, to their family members, and back to their hive is also extremely fascinating. While a honeybee has five eyes-two of which are compound eyes giving it a wide field of vision and allowing it to spot rapid movement-it's a bee's sense of smell that is most remarkable! A honeybee has a sniffer 100 times more powerful than a human's and can help it locate scents miles away.

This simple and fun sensory honeybee smelling activity will help your child appreciate the special smelling talents of honeybees and hopefully will make them understand how necessary they are to the future of food!

What You'll Need

smelly stuff (two of each, for example: oranges, cinnamon, gummy vitamins, mints, mustard, pickles, flowers, and honey, of course!)

containers

plastic wrap

sharp pencil

bandana

black and yellow construction paper for a more crafty, bee-inspired blindfold (optional)

The hardest part of this honeybee smell test may be the smelling itself...if you are anything like me right now with allergies stuffing up your nose! But, assuming you and your kiddos still possess the ability to smell, here's how to set up this honeybee smelling activity matching game.

Getting Started

Line up a series of containers at the end of your kitchen table, one container for every smelly item you plan on using. Place an odoriferous sample in each container. Cover them tightly with plastic wrap and then use the sharp pencil to poke several small holes in the top - to make smelling the goodies possible but not too easy. Make less holes for the really pungent stuff like cinnamon and more for flowers, nuts and mint candies. Repeat the process down at the other end of your table. If you have a round table then you've got all curves and no ends, so just make the best of it!

Make sure that when you are done, you have two of each sample (one on each end of the table) so that your little one can find the match. Now jumble up the order of one set of containers to make this smelling activity a true challenge!

How To Play

Have your child take a good strong sniff of the first sample at one end of the table, inhaling the scent through the small holes in the plastic wrap. Instruct them to store that smell away as they buzzzzzz their way to the other side of the table where you've placed the second set of samples. Now, see if they can be like a bee and locate the matching scent.

Let them continue fluttering from side to side until all the smelly matches have been discovered.

Congratulations, you've now got an adorable little honeybee in your family! And Music for Sprouts has got a charming theme song for you and your kids.

Learn More About The Disappearance of Honeybees

You can help the honeybees! Read about the bee shortage, its impact on the world's food supply and the economy, and what we all might do to keep our black and yellow friends pollinating for years to come.

More Adventures in Learning

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The Honeybee Smelling Activity . Activities for Kids: Adventures In Learning . PBS Parents | PBS

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Have you been outdoors at any point during the past few weeks? Of course, you have! So, of course, you've encountered at least one of them. They are small, a little bit fuzzy, nattily clad in black and yellow-like miniature Pittsburgh sports fans, and get a bad rap because of the whole stinging thing.

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Lesson Plans

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The Lesson Plan Library offers high school lesson plans covering all major school subjects and special interests.

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Scholastic

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Get the Buzz on Honey Bees: national standards-aligned science and geography lessons sponsored by Bee Movie | Scholastic.com

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Get the Buzz on Honey Bees is an educational program that aligns with national standards in science and geography. Developed by Scholastic and generously sponsored by DreamWorks Animation, these materials teach critical life science and geography skills, and feature the fun characters from the upcoming animated film, Bee Movie.

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Lesson Plans All Grade Levels

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PollinatorLIVE: A Distance Learning Adventure | Lesson Plans

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The lesson plans were aligned to the former National Science Education Standards. For the Next General Science Standards, go to http://www.nextgenscience.org/next-generation-science-standards.

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Teacher Guide/Lesson Plans

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Kentucky Agriculture And Environment In The Classroom

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Celebrate National Honey Bee Day with Classroom Lessons and Activities

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​Honeybees play a vital role in pollination which means they play a vital role in agriculture and pollinating the food that is on our table. Here are some fun activities, lesson plans, and books...

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Honeybees Lesson Plans and Lesson Ideas | BrainPOP Educators

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In this educational resource page you will find lesson plans and teaching tips about Science learn about bees, hives, workers, queens, pollen, nectar, animals, and stingers.

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Bringing bees and more into the classroom......

Read about and watch lovely leafcutter bees......

Interesting facts about the marvellous honey bee...... Read

Swarming Bees
The sight of swarming bees may unnerve some people, bu it's a very natural and wonderful part of the life cycle of honey bees ( Apis mellifera). Read

Found a bee in need of
It will usually be a bumble bee. Here's how to help a bedraggled bee, and when to leave it alone. Read

Herbs for bees
There's a great variety of wild and cultivated herbs for bees out there, and many herbs are among the best plants for bees. Read

Do bees sleep?
Scientific study suggests that bees exhibit behaviours that suggest they do!
Read

How do honey bees make honey?
"A bee is an exquisite chemist" said the Royal Beekeeper to King Charles 1. He was right, of course! Read

Why do bees have furry bodies?
As bees visit flowers, they collect fine pollen grains on the many hairs on their bodies. Read

Do honey bees harm wild bees?
Not all science is good science. Here is an important review. Read

Bees trapped in spider webs?
Once free from the web, the bee will clean itself. Read

Brilliant Bees
Bee-themed puzzle book for kids, including honey bees, bumble bees and solitary bees. Read

Did you know, there are about 25,000 types of bees in the world, with probably more species awaiting discovery?

Were you aware that most species are solitary, that males cannot sting, and that collectively, they help to pollinate an estimated one third of all the food we eat?

Find out more about bees and how you can help them.....................

What can you do to help bees?

You could also ask your council to do their bit.

Without doubt, one of the most important thing you can do is ensure you include as many plants for bees in your garden as possible.

If you like what you read, please share the pages via social media too - and let's spread the buzz about bees!

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Amazon and the Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates.

COPYRIGHT 2010 - 2019: WWW.BUZZABOUTBEES.NET
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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Interesting facts about the marvellous honey bee...... Read Swarming Bees The sight of swarming bees may unnerve some people, bu it's a very natural and wonderful part of the life cycle of honey bees ( Apis mellifera). Read Found a bee in need of It will usually be a bumble bee.

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Pollination can be a rather difficult concept to learn-after all, do the bees eat the pollen, or the nectar? And why is pollination so important anyway?

Well, let's get our facts down, so we're all on the same page. When a honey bee lands on a flower, it uses its long tube-shaped tongue (called a proboscis) like a straw to drink the sweet nectar inside the flower. This nectar is eventually turned into honey by the bees at the hive. While the bee was busy getting a drink, tiny grains of pollen often get stuck to the bee. These grains of pollen come from the male part of the flower, the stamen. When a bee flies to a different flower to get more nectar, some of the pollen grains will fall off of the bee and onto the new flower. If they land on the pistil of the flower (the female section of the flower), then the flower gets pollinated and will be able to create a fruit and seed. The plant provides nectar for the bees, and the bees allow the flower to reproduce! Birds, butterflies, moths, bats, and flies can also pollinate flowers, in addition to bees. Some flowers can also be pollinated by the wind (green flowers are usually wind-pollinated).

So, honeybees do not intentionally bring pollen from one flower to another, it just gets stuck to them by accident and transported to other flowers. Just to confuse things, however, female honey bees DO occasionally collect pollen-it is eaten by young honey bees, larvae, and the honey bee queen. But for the purposes of teaching pollination to elementary age kids, I would leave this part out-pollination is confusing as it is!
Pollination Activity #1 -Act it out!
This is a lot of information to process (for younger kids, I would definitely simplify it further), and I find that acting out pollination can be a fun and illuminating activity.

1. On the day when we are learning about pollination, I often start by introducing the different pollinators and allowing students to decorate wings to wear. I give them the choice of making bee, butterfly or moth wings, since those are the most common pollinators in our area.

2. Once they are all wearing their wings, I give each student a straw and tell them it is their proboscis and also put a strip of double-sided tape on each student's arm (since the pollen will need to stick to them).

3. A helper teacher and I will both put on headbands with petals attached, to show that we are flowers. We each have a cup filled with apple juice, to represent the nectar in the flower.

4. Half of the students line up in front of myself, and half in front of my helper. They use their 'proboscis' to take a sip of the 'nectar' and I stick a cotton ball on the tape on their arm, telling them that pollen just got stuck to them.

5. Then I send them to the line in front of the other flower. There, they will take another sip of nectar and the other flower will take the 'pollen' that was stuck to the students' arm. Presto! They successfully pollinated the flower.

Pollination Activity #2-Pollination Tag
This next activity is a good reinforcement of the importance of pollination to plants. Start by telling students to draw their favorite fruit on a piece of paper. On the other side of the paper, tell students to draw a large flower. In the center of their flower, place a piece of double-sided tape, and attach a cotton ball to the flower. This is the pollen! Students may choose to color the cotton ball with marker to distinguish their pollen from the other flower's in the class. Next, choose three students to be pollinators. They can put on their wings from the previous day's activity. The pollinators will now chase the flowers in a game of tag (you may want to implement some rules for safety). When a flower is tagged, it must give its pollen to the pollinator. If the pollinator is already carrying a cotton ball, he/she hands the pollen to the flower to pollinate it. When this happens, the flower turns over his/her piece of paper to show that he/she turned into a fruit. This player then comes out of the game to sit down. The game ends when most of the flowers have been pollinated and turned into fruits!
Pollination Activity #3-Pollination Scavenger hunt
Get your students out in the garden, observing pollinators in action! This activity works anywhere that you have lots of colorful flowers, whether in your own schoolyard garden, or on a field trip.

Scavenger hunts are one of those rare things that can truly be done with all ages. Pre-K - 2nd grade students will enjoy simply finding and observing bees and butterflies, identifying flower colors, and learning to use a chart. For older students it is still completely engaging and can set the stage for great conversations and projects around how pollinators and plants adapt to match each other best. (I've even done this with a group of adults and we enjoyed it!)

For more information on the Pollination Scavenger hunt, click below:

If you are interested in looking at supplemental materials for all three of these activities, click below:
Other Resources:
You may also want to check out a second page of pollination games, activities, and resources that I have found and compiled. Also, another pollination activity can be found at the bottom of this page about tomatillos, in which students will use paint brushes to help pollinate the flowers of tomatillo plants (this activity can be done with other fruits and veggies as well).

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Pollination can be a rather difficult concept to learn--after all, do the bees eat the pollen, or the nectar? And why is pollination so important anyway? Well, let's get our facts down, so we're all on the same page. When a honey bee lands on a flower, it uses its long tube-shaped tongue (called a...

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My third grader is learning about Daniel Boone in his Trail Guide To Learning study. In this week's reading assignment, there is a story of trying to get honey from a bee hive up in a tree. Because Trail Guide To Learning is a unit study type curriculum, honey bees will be our science topic this week.

To get started, I wanted to learn more about honey bee anatomy. I made a worksheet with a diagram of the bee and a bee anatomy vocabulary sheet, plus I added a quiz and a diagram my son can label himself. You can download this 4 page honey bee packet for free and use it in your honey bee study.
For further honey bee study resources: Honey Bee Unit Study Resources Benefits Of Insects Printable Worksheet Honey Bee Resources Pinterest Board

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Honey Bee Anatomy Printable Lesson - The Homeschool Scientist

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My third grader is learning about Daniel Boone in his Trail Guide To Learning study. In this week's reading assignment, there is a story of trying to get honey from a bee hive up in a tree. Because Trail Guide To Learning is a unit study type curriculum, honey bees will be our science topic this week.

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bubble wrap bee hive insects spring bubble wrap

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My husband brought home a bunch of bubble wrap for the kids to play with and, although bubble wrap can be entertaining by itself, I wante...

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4) Buzzing Noisemakers by Teach Beside Me

5) Potato Masher Bee Art via The Education Center

6) Bee Footprint Art by Hand Print Art

7) Buzzing Bee Balloon via Skip to my Lou

8) Recycled Bumble Bee Garden Stake by Coffee with Us 3

9) Honeycomb Art and Finger Print Bees by Mom 2 Posh Little Divas

10) Buzz with Joy Father's Day Card by The Pleasantest Thing

11) Bumble Bee Pumpkin via St. Clair Times

12)Pool Noodle Bees by Next Comes L

13) Recycled Water Bottle Bee Craft by Little Acorns

13) Toilet Paper Roll Bumble Bee by Mom 2 Posh Little Divas

14) Bee Handprint via Pinterest

15) Exploring Sounds with a Buzz Basket by Next Comes L

If you were looking for a simple preschool, kindergarten or elementary school craft, I hope you found something here that you like. Obviously, each of these art projects is appropriate for different skill levels and ages, so you'll need to see what will work best for you and your child.

To keep the conversation going, here are 5 books with bees that you might like to read with your child:
The Honeybee and the Robber by Eric Carle The Honey Makers by Gail Gibbons The Beautiful Bee Book by Susan Unstead Fuzzy Bee and Friends by Roger Priddy Time For Kids: Bees!
Did you know that September is National Honey Month which gives us the perfect excuse to celebrate bees and teach our kids how important honey bees are us and our future!

Do you have any other crafts, activities or tips for helping children learn about bees? If so, please comment below.

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15 Easy Bee Crafts: Preschool & Big Kids

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I've been wanting to write about bumble bee crafts and kid's activities for a while, and I'm really excited to share these ideas with you. This post has all of the best preschool and children's crafts about bees that I could find. Now, they're all in one place!

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Honey bees are important insects that have been in the news recently.

Let's take a look at some wonderful children's books about honey bees and other bees.(Note: Linked titles go to Amazon for more information. Please see the disclaimer below).

Beginning Reader

Discusses honey bees foraging, their dances and how they make honey, with large color photographs.

Bees and Their Hives (Pepple Plus; Animal Homes) by Linda Tagliaferro

Bees by Rebecca Rissman

For the youngest set, combines large color photographs with simple rhyming text. "Do you hear that sound? Buzz! Buzz! Buzz! Buzz! It's a bee! Covered in black and yellow fuzz!"

Reading Level: PreK-K
Publisher: Raintree (2013)
ISBN: 9781410948021 / 1-4109-4802-1

Picture Books

Written and illustrated by Micucci, this lovely book gets high marks for both accuracy and ability to hold the reader's interest. Covers many aspects of bees, including their life cycle and behavior.

Also illustrated by the author, this text highlights honey production and beekeeping. Gail Gibbons books are uniformly high quality and children enjoy them

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

by Jose Maria Parramon and A. Julivert

Probably the most densely information-packed of all the books in this list, this older title is worth looking up.

Age Range: 5 and up
Publisher: Holiday House (May 1, 2010)
ISBN-10: 082342247X
ISBN-13: 978-0823422470

Poetry

Using honey bee metaphors to explore various aspects of living.

UnBEElievables: Honeybee Poems and Paintings, a newer book by Douglas Florian (2012), goes into more scientific detail than some of his other books of poetry. The reader comes away with an appreciation of bees and how they live.

Middle Grade

This book examines colony collapse disorder or CCD - the problem with honey bees disappearing that has been in the news - by going right to the beekeeper who first noticed missing bees. Dave Hackenberg runs a large company, Hackenberg Apiaries. He moves thousands of hives around the country. When he found 400 empty hives in Florida, he knew something big had gone wrong and he sounded the alarm. Burns then introduces us to four bee scientists who are at the front lines of CCD research, and explains their roles in the investigation.

Publisher: HMH Books for Young Readers (April 16, 2013)
ISBN-10: 0544003268
ISBN-13: 978-0544003262

Publisher: Lerner Publishing Group (August 1, 2013)
ISBN-10: 1467705926
ISBN-13: 978-1467705929

Nonfiction appropriate for Young Adults

A noted expert on bees, Buchmann is a passionate and informed author. He does, however, write using complex sentences and vocabulary. If in doubt whether it is age appropriate, check the excerpt on the Amazon page for idea of the reading level.

Lessons Featuring Honey Bees

Fiction

A realistic fiction picture book about a man named Fred who keeps bees on his rooftop in Brooklyn. Description of the honey-making process included.

When a young girl wants a break from reading, her grandfather takes her on a quest to find a bee tree. It is a tale about life's adventures.

Disclaimer: Just so you know, I am an affiliate with Amazon. If you make a purchase after clicking on one of the title links, I will receive a small commission at no extra charge to you, the proceeds of which will help pay for maintaining this website.

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Honey bees are important insects that have been in the news recently. Let's take a look at some wonderful children's books about honey bees and other bees.(Note: Linked titles go to Amazon for more information. Please see the disclaimer below). Beginning Reader Discusses honey bees foraging, their dances and how they make honey, with large color photographs.

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Teacher Guide

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Honeybees communicate with sophisticated "dances" to tell other bees where to find nectar and pollen. Your group will reenact a couple of these dances to learn about bees and how they communicate with each other.

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Discover recipes, home ideas, style inspiration and other ideas to try.

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Teacher Guide

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Pollination and the Honey Bee Teacher's Guide

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Differences between Honeybees and Bumblebees

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Differences between Honeybees and Bumblebees

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Bee Diversity Lesson Plans

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What Can a Layperson do to Help Honeybees?

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What Can a Layperson do to Help Honeybees?

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Gallery of images generated with B-EYE - A simulation of how a Honey Bee sees the world.

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Dance and communication of honeybees: navigation using the polarization of the sky

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Bee's polarized compass and amazing dance

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Lesson Plans

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Pollinators

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We have created new maps for 2016. We realized that we needed to take into account when in the flowering season each count was taken because a count of two bees in early April in California might be relatively low yet in Maine would be very high because of the difference in the seasons.

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Lesson Plans

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Dance Language Teacher Guide

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When we think of insects, most of us think of pests. We think of them as a nuisance that need to be squished, sprayed, exterminated or ran from. They carry the big "ewwww" factor.

Over at Creation Conversations, Dr. John Ashton wrote an article on termites. He spoke of the destructive nature of these wood eating little beasts that we all associate with termites. However, he went on to describe how some types of termites actually benefit us by fertilizing the soil. This got me thinking. Maybe insects aren't all bad all the time.

What are the benefits of insects?

Pollination

Honey bees, moths and butterflies pollinate plants. Without theses pollinating insects, plants wouldn't reproduce. Without plants, we couldn't survive.

Decomposition

Insects help with decomposition. For example, when trees die, insects move in, tunnel and colonize the wood. Some eat the wood and some eat the wood eaters. This helps break down the trees much faster than microbial decomposition alone.

Honey and Beeswax

Honey bees make honey and beeswax. Honey has been a sweetener source for centuries and beeswax is still used for candles, cosmetics and more.

Learn more about honey bees with this honey bee anatomy lesson with free printable and these honey bee unit study resources.

Silk

Without silkworms, we would not have silk. Silkworms make silk fiber that is spun into cocoons. These cocoons are collected and unraveled to obtain the silk fibers.

Food

Insects are food for animals and humans. Raccoons, birds, some snakes and lizards, frogs, fish are some animals that rely on insects for their food source. In many parts of th e world, humans eat insects, as well. They are know to be nutritious, plentiful and quite tasty. (I'll take their word on it. yuck)

Pest Control

Some insects are helpful to humans in that they actually help control the nuisanse insect population. For instance, ladybird beetles feed on aphids that destroy flowers and crops. Farmers and gardeners have been known to release ladybird beetles onto their crops as a means of controlling harmful insect populations without the use of chemicals.

Have you ever thought of insects as anything but pests? All creatures serve a purpose in the ecosystem. Who will do their job if one of them is removed? All creatures are important. Except for gnats. I can't find a reason for gnats. Just sayin.

Insect Identification Worksheet

Ready to head outside and find out more about our 6 legged friends? Grab a bug collection jar, a magnifying glass, and an insect guide. Use this FREE insect worksheet download to record data about the insects you find. Use an insect guide book or an online insect guide like them one at InsectIdentification.org to fill out the worksheet and learn more about the insects around you.

insect worksheet

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Benefits Of Insects and FREE Insect Worksheet - The Homeschool Scientist

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When we think of insects, most of us think of pests. We think of them as a nuisance that need to be squished, sprayed, exterminated or ran from. They carry the big "ewwww" factor. Over at Creation Conversations, Dr. John Ashton wrote an article on termites.

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Insect Identification - Site detailing North American bugs, spiders and insects covering species types such as bees, ants, wasps, butterlifes, moths, beetles dragonflies and more.

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Insect and Spider Identification - Information and Pictures of North American Insects, Spiders, and Bugs.