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I really enjoyed learning about the different pollinators during this module. I liked learning about what the pollinators did for us. I thought it was interesting how many of the food and crops we have would not be in Ireland without bees pollinating them. I was also surprised when I found put that wasps and bees are different species. I always thought that they came from the same family so it was interesting and surprising to find out they weren’t related. It was also surprising when I found out there are different types of bees. For example, honey bees and bumble bees are different types of bees. Honey bees are smaller and make lots of honey, while bumble bees are bigger and fuzzier and make less honey.

If I did this module again I think I would like to find out more about how bees operate. I understand that they communicate through dance but I think I would like to learn about how people figured out the bees communicated through dance. I would also like to know how people knew that bees could not see the colour red and could only see the UV lights at the ends.

Overall I really enjoyed this module as it taught me very interesting things about bees that I would never know if I hadn’t been in this module. Going forward I will try and help bees and other pollinators by planting wildflowers, or not trampling grass and flowers in public places so the bees can still have the flowers to pollinate.

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Bees are in trouble because of habitat loss, loss of food diversity, invasive alien species and pollution.

They are in a 30% decline and butterflies are in a 18% decline.

It is important to protect them so they can pollinate crops and other plants.

The National pollinator initiative has been going on since 2015. They are pollinator friendly, they raise awareness of pollinators and protecting them, they support bee keepers or growers, they expand our knowledge on the services pollinators provide and they collect evidence to track change.

If you ran a sweep nest through long grass you would get many insects as the insects have more places to hide in the long grass as opposed to a cut grass where you would only find 2 insects.

We can help by planting native species in parks or gardens. This allows the bees to pollinate them and gives the bees more food.

During summer you can leave your lawn unmowed, to give the bees more things to pollinate.

Leave flowers alone, don’t walk over them or cut them so the bees have more things to pollinate.

Many species live in nest in south facing banks. You should leave exposed soil at the edge of lawns to attract ground nesting species.

Plant a wildflower patch if you have enough space. Use Red Clover as it is good or any other flower that the bees can pollinate. Try and use flowers with blue and yellow flowers as well as the bees can see those colours better.

You can grow plants in your school or at your house.

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Bees dont have brains. Normal bumblebees live up to a year.

The bees communicate through dancing. They do the round, the waggle and the tremble.

Bumblebees like to build their nests in compost heaps or garden sheds.

Solitary bees live alone and not in colonies like other bees. Only 3% of bees live in colonies.

The queen bee has a coloured dot on her back. If you take the queen bee out of the hive all the other bees will follow her.

The queen lays an egg in a wax cell. A worker feeds the the hatched larvae until the larvae reaches full growth. Then the larvae becomes a pupa and the adult bee leaves the cell.

After the bee emerges they clean the dirty honeycomb, feed larvae, build honeycomb, receive food from foragers, guard the hive from predators like mice and rats, remove corpses and forage for nectar pollen and water. They live around 5-7 weeks.

Only bees drink nectar which they gather from flowers. They climb into the flower and suck the nectar out with their mouths. The nectar is passed from bee to bee which makes honey.

Bees pollinate many fruit and veg and without the bees pollinating them a person would have to with a brush. Some examples of food they pollinate are raspberries, squash, tea and watermelon.

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Bees and wasps are completely different species. Wasps live a year and bees live 6weeks or 6 months depending when they were born. Bees born at the start of the summer live 6 weeks and bees born in September live 6 months as they can go in the hive.

Many different fruits and veg are reliant on bees for pollination and if the bees didn’t pollinate them they would go extinct because they wouldn’t be able to produce seeds.

Bees have different eyes than us. On the rainbow they can’t see the colour red but they can see the UV lights at the end. This means they can’t pollinate red flowers unless the flower has UV lights that the bee can see.

One bee in its lifetime will make half a tablespoon of honey. They are the most important pollinators.

Pollinators help carry pollen from the male part of the flower to the female part of the flower. The male part is called the stamen and the female part is called the stigma

Some other examples of pollinators are butterflies, wasps, birds and bats.