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Kids Learn Why Bees Are Awesome | National Geographic

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Learn More About Pollinators from Vitamin Bee

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Learn More About Pollinators from Vitamin Bee

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Learn More About Pollinators from Vitamin Bee

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Busy Bees! | Bumblebees and Honeybees | Amazing Animals | SciShow Kids

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Buzzing bees are a delight to watch on beautiful spring and summer days. As they travel from flower to flower, pollinating and enjoying their work, bees seem to float on the air.

In their natural environment, bees live in hives and produce lots of sweet honey. It would be hard to go from tree to tree, though, to collect all the honey that we eat and use in all sorts of recipes. Instead, some people choose to keep bees in special hives to produce honey year-round.

Who are we talking about? Beekeepers, of course! They're the people you often see in funny-looking suits and masks. Why do they wear them? They're one good way of preventing getting by bees.

Yes, beekeepers do get by bees. It's only natural. If you spend as much time around bees as beekeepers do, stings are inevitable. It's just part of the risk that goes along with the rewards of keeping bees.

How often a gets depends on how many and what types of bees are being kept. It also depends on individual skill and practice. The more experienced a becomes, the fewer stings are likely to occur.

In addition to learning what types of behavior bother the bees - and avoiding such behavior - the best protection against bee stings is to wear protective gear. This can include a or mask, or a protective bee suit.

Although bee stings can hurt, they tend to hurt less over time the more you get stung. This is because the body can build up a to bee . Some brave beekeepers actually allow themselves to be purposefully several times each season, so that their bodies will build up a and make any subsequent stings less painful!

Beekeepers also use other strategies to avoid stings. For example, avoid working with bees on cold, cloudy, and windy days. These conditions tend to make bees more and may lead to a greater chance of being stung.

Beekeepers also often use smokers when working with bees. A little smoke around the hive helps to calm the bees and make them less active. When they're calm and , bees are much less likely to .

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Buzzing bees are a delight to watch on beautiful spring and summer days. As they travel from flower to flower, pollinating and enjoying their work, bees seem to float on the air. In their natural environment, bees live in hives and produce lots of sweet honey.

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Today's Wonder of the Day was inspired by Lucas. Lucas Wonders, " How do bees pollinate? " Thanks for WONDERing with us, Lucas!

Have you ever heard someone say that bees are responsible for one of every three bites of food you eat? That's an estimate-it's impossible to exactly. However, it's clear that bees play a role in food production . They are excellent pollinators!

Most food crops-including fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds-must go through pollination. That's the process of moving tiny cells between plants to help them make seeds.

How does pollination happen? It's mainly accomplished by insects. And, of all the insects that plants and flowers, bees are by far the most important. They spend most of their lives collecting . It's a primary source of that they feed to their young.

When bees land on flowers, the hairs on their legs attract cells through a force like static electricity. The bees store some of this to take back to their nests. Other bits of it get left on other flowers, completing the process of pollination.

The flowers also reward the bees for their hard work. They produce sweet that gives bees the they need to live their busy lives. In fact, you've probably heard the phrase "busy bee" in the past. That certainly holds true when you think about the important job they do for flowers and crops.

How many flowers can a bee in one day? About 5,000! If you think that's amazing, consider this: To make one pound of honey, a hive of bees must travel over 55,000 miles and visit two million flowers!

Yes, bees certainly are busy. And today, they face many threats to their survival. Where would our world be without these hard-working furry insects? We'd rather not find out!

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Today's Wonder of the Day was inspired by Lucas. Lucas Wonders, " How do bees pollinate? " Thanks for WONDERing with us, Lucas! Have you ever heard someone say that bees are responsible for one of every three bites of food you eat? That's an estimate-it's impossible to exactly.

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Today's Wonder of the Day was inspired by Bo from NC. Bo Wonders, " Where do bees go when it's cold? " Thanks for WONDERing with us, Bo!

When winter rolls around, bears and birds south, but what about the bees? Like every other creature on earth, bees have their own ways of with temperatures during the winter season. One way bees prepare for the winter is by gathering a winter reserve of .

Honeybees head to the when temperatures drop into the 50s. As the weather becomes cool, the honeybees gather in a central area of the and form a "winter ." A winter is much like a you may have seen at a football game - except it lasts all winter!

Bees have one main job in the winter - to take care of the queen bee. This means they must keep her safe and warm.

In order to do so, worker bees surround the queen and form a with their bodies. The worker bees then flutter their wings and shiver. This constant motion and continuous use of energy is how the bees keep the inside temperature of the warm.

In order to keep shivering, the bees must have enough . This is how they get their energy. One of the most important jobs of the beekeeper in the winter is to make sure the supply stays full so the bees can keep shivering.

Though the queen is always at the center of the , worker bees from the outside to the inside of the , so no individual worker bee gets too . The temperature of the ranges from 46 degrees at the to 80 degrees at the . The colder the weather is outside, the more the becomes.

In order to produce body heat and stay alive, honeybees must rely on for energy. Some studies have found that hives of honeybees will consume up to 30 pounds of stored over the course of a single winter. On warmer days, bees will leave the briefly in order to eliminate body outside the .

Fun facts about bees:

Honeybees are the only that produces food eaten by humans.

Worker honeybees are female.

The average worker bee produces only 1/12 teaspoon of over her lifetime.

A worker bee lives about 6 weeks. The queen bee can live to be 5 years old.

To make one pound of , bees must visit 2 million flowers.

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Today's Wonder of the Day was inspired by Bo from NC. Bo Wonders, " Where do bees go when it's cold? " Thanks for WONDERing with us, Bo! When winter rolls around, bears and birds south, but what about the bees? Like every other creature on earth, bees have their own ways of with temperatures during the winter season.

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What did the husband bee say to his wife when he got home?

"Hi Honey!"

Isn't that the best bee joke you've ever heard? What? It isn't? We don't bee-lieve it!

Bee jokes have created quite a around Wonderopolis these days. Of course, that's probably bee-cause bees are such important creatures, and we simply love the honey they make. In fact, some of our Wonder Friends were recently WONDERing exactly how it is that bees make that .

Most of us have never dared to inside a beehive. Is a typical filled with tiny stoves, cooking pots, and stirring spoons? Not quite! The real process of making honey is much more personal than that!

The process begins when bees go hunting. Older worker bees fly outside the searching for flowers filled with nectar. Depending upon the weather and the time of year, they may have to fly several miles to find the flowers they need.

When bees flowers, they in and use their long, straw-like tongues to suck out the flower's nectar, which is very similar to sugar water. They don't digest it, though. The nectar gets stored in their extra stomach (called a "crop") for the flight home. Bees may visit hundreds of flowers to fill their crops with nectar.

During the return flight, the nectar mixes with enzymes in the crop. The enzymes slowly begin to change the chemical composition of the nectar to begin the process of turning it into honey. The sugar (sucrose) in the nectar is broken down into simple sugars (glucose and ) during this process, which is known as inversion.

Back at the , the bees regurgitate (that's the scientific word for "throw up") the nectar into younger worker bees' mouths, where it continues to be broken down even further. The regurgitation process repeats until the nectar has been broken down completely, at which point it is regurgitated into a honeycomb .

The deposited nectar does not yet resemble honey, because it's too watery (about 80% water). bees quickly begin fanning the fresh nectar with their wings to speed along the natural process of evaporation . Once the nectar's water content drops to around 14-18%, it will resemble the thick, golden we know as honey.

When the bees are satisfied with the honey, they seal the honeycomb cells with a liquid from their abdomens. This hardens into beeswax, which helps to keep air and water away from the honey. Stored this way, the honey will keep indefinitely . This makes it the perfect food source to keep bees happy and healthy throughout the long, cold winter.

If you've ever seen an active beehive, you know it can be filled with hundreds and even thousands of bees. That's a good thing, because a single worker bee can only produce about one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey over the course of its life. Working together, though, thousands of bees can produce hundreds of pounds of honey in a typical year.

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There's nothing sweeter than the buzz about today's Wonder of the Day!

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When it comes to bees, you may wonder what all the buzz is about. The rapid wing beats of bees create vibrations in the air that the human ear detects as buzzing.

The bigger a bee is, the slower its wings beat. The slower its wings beat, the lower the of the buzzing will sound.

Buzzing isn't just for show, however - it also serves an important purpose. When certain of "buzz- pollinating " bees, such as bumblebees, visit a flower, the buzzing and vibrations of their wings and bodies cause to shake off the flower.

The then attaches to the bee's body and is deposited on the next flower the bee stops to visit. This of from flower to flower is called " pollination ."

Bees play such an important role in pollination that some plants - such as blueberries, green peppers and tomatoes - have adapted to help make the process easier for buzzing bees. Bumblebees pollinate these crops much more efficiently than "non-buzzing" bees, such as honeybees.

So the next time you find yourself snacking on a handful of blueberries - thank a bumblebee!

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When it comes to bees, you may wonder what all the buzz is about. The rapid wing beats of bees create vibrations in the air that the human ear detects as buzzing. The bigger a bee is, the slower its wings beat. The slower its wings beat, the lower the of the buzzing will sound.