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The Buzz on Bees

ACTIVITIES AND LESSON PLANS

Dances with Bees is an elementary-level science activity in which kids discuss animal communication, learn about bee dances, and participate in their own waggle dance.
Bee Memory Experiment has instructions for making a simple homemade bee feeder and using it to test bee memory. For ages 4 and up.
Honey Bees: Science Activities for Kids has bee lesson plans and suggestions for planting a bee garden and building a bee house.
From the University of Arizona, this excellent series of Africanized Honey Bee lesson plans (for grades K-3, 4-6, 7-8, and 9-12) does cover Africanized bees, but actually concentrates on honey bees in general. Included are activities and projects, printable information sheets and worksheets, and a bibliography to accompany each lesson.
Bees Louise has a list of bee-based lesson plans for a range of ages. For example, kids learn bee anatomy by creating their own bee costumes; make a “Colorful Bees” mobile; make a Nectar Navigator and learn how bees find food; dissect a flower while learning about pollination; and dissect an adult bee.

DISAPPEARING BEES

 Suzanne Slade’s What If There Were No Bees? (Picture Window Books, 2010) emphasizes the importance of bees to ecosystems and food chains. Other titles in the series include What If There Were No Gray Wolves? and What If There Were No Sea Otters? Thought-provoking picture books for ages 5-8.

Odo Hirsch’s Darius Bell and the Crystal Bees (Allen & Unwin, 2012) does not, as I expected, feature magical crystal bees. Instead, the real bees are dying; the Bell estate – which raises fruits and vegetables – is threatened; and Darius sets out to solve the problem, despite opposition from a villainous mayor and difficult school principal. For ages 8-12.

The Hive Detectives: Chronicle of a Honey Bee Catastrophe by Loree Griffin Burns (Houghton Mifflin Books for Children, 2010) tracks four scientists as they try to solve the current mystery of disappearing honeybees, a deadly phenomenon known as “colony collapse disorder” or CCD. Illustrated with color photographs; included is an excellent supplementary resource list.  For ages 11 and up.
From the New Yorker, Stung by Elizabeth Kolbert is an excellent article on bees and colony collapse disorder (CCD).
Birds as well as bees? From Wired magazine, this article discusses concerns that the neonicotinoid pesticides implicated in colony collapse disorder may also be killing birds.
From Forbes, Colony Collapse Disorder – The Real Story Behind Neonics and Mass Bee Death argues that there may be more to CCD than a pesticide problem.
Queen of the Sun (2010) is a documentary on the global bee crisis, with appearances by beekeepers, entomologists, and historians, among them Michael Pollan and May Berenbaum.
The Foundation for the Preservation of Honey Bees sponsors an annual bee-based essay contest for students. They also have a list of resources for kids.
The Great Sunflower Project is an annual citizen-science project in which participants plant “bee-magnet” plants – such as sunflowers – and count the visiting bees. All ages welcome.
Bee Hunt, funded by the U.S. Department of the Interior and the National Science Foundation, is a citizen science project studying pollinators – including the all-important bee. Find out how to participate at the website.
For more bee-related citizen science projects, see PollinatorLive. The site includes links and brief descriptions of citizen science projects surveying bees, butterflies, birds, and more. (Volunteer!)
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