Bee photographs

We spent several hours observing bees during this unit (both in the mountains and closer to home), and taking pictures when possible. Some of the pictures were taken by me and some by the children. It is hard to hold the camera still enough! But we were happy to have these pictures because we could then come home and look at the bees more closely, and identify different species and different features on the bees.

We also printed out several of these bee identification cards to take with us on our field trips for reference.

What amazed me most was just how many bees we noticed, once we were looking for them. And how often we could see even very small details, like full pollen baskets or an extended proboscis. I guess you really can see more when you know what to look for (and when you are actually looking)! 

Bees sharing a coneflower

Bulging pollen basket (by the arrow)

I like this bumblebee's orange fur

You can see the dusting of pollen all over this bee's front legs

More very full pollen baskets!

Another strikingly-colored bumblebee

You can see the bee sipping through her proboscis here

Also here

This is an interestingly-colored wasp---the stripes are almost blue or green

And while we were out, we couldn't help but notice some other pollinators. These beautiful butterflies are hard workers too!

This shiny blue one is my favorite!

Bee Pheromone Game and Bee-Dance Treasure Hunt

To help us understand the role of pheromones in a colony of bees, we played an identification game. One pheromone, called Queen Substance, helps the bees identify which bees are from their same colony, and also lets them know that the queen is alive and well. Each colony's queen has a slightly different scent which her own bees will recognize. 

So, for this game, I put a drop of one of four scents on a cotton ball: mint, lemon, almond and vanilla extracts. I put the scented cotton balls around the room (these were the "bees"). Then I gave each child another cotton ball with one of the four scents on it. So, for example, Abe would get almond, Daisy would get lemon, Seb would get mint, and Ky would get vanilla. I had them smell their scent and try to memorize what it smelled like.

Then, they had to go around the room finding and collecting the cotton ball "bees"---but only the ones that matched their own scent. They had to recognize which "bees" were their hive-mates by scent alone. The object of the game was to gather up all of your own-scented "bees," and none of the other "bees."

It was surprisingly hard to do, actually, because your scent receptors become kind of fatigued after a while, and things start to smell the same. And, Sebby had a cold, so he was pretty much just guessing the whole time. :) But it was still a fun way to learn about pheromones, we thought.

The next game was our very favorite. The children kept asking me to play it again, even on later days. It is a bee-dance nectar hunt. We used two of the bee dances, the round dance and the waggle dance, to convey information about the hidden "nectar." Just like with real bees, the round dance signaled that the nectar was close, in the same room as we were in. The waggle dance could convey information about two different places, depending on which direction we did it. If we did the waggle dance while facing east during the waggle, it meant the nectar was outside our current room, to the east (the dining room). If we did the waggle dance facing west, it meant the nectar was outside our current room, to the west (the front living room).

(Video showing a bee dance is here)

So, one child was chosen to be the "scout bee." He or she would take the "nectar" (a Starburst candy leftover from Seb's birthday) and hide it somewhere in one of the three rooms. Then he or she would perform either a round or a waggle dance to help the other bees zero in on the nectar. Once the bees knew which room the nectar was in, they would hunt for it until someone found the nectar. The finder would become the next Scout Bee.

It was super funny to watch everyone doing the Bee Dances, and the Nectar-hunting got quite intense. We loved this game!!

Beehives, Polygons, and Comb Construction Project

Beehives and comb cells are some of the most amazing things! To discover how hexagons are one of the strongest shapes for building with, we made various polygons out of paper---but first we investigated something intriguing I read in this book. The author says: 

"Recently, it has been suggested that the hexagonal cells are an 'emergent property,' that is, at the right temperature . . . the hexagons form on their own. First the bees make cylindrical tubes around themselves and then the hexagonal angles form. Chemically, the beeswax transforms from an amorphous (or unorganized) state into a crystalline state."

To test this, we rolled some clay cylinders out, about pencil size.

We put them into a group and squeezed them slowly together.

You can see that they have (kind of) formed hexagons! If our cylinders were more precise, and our squeezing more uniform, I think it would have been even more obvious.

We also had a good close look at this abandoned wasp's nest we found outside.

Next, we made polygons out of thin strips of paper. We measured the paper strips and figured out how many inches we'd need each side to be for squares, triangles, pentagons, hexagons, and octagons. We each made a couple examples of each type of polygon. Then we joined polygons of the same type together to see how they fit. We put a little foam ball inside each cell to see which cells were the roomiest for holding larvae and pupae.

We discovered that hexagons provide the least wasted space and the most interior space, for the least amount of material needed (perimeter) to make them.

After that, we made comb cells with different colors of paper to represent their different functions. Honey cells were yellow, pollen cells were orange, and brood cells were pink. We arranged these cells in their relative places in the hive (see page 32-33 of this packet for an example).

It was fun and oddly satisfying to make hexagon after hexagon and then tape them together. We would have kept going for longer if we hadn't gotten hungry for lunch.

We hung our finished comb up in a doorway. It got a little stretched out, but we didn't mind.

This is a queen cell hanging off the bottom. With a queen emerging from it.

 We had so much fun with our big beehive that we made smaller ones too. These were made with half-size and half-width strips of paper. We put them on top of white paper so we could draw what each kind of cell was holding inside. Here is Malachi's beehive with honey cells, pollen cells, and brood cells. I love it!

Making Rolled Beeswax Candles

During our Civil War Unit earlier, we tried our hands at candle-dipping---so to go with our discussion of Beeswax during this Bee Unit, we decided to make rolled beeswax candles. I remember making these with my mom when I was young. It is a really fun, easy craft. We had this kit which includes the beeswax sheets and the wicks.

Speaking of beeswax sheets, here is a video we enjoyed about how they are made!

And this is one of the coolest things we've ever seen: a video about how those beautiful layered carved candles are made. It looks so simple, but it must take tons of practice to do it so perfectly. I had never seen one of these candles before seeing this video, but now I want one! :)

We made several long candles, a few shorter ones, and then a bunch of teeny-tiny ones from the scraps! It was fun to cut smaller shapes out of the beeswax and stick them on the outsides of the candles for decoration. We found it was easier to make things stick together if we heated them up for a few seconds with the hairdryer first.

We had fun burning these candles during our Bee Celebration at the end of the unit!

Honey Tasting activity, and Honey Map

The different types of honey are so beautiful. Look at the color variation!

I admit that before we had this tasting activity, I was skeptical about different honeys tasting that different from each other. I have tasted flavored honeys before (the kind with strawberries added, for example) but as far as pure honey, gathered from different types of flowers, I thought "how different can it be?" But we did really taste strong differences. It was fascinating.

I had bought a couple different local honeys at the farmer's market, and I bought a few more types from Amazon for us to try. We had local wildflower honey, local "urban" honey (the guy has hives on top of some buildings in downtown Salt Lake---so interesting), basic clover honey from the grocery store, and then sourwood, blueberry blossom, and orange blossom honey that I ordered online. 

Later we also got to try this honey from the Black Forest, and if you ever get a chance, I highly recommend tasting it. It's expensive, but SO interesting! It's made from "honeydew," which is a substance formed when little aphids feed on the sap of conifers. The aphids eat the sap and excrete this honeydew, and then the bees sip the honeydew and make honey from it. The honey is dark and rich and almost tastes like molasses! Delicious.

Ooh! Also, you should look at these pictures of some honey that bees made from M&Ms in France! 

I made little tasting sheets for us to fill out, and we talked about different adjectives we might use to describe what we tasted. We had water to cleanse our palates between tastes. :) The boys wrote down some great descriptive terms: like lavender, like pine sap, smoky, bitter, ting-y, caramelly, hits top of mouth sweetly. If we don't watch out they'll become wine tasters.

My favorite thing was watching how seriously everyone took this. They'd take a taste, roll it around on their tongues, close their eyes, lick their lips, furrow their brows. It was really funny and cute to watch.

Junie had to participate with everyone else, of course

Daisy filled up her sheet with neatly written observations, too

When we were done tasting, we enjoyed all the different honeys on homemade bread. They were so delicious!! My favorite was the sourwood, but I loved the Urban Honey too---it had an almost smoky taste. So interesting!!

We also talked about where in the United States these different types of honey were collected. We used the map on page 51 of this packet to talk about specialty honeys in different states. The children drew pictures of the kinds of flowers or fruits used to make honey in each state.