The Fairy-Land of Science · Lecture IX, part 2 · Part 9: Lecture IX: Bees in the hive
26. Honey, baby bees, queens and swarms
Goal: Your child can tell how a bee collects honey and pollen, how a baby bee grows from egg to adult, and how a new queen is made.
You'll need
- A spoonful of honey (and a piece of comb honey, if you have it)
- A magnifying glass
- A sunny garden or park with flowers, for watching bees
- Science notebook and pencils
What's in the book
Pages 201 to 211. Bees sip honey with their long tongue and carry it home in a honey-bag; they roll pollen into balls and pack it into "baskets" on their back legs; bee-bread; the queen laying eggs; larvae, sealed cells and cocoons; twenty-one days from egg to bee; royal cells and royal jelly; swarming; young queens piping; the drones driven out in autumn; fanning bees, guard bees, and a slug sealed in propolis.
The lesson, step by step
Hook question
Taste a little honey.
SayHow did this get from a flower into a jar?
Let your child tell what they know.
Read together
Read pages 201 and 202. The bee sucks up the honey with her long tongue and stores it in a honey-bag inside her. She rolls pollen into balls and passes them back to her hind legs.
Here she will pack it into a little hairy groove called a "basket" in the joint of one of the hind legs
The pollen becomes "bee-bread" for the young bees.
From egg to bee
Read or tell pages 203 and 204. The queen lays one tiny egg in each cell. It hatches into a little grub (larva), which the nurses feed. Then they seal the cell with wax, and the grub spins a silk cocoon.
At last, just twenty-one days after the egg was laid, the young bee is quite perfect
Count 21 days on a calendar together: three weeks!
Queens and swarms
Read or tell pages 205 to 208. A queen grows in a big cell like a thimble and is fed on special royal jelly. When a new queen is about to come out, the old queen flies off with thousands of workers: that's a swarm. Buckley tells how young queens make a piping noise, and how the drones are put out of the hive in the autumn because they do no work.
Try it: watch the workers
Read page 209.
Some of the bees stand close to the entrance, with their faces towards it, and opening their wings, so as to make them into fans, they wave them to and fro, producing a current of air.
Go out to some flowers on a warm, sunny day and watch the bees from a few steps away. Can you see full pollen baskets on their back legs, like little yellow or orange lumps?
Safety: watch bees from a few steps away and keep still; never swat at them or touch a hive or a swarm. Anyone allergic to stings should stay indoors and watch through a window.
Tell it back and check
Your child tells the story of a worker bee from egg to honey-gatherer. Then ask:
1. Where does a bee carry pollen?
2. How many days from egg to bee?
3. What makes a grub grow into a queen?
What we know now
A queen can lay more than a thousand eggs a day in summer, many more than Buckley's 200. Summer workers live only about six weeks; bees born in autumn live through the winter. We also know that a worker who finds good flowers does a "waggle dance" in the hive to tell the others which way to fly and how far. Honey bees came to America with European settlers.
Afterwards
Notice it this week: on a warm, sunny day, find a patch of flowers and count how many bees visit in five minutes. Look for pollen baskets.
Tip
Bees busy at flowers are gentle and rarely sting unless squeezed or swatted. Stay calm and still, and your child will too.
Answers to the book's problems
1. In the pollen "baskets" on her hind legs. 2. Twenty-one days. 3. Being raised in a large royal cell and fed royal jelly.
Worked out for this site from the scan. If a number in your copy differs, trust the book.