A colony is a big family
One hive can hold 50,000 bees in summer. Nearly all of them are sisters, and they all have the same mum: the queen. In late spring she can lay more than 1,500 eggs a day.
Bees for young explorers
Five quick things to know about honeybees, and three free activity sheets to print for home or the classroom.
Three kinds of bee
Workers are girls, and do every job: cleaning, feeding babies, building wax comb, guarding, and fetching food. Drones are boys, with big eyes and no sting. The queen lays the eggs.
Bees dance to talk
When a bee finds good flowers, she flies home and does a waggle dance on the comb. The direction and length of her waggle tell her sisters which way to fly and how far.
Honey is dried nectar
Flowers make a sugary drink called nectar. Bees carry it home in a special honey stomach, then fan it with their wings until it's thick and sticky. That's honey, their food for winter.
Bees help plants grow
Pollen sticks to a bee's fuzzy body and rubs off on the next flower. That's pollination, and it's how lots of plants make seeds and fruit, like apples and strawberries.
Be bee-safe
A bee on a flower is busy, not cross. Stay calm and let it fly away. Don't swat or grab. If you see a big cloud or cluster of bees, stay back and tell a grown-up. It might be a swarm.
Free to print
Activity sheets
Each sheet is two A4 pages: the activity, then teacher notes with answers. Print in colour or black and white.
Ages 7–11 · 25 min
Decode a waggle dance
Read five bee dances and find the flowers on the map. Angles as turns, and using a map scale.
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Ages 7–11 · 20 min
Label a honeybee
Name ten parts of a worker bee, then count legs, wings and body parts. Then colour her in.
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Ages 7–11 · 30 min
How many flowers make a jar?
Five steps from nectar to a jar of honey. Big numbers, units, and multi-step problems.
Download PDFFor teachers
Using these in class
The sheets are free to print and photocopy for teaching. The notes page on each one has the answers, links to the science and maths curriculum, and ideas for going further.
For older pupils, Hive Mind works well on a classroom screen: find the hive, click a patch of flowers, and ask the class to predict which way the dance will point. The forage calendar is good for a seasons or plants topic, and Open the hive makes a good whole-class challenge: who can find the queen first?
Spotted a mistake, or want a sheet on something else? Email james@bassitt.co.uk.