Bee Social 2

1. Life in the Colony

Bees are social creatures and can live in colonies of up to 80,000 individuals. Every bee has its own role to play. Worker bees (the bees we see buzzing from flower to flower) are housekeepers, nurses, attendants to the queen, architects, ventilators, guards and foragers.

The queen bee, whose main role is to lay eggs, is slightly bigger than the other bees and has a golden thorax.

Can you spot the queen bee in this hive?

What do you think the other bees are busy doing?

2. The Waggle Dance

Every morning, forager bees leave the hive to look for flowers. Their vision of a field of flowers is very different than ours and looks like a pixelated picture.

Once the honey bee finds flowers to forage, it goes back to the hive and performs a waggle dance to the rest of the bees so that they know where to go.

Complete the image of a bee’s vision of a field of flowers with the colors that correspond to the numbers:

Draw a figure 8 waggle dance the bee is performing to let the other bees know where to go.

Color the flowers in number 3 you colored in the previous activity.