Adults can learn how honeybees communicate to one another about the location of food sources. Then, with children, create a garden of paper flowers and introduce a game that highlights the waggling dance that bees use.
Beehive Communication
Honeybees are social insects that live in hives. There are three types of honeybees in the hive – the queen, who lays eggs; workers, the females who tend eggs, build the honeycomb, make honey, guard the hive, and gather nectar (a sweet liquid made by flowers) and pollen; and the male drones that mate with queen honeybees.
Worker honeybees scout an area for flowers where they can gather nectar and pollen. When a worker bee finds a flower patch, she flies into the hive and “dances” for several minutes. If the flowers are close, the honeybee travels in a circle, stops, and then retraces its steps.
The bee’s movements lets the other bees know where they can locate the flowers. If the flowers are further away, the bee travels in a straight run, followed by a turn to the right to circle back to the starting point, another straight run, a turn to the left, again circling back to the beginning.
During this figure eight movement, the bee vibrates, or waggles, her abdomen back and forth. The direction and length of the straight runs give the other worker bees clues as to the direction and distance of the flower patch. For example, when a worker advertises flowers at a distance, the straight run is longer and the waggling slower.
A fun fact - honeybees have to make 80,000 trips to flowers to produce enough honey to fill one jar.
Paper Flower Craft
Create a garden of paper flowers that the students can use to decorate the classroom or outdoors. Cut or purchase colored tissue paper circles. Each flower will require four to six circles, either in the same color or in complementary colors. Take a chenille stem and fold over one end approximately half an inch. Have the children slide the tissue paper circles up the stem to the bent end. After sliding on each circle, slightly crush the paper to give the petals some texture. After all of the circles have been fastened to the chenille stem gently unfold the crushed paper, without flattening it.
Honeybee and Flower Game
Set the flowers around the room, wrapping the chenille stems around different objects to anchor them in place. If the children are playing the game outside, twist the chenille stems around a skewer and stick the pointed end into the ground. Whether playing the game indoors or outdoors, place the flowers in small groupings, scattered throughout the room.
Explain to the children about the way honeybees dance to communicate the location of food. Have the students then practice moving in a circle and a figure eight while wiggling their hips.
To play the game, each child, in turn, secretly selects one of the flowers and “dances” for her classmates, trying to give clues about the location. The children then fly out to the flower patch they think they were told has the best nectar and pollen. Repeat, with different students acting as the scout bee.
Young children can learn how honeybees use their bodies to communicate the location of food sources with a charade game where they mimic the movements of bees.
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