Hi everyone! Squeaks and I are enjoying a beautiful day outside the fort!
Oh, look, there’s a bee. Oh! It landed on that flower! Let’s watch and see what it does.
We’ll get a little closer, but not bother it!
There it goes, buzzing off to find another flower!
You know, bees are some of my favorite animals to watch! They always seem so...busy!
But do you ever wonder what they do all day?
You might already know that bees are insects...like ants and beetles.
Like all insects, bees have six legs and three body parts.
In bees, these body parts are often brown or yellow...and sometimes they’re striped
with both colors!
Bees also have four wings.
When their wings move back and forth fast enough to make them fly, they make a buzzing
sound that we think of when we hear the word “bee”!
And there’s another part of the bee that you’ve probably heard about: the stinger.
BUT! Not all bees have stingers!
And the ones that do, don’t sting unless they have a really good reason to...
...Like when they’re frightened...or to protect themselves...or to chase other animals
away from their nest.
There are lots of different kinds of bees. But the two kinds that you’ve probably seen
most often are bumblebees and honeybees.
Bumblebees are easy to spot, because they’re big and fluffy.
Honeybees are a little smaller, and don’t look like they’re covered in fuzz the way
bumblebees do.
Both kinds of bees make honey, but bumblebees only make a little, while honeybees produce
a lot of that sweet sticky stuff!
And both kinds of bees also live in big groups, inside nests that we call hives.
Do you want to see inside a honeybee hive? Let’s have a look!
This bee is the queen. No, she doesn’t wear a crown, but she does have a really important
job. She stays in the hive all day, and lays eggs...lots of them!
After three or four days, these eggs will hatch, and eventually grow into adult honeybees.
Most of the other bees that live in the hive are workers.
And worker bees...yup, Squeaks, they do almost all the work.
There are lots of jobs for them to do...like helping to build the hive, and keeping the
hive clean.
But their main job, the one that they do almost all of the time, is to look for food.
That’s what the bee that we saw was doing...she was getting food from that flower.
When a worker bee lands on a flower, she drinks a sweet juice from the inside of the flower.
This juice is called nectar.
While she’s on the flower, the bee also brushes up against the yellow dust that the
flower makes. This dust is called pollen.
So while she’s gathering nectar, the bee also gets covered with pollen as she moves
around on the flower.
When the bee has as much nectar and pollen as she can carry, she flies back to the hive.
She feeds some of the nectar and the pollen to the baby bees and to the queen...and then
she turns most of the nectar into honey.
Bees fly back and forth all day collecting nectar and pollen from flowers, and taking
it back to the hive.
When it gets dark, they go back to the hive and rest. And then they’re up early the
next morning to start again!
If you’ve ever heard the expression “busy as a bee”... now you know why we say that!
So if you see a bee, you don't have to be afraid of it... but do leave her alone and
give her lots of room to get her work done.
...and that work includes more than making honey. . . it has something to do with pollen.
Next time, we’ll see why when you bite into a delicious apple...you should thank a bee.
Thanks for joining us on SciShow Kids. Do you have a question about insects or flowers
or anything else? If so, get help from a grownup, and let us know! You can leave us a comment
below, or send us an email to kids@thescishow.com.
And we’ll see ya next time, here at the fort.