How do bees help plants?
Quick answer from Eartha
Bees help plants by carrying pollen from flower to flower. This is called pollination, and it lets plants make seeds and fruit. When a bee visits a flower for sweet nectar, pollen dust sticks to its fuzzy legs and rubs off at the next flower. No pollen, no apples or pumpkins!
The longer story
Flowers make a sweet juice called nectar to attract visitors like bees. While a bee drinks the nectar, tiny grains of pollen stick to the fuzzy hairs on its body, almost like dust sticking to velcro.
When the bee flies to the next flower, some of that pollen rubs off. This is called pollination, and it is how many plants make seeds, fruit and vegetables.
A single honeybee can visit around 2,000 flowers in one day, buzzing from bloom to bloom without stopping for long. That is a lot of pollinating in just one busy day.
Without bees and other pollinators, many plants could not make the fruits and vegetables that people and animals love to eat, like apples, almonds and pumpkins.
Try this at home: Be a bee
- Dip a cotton bud in a little bit of flour to be your 'pollen'.
- Gently touch it to one flower or drawing of a flower, then touch a different one.
- Talk about how the 'pollen' moved from flower to flower, just like a bee does.
Words to know
- pollen
- Tiny yellow dust made by flowers that helps plants make seeds.
- pollination
- When pollen moves from one flower to another so plants can grow fruit and seeds.
- nectar
- Sweet juice inside flowers that bees drink for energy.
For grown-ups: what is my child learning here?
Age band: 5-8
Curriculum link: Australian Curriculum v9 Science, AC9SFS01, AC9S2U01
The concept: Living things depend on each other, and bees are a key example of animal-plant interdependence.
More classroom ideas are on our teachers page, and safety notes for families are on for parents.
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