When honey bees seek out nectar and pollen to make honey with, they visit many different types of flowers, including clover, dandelions, goldenrod, fruit trees, and milkweed. Once at the flower, the worker bee drinks as much nectar as she can hold. When she gets back to the hive, she passes the nectar on to another worker. This worker holds the nectar on her tongue until the water evaporates (leaves the nectar to go back into the air).

She is left with honey on her tongue, which is stored in the hive. To help your little ones understand how this works, we used turkey basters, real flowers, and yellow water to move “nectar” from our “flowers” to a beehive created out of chalk and yellow tape. The purpose of this activity was to suck up the yellow water from the flowers, and use it to make the chalk disappear!

This activity incorporated several developmental tasks. It enabled your little one to formulate ideas based on quantity and space. It also helped your little ones understand how bees obtain pollen from flowers that they take back to their hives. Lastly, by transferring the liquid among the different compartments, your little was given the opportunity to estimate how much should be poured onto our chalk beehive to make the hexagons disappear.