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Celebrate World Bee Day
World Bee Day is an excellent opportunity to teach your children about the importance of bees and how to respect and protect them.
World Bee Day is celebrated on 20 May each year to raise awareness about the importance of bees and other pollinators for our planet’s ecosystems and human survival.
Bees play a crucial role in pollinating crops, which provide us with the food we eat. However, bees and other pollinators are facing many threats, including habitat loss, pesticide use, and climate change.
It is essential to teach our children about the importance of bees and how to respect and protect them.
Teach your children to respect bees
- Teach your children about the importance of bees. Start by explaining why and how bees are essential for the survival of many plants, animals, and humans. Tell them that bees pollinate crops, which provide us with food, and that without bees, we would lose many of the foods we love, such as apples, almonds, and strawberries.
- Teach your children to respect bees by avoiding swatting or killing them. Explain that bees are not aggressive unless they feel threatened, and they only sting as a last resort. Encourage your children to observe bees from a safe distance and appreciate their work in the environment.
- Encourage your children to plant bee-friendly flowers and herbs in your garden or on your balcony.
10 fun facts about bees
While we all know bees are fascinating creatures, here are some fun facts your child may not know about these busy critters.
- Bees can recognise human faces.
- A bee can fly up to 24 kilometres per hour.
- Bees can see ultraviolet light, which allows them to navigate and locate flowers more easily.
- A single bee can visit up to 1,000 flowers per day.
- Honey bees communicate with each other by dancing. They use different types of dances to indicate the distance and direction of food sources.
- Bees are responsible for pollinating approximately one-third of the food we eat.
- Bees can flap their wings up to 200 times per second, which creates a buzzing sound.
- Bees are excellent mathematicians and can calculate the shortest distance between flowers and their hive.
- Male bees, or drones, do not have stingers.
- Bees have five eyes – two large compound eyes and three smaller eyes on top of their head.
Five fun ways you and your child can celebrate World Bee Day
- Make Bee-friendly Snacks: Take advantage of World Bee Day to make some bee-friendly snacks with your child. You can make honey granola bars, peanut butter and honey sandwiches, or fruit salad with honey dressing. Talk to your child about how honey is made and why bees are essential to the food we eat.
- Create a Bee Garden: Take your child to the local gardening store and pick out some bee-friendly plants to create a bee garden. Have your child help you plant the flowers and explain how bees collect nectar and pollen from flowers. You can also teach your child how to care for the plants and how to keep the garden safe for bees.
- Go on a Bee Hunt: Take your child on a bee hunt to find bees in your backyard or a nearby park. Use a magnifying glass to observe bees and watch as they collect nectar and pollen from flowers. Encourage your child to ask questions and learn more about bees.
- Watch a Bee Documentary: Take some time to watch a bee documentary with your child. Some good options include The Queen of the Sun: What are the Bees Telling Us? or Vanishing of the Bees. These documentaries can help your child learn about the threats facing bees and what we can do to protect them.
- Make a Bee Craft: Create a bee craft with your child, such as a bee bookmark, a bee pencil topper, or a bee house. You can use materials you already have around the house, such as cardboard, felt, or pipe cleaners.
