A day in the hive
Follow one honey bee hive from sunrise to night: who wakes first, who feeds the babies, who guards the door, and how bees tell each other where the flowers are.
Grades K–5 This room is for watching and wondering. We never touch a hive. Older students and grown-ups can visit Keeping bees.
- Sunrise: warming up. Bees cannot fly when they are cold. The first foragers shiver their flight muscles to warm up, like stretching before a race. Then they zoom out the door.
- Morning: the queen at work. The queen walks across the comb and lays a tiny egg in each clean cell, one after another. She is the mother of almost every bee in the hive.
- Nursery time. Young nurse bees feed the babies (larvae), which look like little white curls. The babies grow fast and eat many meals a day.
- Builders. House bees make wax from their own bodies and shape it into six-sided cells. Six sides fit together with no gaps and use very little wax.
- Guards at the door. Guard bees smell every bee that lands. If the smell is right, come in. If not, the guards chase the stranger away.
- The waggle dance. A forager who found good flowers comes home and dances: she waggles in a straight line, then loops back and does it again. The direction of the waggle shows which way to fly, and the length shows how far.
- Afternoon: making honey. Bees pass nectar from mouth to mouth and fan their wings to dry it. When it is thick and sweet, they seal the cell with a wax lid. That is honey.
- Hot day? Air conditioning! Some bees bring water and others fan their wings at the door to pull cool air through the hive.
- Evening: everyone home. Foragers come back with pollen baskets full of yellow, orange or even blue pollen. The hive hums all night as bees keep working inside.
Bee-watching rules
Stay to the side
Never stand in front of the hive door. That is the bees' runway.
Be a statue
If a bee lands on you, stay still and calm. It will fly away. Never swat.
Hands off
Never touch or open a hive. Only a trained beekeeper does that.
Tell a grown-up
If you get stung, tell a grown-up right away, especially if you feel itchy all over or it is hard to breathe.
Try it
Dance like a bee
One person hides a paper flower. They come back and waggle-dance toward it. Can the others find the flower from the dance?
Hexagon puzzle
Cut out paper circles, squares and hexagons. Which shape fits together with no gaps? That is why bees build hexagons.
Count the colors
Watch bees landing on flowers in a garden from a safe distance. What colors of pollen do you see on their back legs?
Sources: UF/IFAS Honey Bee Research and Extension Laboratory; USDA ARS Bee Research Laboratory; Karl von Frisch, who decoded the waggle dance (Nobel Prize 1973).