THE SCIENCE BEHIND BEES & FOOD: How do Bees Make our Food?

Explore how bees help produce many of the foods we eat by learning about the relationship between bees and plants and the basic parts of a flower involved in pollination and fruit production.

This video is part of a larger lesson intended for grades 2-5. It includes other resources including other videos, readings, a full lesson plan, classroom slides, and hands-on activities. Find this lesson on www.bitescized.org and www.eatdrinkthinkkids.com.

This lesson was created with the support of Eat.Drink.Think.Kids., a special content division of Edible Communities created for children, teachers, and families. Edible Communities is the world’s largest media company devoted to healthy, sustainable foods, which publishes 85+ magazines and websites across North America. Learn more at EatDrinkThinkKids.com.

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Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/crop...
https://www.fda.gov/animal-veterinary...
https://apples.extension.org/timing-o...
https://ourworldindata.org/pollinator...
https://www.britannica.com/science/po...
https://www.britannica.com/science/po...
https://xerces.org/sites/default/file...
https://sites.udel.edu/weeklycropupda...
https://theconversation.com/curious-k...
https://kids.britannica.com/kids/arti...
https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00984103
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-017-11....

Educator Notes: A number of simplifications have been made in this video that we want to point out for educators.
We briefly reference tomatoes as an example of a plant that needs bees. Tomato plants are often pollinated by bumblebees, rather than honeybees. However, we included this example because we felt like it was a vegetable many students can relate to.
The anatomy of a flower is simplified so students can focus on a few vocabulary terms, rather than 10+ terms. The pistil and stamen can be further broken down into different structures. You can learn more details about different parts in this free CK-12 textbook resource.
We also simplified the term seeds to describe the ovules and fruit to describe the ovary. You can learn more about these details on Britannica.

Extensions:
While honeybees are one of the world’s most common pollinators, there are thousands of other pollinators that help transfer pollen from one flower to one another. In fact, the honeybee is just one species of bee. There are over 3,600 different bee species in the U.S and Canada. While many pollinators are insects, animals like bats, hummingbirds, and even lemurs can act as pollinators. Learn more about different pollinators in this Article by Xerces: https://xerces.org/pollinator-conserv....

We focused on other foods that bees help produce in this video. To learn more about honey specifically, check out this article by Best Bees: https://bestbees.com/2022/10/26/types....

We choose to focus on crops that are pollinated by honeybees in this video. However, pollinators are essential to the reproduction of many crops, including those that don’t produce edible fruit, making them even more critical for food production! When we take this account, about ¾ of all food crops at least partially depend on bees.

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0:00-2:01 introduction: what foods do bees help produce?
2:01-3:22 pollination and parts of a flower
3:22-5:47 why do flowers need bees to move pollen?
5:47-6:35 review games