Scene 1
Scene 2
Scene 3
Scene 4
Scene 5
Interactive Wonder-Worksheet 18b · Ages 9-14 · Page 1 of 8
Your mission: become a Pollinator Protector. Work through each page, click your answers, type your ideas and collect Wonder Stars. Some questions have no single right answer - they are there to make you think like a scientist.
Click every animal you think is a pollinator. Careful - a few are tricky!
Did you know? Hoverflies look like wasps but are harmless flies, and they are the UK's second most important pollinators after bees. Moths do the night shift. In Madagascar, ruffed lemurs push their faces into flowers to lick nectar and come away covered in pollen. Earthworms, snails and hedgehogs are brilliant for gardens, but they don't carry pollen between flowers.
Imagine a world with no pollinators. Click the foods that would become rare or very expensive. Leave the ones that could still be grown.
Why? Rice, wheat and sweetcorn are grasses - the wind carries their pollen. Potatoes are grown from pieces of potato, not seeds. But chocolate needs tiny flies called midges to pollinate cocoa flowers, and almond orchards rely on millions of visiting bees.
Choose the right name for each numbered part. Like all insects, a bee has three body sections and six legs.
Bee fact: honeybees have five eyes - two big compound eyes made of thousands of tiny lenses, plus three simple eyes on top of the head that sense light. The pollen basket is a hollow on the back leg, fringed with hairs, where bees pack pollen to carry home.
How is a bee's body similar to, or different from, another pollinator's? Pick a pollinator, research it, then fill in both columns. Helpful website: Bee Professor - honeybee anatomy.
| Honeybee | ||
|---|---|---|
| Animal group | ||
| Number of legs | ||
| Wings (how many? what made of?) | ||
| How it reaches nectar | ||
| How pollen travels on it | ||
| Active by day or night? | ||
| Super skill |
Watch one flowering plant for 10 minutes. Count every visitor.
| Visitor | Tally |
|---|---|
| Bumblebees | |
| Honeybees | |
| Solitary bees | |
| Hoverflies | |
| Other |
Q1. Which flower colour is hardest for a bee to spot?
Q2. Why do tomato growers put bumblebee nests in their greenhouses instead of honeybee hives?
Plan it first! Write what you'll say or show in each scene.
When a honeybee finds good flowers, she flies home and does a waggle dance on the honeycomb to tell her sisters where to go. Scientist Karl von Frisch cracked this code and won a Nobel Prize in 1973.
Q1. A forager waggles 90° to the left of straight up. Where should her sisters fly?
Q2. Bee A waggles for 1 second. Bee B waggles for 3 seconds. Whose flowers are further away?
Honey is made from flower nectar. Bees store it as food for times when there are few flowers, like winter. Only honeybees and a few other bee species make honey. Find out more at honey.com and The Conversation.
A worker honeybee makes about 1/12 of a teaspoon of honey in her whole life. Answer in digits, e.g. 25.
Pollinators need food from early spring to late autumn. Tick four plants to feed them for as many months as possible. (Approximate UK flowering times.)
Tick some plants to see your patch's flowering months.
Watch out: many "double" flowers have extra petals where the pollen-making parts should be, so they give pollinators little or no food. Some flowers are also bred without nectar or pollen, so check before you buy.
Also: don't use pesticides - they harm insects and reduce food for birds and small animals. Find out how to garden naturally instead: 7 things you can do (Pollinator Partnership) · 10 ways to save pollinators (NWF)
Collect wood, hollow stems, sticks, moss, straw, pine cones and old bricks or tiles. Add a roof to keep it dry. Guide: RSPB - Build a bug hotel
Tick what you've found:
Find out what each term means, then explain how it connects to pollinators. Open a hint only if you're stuck!
These happen every year (exact dates can change - check the website). Plan how you could join in.
Want to find out more? These websites will get you started:
How did you find this worksheet?
This is to certify that
has completed Wonder-Worksheet 18b and is now an official Pollinator Protector.
For grown-ups: open questions have no single answer - look for reasons and evidence. Answers: A5 Q1 right angle to the left of the sun, Q2 Bee B · A6 a) 12, b) 768, c) 1,000,000 · A7 e.g. crocus, lungwort, borage, ivy (10 months).