This video segment from NOVA: "The Mystery of Animal Pathfinders" explores honeybee communication and navigation.
BeeVisit enables students to evaluate the relative contributions of different pollinator species to a plant's reproductive success through an interactive model of pollen transfer.
The model tracks a plant's presentation of pollen through time; pollen may be presented gradually or all at once, and the program lets you choose from a family of power curves to model the shape of the cumulative pollen presentation curve over a set number of time intervals (usually 100). Then, 'bees' of 1, 2, or 3 types are allowed to visit the plant.
You specify the expected number and type of visits; this sets the probability of a visit occurring during each interval, and visits occur stochastically according to these probabilities.
The bee obtains nectar to take to the beehive where it is used to make honey and provide food for the bees. The bee grabs pollen and transfers it to other flowers. This is called pollination and helps flowers reproduce.
Learn about bees, their habitat and how to interact with a swarm in this Wild TV video segment.
The bee obtains nectar from the flower to make into honey. During this process, the bee is covered in pollen that will be transferred to other flowers for reproduction. Both the bee and the flower benefit from this process.
In this video segment from WILD TV, learn about bees and the different techniques for handling them.
This interactive feature from the NOVA "Tales from the Hive" Web site explores the methods honeybees use to communicate to their hivemates the location, quantity, and quality of nearby food sources.
In this photograph from Oxford Scientific Films, a horned bee attempts to mate with an Ophrys orchid, which has evolved to resemble a female bee.
Students are asked to explain the relationship between a bee and a flower.
Video interviews with twenty Smithsonian scientists introduce students to the wide variety of work in the sciences. Students will learn the diverse pathways that these scientists took to enter their fields and they will see that many kinds of people become scientists.
