Busy Bees

The most important pollinators in the world are bees! Bees help pollinate plants that create a lot of the foods we eat such as peaches, apricots and almonds. Bees like brightly colored flowers with sweet scents. In exchange for nectar, bees help transport, or bring, pollen to another plant. As a bee walks along a flower to get to nectar, pollen from the flower sticks to its legs. Then when the bee flies to another similar flower, the pollen on its legs rubs off onto the new flower, fertilizing it. The bee then takes the nectar it eats and gives it to worker bees waiting at their hive in honeycombs, where the bees live. The worker bees spread the collected nectar into wax honeycombs where water evaporates from it, which means that the water turns into a gas and disappears into the air. With the help of bees fanning the nectar with their wings, the nectar then turns into thick syrup. This syrup is honey! When the honey is thick enough, bees seal the honeycomb with wax. The honey is then stored until it is ready to be eaten by bees during wintertime.