Bee detective - directions for tracking bees taking nectar to their homes

Ranger Rick, Sept, 1996

Summer is here, and honey bees and bumble bees are busy collecting sweet nectar from flowers. Have you ever wondered where bees go after they load up on nectar?

You can be a detective and figure out where a bee's hive or underground colony is. Follow these instructions to make a bee "tracker" that marks bees so you can track them to their home. One warning, though: Bees can roam pretty far. Good detectives have to "bee" patient!

What You Need:

shallow wooden bowl honey or sugar water flour

What You Do

1. Dust the inside of the bowl with flour. The flour will stick to the bees that visit your bowl and will help you follow them.

2. Put a few tablespoons of honey or sugar water (a one-to-one mixture of sugar and water) in the center of the bowl.

3. Place the bowl on a stump or post in an area where bees are active, such as a garden.

4. Watch from a distance of about a car's length away for the first bee to visit the bowl. When the bee leaves, note the direction it flies in.

5. Move the bowl as far as possible in that direction. Wait for the bee to return. You'll know it's the same bee if the flour is still on her body--but sometimes it rubs off in the hive. (Other bees may come before she returns. If they fly off in the same direction as the first bee did, they may belong to the same hive.)

6. The first bee will usually bring more bees with her on her next visit, and they'll all end up dusted with flour. Keep moving the bowl in the direction of their flight. If you'd like, you can start timing how long it takes the "flour" bees to return. This will help you figure out about how far you are from the nest. Gradually you'll track the bees to their hive.

7. Once you've found the bees' home, you can spend a long time watching their comings and goings. What does their home look like? How often do you see the bees marked with flour? Are the bees more active on sunny days or cloudy days? What time of the day are they most active?

Note: Before starting this activity, make sure an adult knows what you're doing. Always keep a safe distance from the bees to avoid getting stung. And don't do this activity at all if you're allergic to bee stings.