Most bee species (and yes, there is not only our well known Apis mellifera) are solitary and don't make honey (on the other hand, they remain good pollen carriers). But for the social ones, how does it work in the colonies?
To explain it to Minus, I proposed him to create our own colony.
Materials :
For the hive:
- Cardboard
- Toilet paper rolls
- Yellow paint
- Brushes
- Scissors
- Glue
For the bees :
- Salt dough (2 glasses of flour, 1 glass of salt and 1 glass of water, add more or less water depending on the humidity in the room)
- Paints (blue, yellow, black, brown)
- Brushes
- Oven (80°C, 1h30)
How to build ?
For the hive:
(1) Cut the toilet paper rolls to make circles about 2cm high
(2) Paint the cardboard and each toilet paper circle in yellow to make the colony cells.
(3) Glue the cells on the cardboard and cut the excess cardboard.
For the bees:
(1) With salt dough, form several bees, a pupa (a kind of chrysalis), a larva and eggs
(2) Put the characters in the oven (80 to 100°C) for at least 1h30.
The +: if the oven is too hot, they will broke; few time in the oven, they will remain moist and therefore soft.
(3) Paint the little characters
The hive is ready to begin its activities:
- The queen, the only fertile female in the hive, will spend most of her life laying eggs.
- The workers have a heavy workload. They will have to perform several tasks during their life: first housekeeper, then nurse, queen's helper, mason, ventilator, guard, and finally forager (and yes, the bees we see foraging are the oldest and most experienced in the hive).
- The drones, the males with a very short life cycle that will be useful for the fertilization of future queens.
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