Create a pretend “beehive” with “honey combs” using bubble wrap, old scrap paper, shipping boxes, shoe boxes, or any other paper product.

What you’ll need:

• bubble wrap

• yellow paint

• scrap paper, wood, cardboard boxes, or any paper product

Honey Comb Art:

1. Cut the bubble wrap into different sizes and shapes (long strips, triangles, hexagons, circles, squares, etc.).

2. Using paint brushes or sponges, dab yellow paint onto the bubble wrap, and help the children press the painted bubble wrap onto the shipping box, cardboard, or any paper or materials you have on hand.

3. Use the “beehive” for dramatic play or as a special place to store any bee projects or activities. Note: bubble wrap can be rinsed and reused.

Bee Fun Facts:

• Honey bees are great dancers! To share information about where they can find food and flowers with nectar, bees perform a ‘waggle dance’. When a worker bee flies back to the hive, it dances in a special way, and waggles its body to show other bees where to go to find food.

• A queen bee can live up to five years. She is busy in the summer, when she can lay up to 2,500 eggs a day!

• Without bees, we wouldn't have many kinds of beautiful flowers, and many of our favorite foods like apples, almonds, chocolate, blueberries, cherries, avocados, cucumbers, pumpkins, squash, oranges, and grapefruit.

• Bees need our help. Bees have been disappearing, due to pollution, or their homes or food sources (flowers) being destroyed. We can help by planting flowers and plants that bees can visit and drink nectar from.

• Bees have 5 eyes and 6 legs. Honey bees live in large groups called colonies. An average beehive can hold 50,000 bees.

• Bees can have many different jobs. Worker bees are females. They do all the different jobs needed to keep the hive working, such as caring for the baby bees, making honey, keeping the hive clean and getting nectar and pollen from flowers. Male bees don’t gather nectar and pollen, and do not carry stingers.

• A honey bee visits 50-100 flowers during each trip out of the hive. Honey bees don't sleep! They only stay very still during the night to save energy for the next day.

• Bees have 2 stomachs – one for eating, and one for storing nectar!

• Beekeepers wear a special white outfit as bees don’t like dark colors and to protect their bodies from stings.

• Beekeepers use special smoke to help calm the bees and make it safe to take honey from the beehive. Bees are very smart, and can even recognize different human faces. Bees have a very strong sense of smell - 100 times better than a human.

• Special wax comes from the honeycomb in a hive. In can be used to make candles, lip balms, crayons, skin creams, and makeup.