La classe de Mme Bensalam: Bzzz...c'est le printemps!

Spring is finally here and it is actually starting to feel like it. The students in Room 111 were busy writing letters to spring. Yes to spring! Have you ever written a letter to a season? The students wrote their final farewells to our old friend winter and welcomed our new and exciting friend, spring. They glued the letters onto a vase with blooming flowers.

As an Eco school initiative, the students of Clairlea are trying to raise awareness about the colony collapse disorder of honey bees. They are not only dying, they are disappearing!

So, my class and I decided to do some research about the honey bee. We discovered that one of the most important facts is to not confuse honey bees with wasps, mosquitoes or other insects which sting us. Throughout this journey of learning and teaching material on honey bees, we wrote one fact about honey bees which are flying above the blooming flowers. Take a look!

Honey bees live in hexagon shaped chambers. The hexagon shaped chambers make good use of space. During winter, honey bees form a tight cluster in their hive to keep the queen and themselves warm.

Only worker bees (female) sting if they feel threatened. They die once they sting. The male honey bees have no stinger.

The honeybee's wings stroke extremely fast, making their famous distinctive buzz sound. A honey bee can fly for up to six miles!

A honeybee uses it's antenna to taste and to smell the nectar in flowers.

A honeybee does a dance called the figure-eight dance or "waggle dance". By performing this dance, worker bees can share with other members of the colony information about the direction and distance of flower gardens, pollen, water sources, or new nest locations.

A honeybee has 2 main eyes made of tiny lenses and 3 simple eyes on top of the head.

The honeybee is attracted to all types of flowers- especially to the Echinacea cone flower. It is a medicinal flower which bees are attracted to.

A honeybee visits 50 to 100 flowers in search of pollen per day.

A honeybee dislikes stinging humans, as it would die following 36 days.

A honeybee does not strip a plant from all of it's pollen; it only takes what it needs and leaves enough pollen for the flower to live.

A honeybee can learn to live with beekeepers named "apiculteur". A beekeeper keeps bees in order to collect their honey, beeswax, and to pollinate plants.