Victorian Curriculum Links

Science Understanding

Scientific understandings, discoveries and inventions are used to inform personal and community decisions and to solve problems that directly affect people’s lives (VCSSU073)

The growth and survival of living things are affected by the physical conditions of their environment (VCSSU075)

Energy from a variety of sources can be used to generate electricity; electric circuits enable this energy to be transferred to another place and then to be transformed into another form of energy (VCSSU081)

Science Inquiry Skills

Construct and use a range of representations, including tables and graphs, to record, represent and describe observations, patterns or relationships in data (VCSIS085)

Communicate ideas and processes using evidence to develop explanations of events and phenomena and to identify simple cause-and-effect relationships (VCSIS088)

Activity Description

GALS teams investigate STEM concepts in this activity; in biological science.

In this hands-on, interactive STEM activity students work together in small teams to gain an insight into bee behaviour. It requires effective communication as the teams discuss their activity response before presenting it to the group.

During their presentations group members take on different roles: some act out their planned bee waggle dance, while others explain this to the audience.

Instructions

Materials

1 set per group

• Black and yellow streamers

• Bee Waggle Dance Handout (download)

Tune In

Why do bees do the round dance?

If a foraging honey bee (Apis mellifera) locates a profitable food source, she returns to the hive and performs a round dance to communicate its location. The forager bee moves in close circles over the comb, alternating directions.

What do the bee's different kinds of dance indicate?

The direction of the food source is indicated by the direction the dancer faces during the straight portion of the dance when the bee is waggling. If she waggles while facing straight upward, then the food source may be found in the direction of the sun.

In the dance, the bee walks in a circle, turns around, then walks the same circle in the opposite direction. She repeats this many times. Sometimes, the bee includes a little waggle as she's turning around. The duration of this waggle is thought to indicate the quality of the flower patch she has found.

A run of 1-second duration indicates the food source is about 1 kilometre away. The quality of the food source is indicated by the vigour of the waggling during the waggle phase and the speed with which the return phase is conducted.

Activity
Provide each pair with the required materials.

Instructions:

Working with a partner, develop a waggle dance to describe to the other bees (the other girls at your school), where there is a good source of pollinated flowers (food source). Use the information sheet provided to understand the waggle dance first.

Allow pairs to work through the following steps:

1. Cut out the symbols on the GALS Bee Waggle Dance Activity handout and use them to decide:

   1. How far away the food source is

   2. What direction the food source is from the hive

   3. How your dance aligns with the position of the sun.

2. Practice your waggle dance, so that you are sure that it is correct.

3. Perform to others in your group and see if they can work out how far the food source is away and in what direction.

Reflection Questions

1. Conduct a PMI (plus, minus, interesting) following this task.

2. Describe a bee’s role in the pollination process?

3. What is pollination and how does it affect our primary industries?

4. What can we learn from bee behaviours?

5. Whilst completing this activity list how you worked well as a team, and how you solved problems.

6. Think of five of your own questions related to this activity, write them down, and answer them.