Native 'trees for bees' Spotter Guide (Teacher Support)

Introduction

Flowering trees are an especially important source of food for bees, since they produce annual crops of flowers over their often very long lives. They also have a multitude of other benefits including: providing shelter, binding soil to prevent erosion, providing homes for birds and many native insects and spiders, and, their beauty.

This spotter guide helps students to recognise native trees that are especially favoured by bees. This involves careful observations of distinguishing features.

Native 'trees for bees' Spotter Guide

Relates to: student Native 'Trees for Bees' Spotter Guide

Answers

1. The times of year are likely to correspond to the months shown on the Spotter Guide handout.
2. Honey bees only forage when temperatures are 12° C and higher, and they don't forage in rain or when the wind is stronger than 24 km per hour. So if conditions are not right, honey bees will not be seen on the flowers. Also, they won't forage if the new flowers are not opened enough, or, if the flowers are too old to supply pollen and nectar.
3. The bees might be attracted to the brightly coloured flowers, the masses of small flowers, or the strong pleasant scents released by inconspicuous flowers. More specifically the patterns on the petals of flowers such as ngaio might 'point' the bees to their nectar and pollen sources.
4. Bees gain pollen and nectar food sources from the flowers. If a bee is collecting nectar it will be probing deep into the flower with its tongue (proboscis). You may even see them pushing their whole body into the flower, and their tongue may hang out for a few moments as they prepare to fly away. Bees collecting pollen rub their legs and body over the flower's anthers and use their legs to comb the pollen into 'baskets' on their hind legs. There you will see little blobs of yellow or orange pollen accumulating as they forage.
5. Bee health is affected by the lack of variety and quality of pollen and nectar available for collecting. This is because over recent decades the variety of plants in the environment has declined through modifying and clearing of landscapes for housing or farming, and a tendency of humans to 'clean up' wild unkept areas by spraying.