Let’s go on a pollen hunt

Learn more about how bees collect pollen with this fun game!

Supplies

• The Hive: At least one egg carton (can use as many as you want)
  • Tape or hot glue if putting multiple egg cartons together into a larger hive. Can also attach egg cartons to the sides of a cardboard box for a 3D hive.
• The Pollen: Pom-poms or cotton balls or even crumpled up paper—anything that is roundish and small enough to fit into one of the cups of the egg carton.

Directions

• Together, pick a home base for the egg carton hive and set it up there
• Hide pollen around the house, making sure there are no little bees spying
  • The level of difficulty for hiding spots can be easily adjusted
• Have kid(s) find the pollen and carry it to the hive! 
  • Bees can only carry so much at once, so limit the amount of pollen they can collect at one time. They should be going back and forth between hunting down the hiding spots and dropping off the pollen they collect. 
• Once all the pollen has been found, you can count how many pom-poms/cotton balls were collected. 
  • Celebrate! Do a bee dance, eat a treat (bees get hungry after hunting for nectar and pollen all day), high five!

Variations

• You can spend some time coloring flower coloring sheets (or making paper flowers) and placing them around the room to make an outdoor scene. You can place pollen near the flowers to help younger children find pollen, or they can just be decoration.
• Color-code the egg cups in the carton and the pollen: match the pollen color with the correct egg cup.
• Make a pollen basket! You can decorate a paper cup (or make a cup/bowl/basket out of paper+pipe cleaners), use an existing regular basket, a bowl, whatever you want to carry the pollen.
• Timed! How much pollen can you collect in 10 minutes? 5 minutes? 2 minutes?
• Use a second material to represent nectar–bees collect this, too, and store it in the hive.
• Dance like a bee! If a worker bee finds a good source of pollen or nectar, she will return to the hive and do a “waggle dance” which tells the other worker bees where it is. Dance like a bee to tell your hive mates where to find more pollen and nectar!