I thought this year that I might change the content of my bee presentation to include a bit of
role playing, and to that end I sought to see what kinds of numbers I might use to create some
"props".
    After looking at the 1/12 teaspoon for a while I thought that would translate into about 800
"bee-lives" for a pound of honey, at average density.  Alternatively, I show the children a cube of
lucite (clear plastic) that has the volume of one teaspoon, and say that it would take about a dozen
bees to produce that much honey.  A crude estimate, perhaps, but the kids begin to see that it is
important to focus on the whole colony, not just to talk about a single bee. Using the crude number
for the weight of an "average" bee, that means bees can produce roughly 5 or six times their weight
in honey.
  Using these props and a few others, I try to show the kids see what a bee's life is like.  I
divide them into 6 groups, and using rather crude division of the life cycle into 6 equal segments,
the six groups rotate through:
      egg and larva
      capped brood, metamorphosis and emergence
      cleaning and feeding
      comb building and food storage
      guarding
      foraging
Each group of children starts at a single point in the cycle, and they rotate through each of the
stages.  I play some "flight of the bumblebee", then some Klezmer music as the foragers return to
the hive and do a dance to show the guard bees (the next foragers) where the best nectar is.
    My objective is using these crude figures is primarily to show how structured a colony is, and
that honey production is a group effort.  Also important is the point that although there is a
"queen", bees should not be anthropomorphized.....they are not "flying little people", but insects
that do wonderous things, as they have been doing for thousands of years.
   I expect there is a great deal of "slop" in this artful use of math, but I don't present it as
science so much as I use it to support an overall view of a colony and something quite
sophisticated.  I want they to think of the colony the next time they see a honey bee on some
dandelions in the playground.
   Any suggestions to further this end would bee much appreciated.
/Curtis Crowell