Teach Kids About Mason Bees & How They Make Our Food

Mason Bees are amazing pollinators and kids love to watch these friendly non-stinging bees work. Help your kids become Backyard Scientists and teach them how to explore their yards and gardens. Help them not be afraid of bees and have them learn the difference between honey bees & mason bees, learn how pollinators make their food and teach them about their ecosystem and how to care for ALL pollinators. We have created fun and interactive workbooks and worksheets that are printable in color or black and white and have provided videos that you can share with your kids.

TEACHING RESOURCES:

Oregon State University Provides and Incredible website to teach kids about pollinators. They include bee books, videos and session planning for teachers – https://www.foodhero.org/bees

Read our blog about “How to Involve Kids with Mason Bees” – https://rentmasonbees.com/how-to-involve-kids-with-mason-bees

FUN FACTS FOR KIDS:

MERMAID BEE– Mason bees have an iridescent sheen that looks like a glimmery mermaid tail.
CLUMSY LITTLE BEES – The honey bee carefully collects pollen on their back legs, whereas the mason bee BELLY FLOPS onto the flower and gets pollen all over their bodies.
BEE AMAZED! – It’s good to be clumsy. Mason bees pollinate 95% of the flowers they land on.
HARD WORKERS – Mason bees visit up to 2,000 flowers a day.
HELP HONEYBEES – They co-exist with honeybees and help reduce the stressful demand placed on honeybee colonies.
WORK ALONE – Solitary bees work by themselves, find their own food, build their own nest and lay eggs.
APPLES, BLUEBERRIES, ALMONDS, PEARS & CHERRIES – The food you eat was made by a pollinator.

Rent Mason Bees is the only company in the country who has a mason bee program where you “host” mason bees. By simply hanging up a mason bee house and nesting block, your bees will pollinate your yard and then lay eggs or “baby bees” in your nesting block. The kids love seeing how many holes get plugged because inside every plugged hole are 3-5 babies.

At the end of the season, you mail your nesting block back to Rent Mason Bees and we clean and harvest your babies, who have now turned into cocoons. Then, next Spring your babies are sent to farmers all over the United States to pollinate crops and help farmers make more food like apples, blueberries, almonds, cherries and pears.

The results are: your garden gets pollinated, healthy bees are put back into the ecosystem and farmers produce more food.