Teaching sequence

Work through this resource material in the following sequence:

10 minutes

Tune In: What’s the buzz about pollinators?

20 minutes

Find Out: Pondering pollinators

25 minutes

Take Action: Peering at pollinators

5 minutes

Reflection

Learning intentions

Students will:

discover Australia’s amazing range of native invertebrate pollinators
explore the impact of invasive invertebrates on native pollinators.

Success criteria

Students can:

use structural features and appearance to identify pollinators.
describe how invasive invertebrates impact the survival of native pollinators.

Preparation

Access the Bug Hunt Australia project in iNaturalist. Set up an account for your class to use and familiarise yourself with the project. Read the Teacher Content Information and decide how you will submit your Bug Hunt Australia finds to the iNaturalist project. You will need to choose an outdoor area where students can conduct their bug hunt. To prevent doubling up of observations, we recommend that you use cones or flagging tape to mark out areas for each group of students. Make sure devices are charged and ready to go!

Tune In: What’s the buzz about pollinators?

Step 1

Ask your students, ‘Why are bees so important for our environment?’. Use the Australia’s Pollinators visual explainer to confirm with students that bees visit flowers and collect nectar for sugar and energy, and pollen for protein. As they travel from flower to flower, they take the pollen with them and transfer some of the pollen to the new flower so it can reproduce and grow fruit and seeds. In the ‘What is pollination?’ slide, you can see pollen stuck to the bee’s legs and body.

Step 2

Ask your students, ‘What does a bee look like?’. Students may suggest that a bee is a small insect with wings and yellow and black stripes. Explain to students that this type of bee that we stereotypically think of was introduced to Australia, and we also have many different types of native Australian bees. Show students the slide of Australia’s bees. Ask students what they notice about these bees.

Explain that bees aren’t the only pollinators in Australia. Show students the slide of Australia’s pollinators. Explain that these are just a small sample of Australia’s pollinators. Ask students if they can think of any other invertebrates that might be pollinators? Students may suggest butterflies, dragonflies, beetles and more!

Step 3

Ask your students, ‘If all these different animals are pollinators, then what is a pollinator?’. As a class, write a definition for the word pollinator. Consider the structural features and behaviours that an animal needs to be considered a pollinator. Here is an example definition.

A pollinator is an animal that helps plants make seeds by carrying pollen from one flower to another. They have features like hairy legs and bodies that pick up pollen. They also show behaviours like visiting lots of flowers of the same kind.

Find Out: Pondering pollinators

Step 1

Let’s dive deeper into the world of pollinators. Start by using the slides to look at our introduced bees, and explain the features and behaviours that make them good pollinators. This includes:

Features

they have hairy bodies and legs that trap pollen
they have special baskets called ‘corbiculae’ on their legs to carry pollen back to the hive
they have a long tongue to drink nectar that makes them get in close to the flower.

Behaviours

they often crawl right inside the flower to drink nectar
honey bees use a ‘waggle dance’ to tell other bees where the best flowers are
they visit many flowers of the same type in one trip
they fly long distances to find flowers
they need to search for food daily.

Step 2

Explain to students that early settlers brought European honey bees (Apis mellifera) with them to Australia as a source of honey and to pollinate European crops. Honey bees pollinate our crops, allowing our food to grow. There are even special beekeepers who take their hives from place to place so they can pollinate crops. However, they can also cause harm as well as do good in our environment. Ask your students if they can think of any ways that honey bees might have a negative impact on the environment.

Use the slide to explain the harm honey bees can cause to the environment, including:

outcompeting other pollinators for food
pollinating invasive plants, helping weeds like thistles to spread
taking over tree hollows that other animals, like native bees, possums, and birds, use as homes
preventing native bees from pollinating native plants (more on this on the next slides).

Step 3

Let’s explore how native bees are adapted to suit Australian environments. Show your students the features and behaviours slides and discuss how these different adaptations make them suited for pollination. We’ve provided more detailed information below to help you scaffold this discussion:

Features

Instead of collecting pollen in corbiculae (the baskets on their legs), some native bees have scopa or thick, branching hairs on their legs and bodies to trap the pollen. This means the pollen is held in a different place on their body and is more likely to be knocked loose when they visit native flowers.
Their bodies and mouth parts are adapted to Australian flowers. Stingless bees (Meliponini) are the perfect size for pollinating small and shallow Eucalyptus flowers, and Teddy Bear bees (Ameillla bombiformis) have long tongue, allowing them to get inside flowers like native pea flowers.

Behaviours

Some native bees can ‘buzz pollinate’ where they vibrate their bodies at a certain frequency to release pollen. Honey bees can’t do this, so if a honey bee visits a flower that needs buzz pollination, they will take the nectar without pollinating the flower.
There are over 2000 species of native bees in Australia, and they forage at different times of day and year.
Some native bees are more likely to show species fidelity and stick to fewer types of flowers. This means there is a better chance of pollination and less chance of cross-pollination, which produces hybrid seeds and fruit (which are not always viable).
Native bees can have different social habits. Teddy Bear bees and blue-banded bees (Amegilla) are solitary, which means they do not live in a colony with other bees and do not have queen bees.

Step 4

Ask your students, ‘What changes to Australia’s environment are causing problems for our native bees?’. Discuss the following with your students, as well as any of their additional ideas.

Feral invasive bees: outcompeting native bees for nesting sites and food
Insecticides: the agriculture industry uses insecticides widely to protect crops from damaging insects. However, these also affect pollinators. Native bees don’t look like the bees people know, and people spray them, thinking they are pests OR people don’t understand the role pollinators play in our environment.
Loss of habitat: land is cleared for development, causing the loss of plant species and habitat fragmentation. Agriculture is often monoculture, causing a boom-bust cycle of food availability. Many native bees make their homes in old trees or underground, and these places are often disturbed or removed.
Climate change: bees are sensitive to heat, and extreme temperatures are damaging. Changes in rainfall patterns change plant flowering patterns, impacting food availability, and drought reduces available food.

Take Action: Peering at pollinators

Step 1

Ask your students to think of different ways they can help our pollinators. In the Visual Explainer, we have included some ideas on a slide for you to use with your students. Explain to your students that we can make small changes on an individual level and that groups of people are also working together to protect Australia’s pollinators.

Students are going to work together with others to help our pollinators by participating in the Bug Hunt. Use the Visual Explainer to introduce the iNaturalist project, citizen science, and ethical bug hunting protocols to your students.

Step 2

Take your students outside to conduct their observations. Make sure students:

have their devices, hats, and sunscreen
understand where they are conducting the Bug Hunt and what the boundaries are
know how much time they will be spending on their survey
remember to fill the frame with their photographs, and take photos of the same bug from different angles
follow the Bug Hunt guidelines and be respectful.

Learning extension: Practice digital literacy skills with your students by uploading the images together. You could either do this as a whole class or use a few observations as demonstrations and let the students upload their observations in groups. They will need to locate all of the images attached to a particular observation, upload them to iNaturalist, select options about the observation that apply, and submit the observation.

Reflection

Step 1

When you return to the classroom, ask your students if they know which of the bugs they found were pollinators. Also, ask them if they know which are native species and which are invasive species. Use the following questions to facilitate a reflection discussion with your class.

How do these introduced/invasive species get into Australia?
How do we balance the needs of agriculture and the use of introduced pollinators with impacts on native invertebrates and ecosystems?
How can we help native invertebrate pollinators?

Bug Hunt: Pollinator Perspectives

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