Honey bees (Apis mellifera) are the most important pollinators of many cultivated food crops and other flowering plants. These plants would be in trouble without bees, and so would we. Rights ...
The ‘Buzz of bees’ is a Connected journal devoted entirely to bees. Each article has diagrams and illustrations that offer opportunities for students to develop the science capability ‘Interpret ...
Below are some interesting facts about bees and honey. Find out more about bees and pollination. All worker bees are female. A bee produces a teaspoon of honey (about 5 grams) in her lifetime. To ...
One of New Zealand’s most well known insects is the wētā, of the Orthoptera order, but there are thousands of other insects species, some of which we know very little about. Rights: Photo by Tom ...
The life cycle of the monarch butterfly. Click on one of titles to find out more about each stage.
All honeys have properties that help them heal wounds. But how do they do this, and what’s so unique about Mānuka honey? The problem with wounds In normal situations, like a cut finger or a ...
Dr Mark Goodwin of Plant & Food Research explains what artificial pollination is and why it is needed for kiwifruit. Some work of the company PollenPlus is shown, including their QuadDuster ...
Getting good crops of avocados in New Zealand is not always easy, and pollination is part of the problem. The avocado is a fruit tree introduced to New Zealand from Central America. It likes warm ...
Dr Mark Goodwin of Plant & Food Research explains how flowering plants use self-pollination or cross-pollination in their reproduction. He uses kiwifruit and avocado as examples to show how ...
Here are links to Science Learning Hub resources for primary teachers related to insects in the Living World strand of the New Zealand Curriculum. Investigate insects found in New Zealand to ...
In Spring 2020 Countdown developed a fantastic collection of insect cards and an album full of amazing facts and activities all about insects found in Aotearoa New Zealand. It is an excellent ...
Next time you eat a kiwifruit, cut it in half and look at it before taking a bite. Look for the little seeds – most kiwifruit have about 1,000, so you can’t miss them. To get seeds in a ...
Flowers are not on plants just to make them look pretty. They are there as a vital part of a flowering plant’s life cycle. Not all plants have flowers, find out what flowering plants are and how ...
Discover more about five New Zealand insects, each one representing a different order within the insect kingdom.
Honey is antibacterial and can prevent growth of most types of bacteria. This experiment compares the effect of different types of honey on bacteria growing on agar plates. Purpose To compare the ...
What is an insect and should we really care about these creepy crawlies? In a word – yes. As American biologist Edward O Wilson puts it, they are “the little things that run the world”. There are ...
In this activity, students take on the role of flower parts and act out the process of insect pollination By the end of this activity, students should be able to: understand that pollination ...
Professor Peter Dearden, from the University of Otago, is interested in how genotype makes phenotype. In this video, he talks about his laboratory’s research where they manipulate individual ...
You may have been spreading honey on your toast for a few years, but people have been using it to treat illnesses for thousands of years! Now honey is being used to make a product that can help ...
Although honey from New Zealand’s Mānuka trees looks a lot like other honeys, there is one important difference that makes it extra special. Different honeys from different flowers New Zealand’s ...
Flowering plants create seeds, which get spread away from the parents and grow into new plants in new places. Pollination has to happen before seeds can be made, so flowers have a range of ways ...
In this webinar, join Greta Dromgool as she introduces Tom Saunders and Chrissie Painting – two of Aotearoa New Zealand’s amazing entomologists. Delve into the fascinating world of insects and ...
Pollinators are insects that visit flowers to drink nectar or feed on pollen. During this process, they get covered in pollen grains and then transport the pollen from one plant to another ...
Watch varroa mites (white juveniles and brown adults) on honey bees and learn how they spread viruses that kill bee colonies. Dr Mark Goodwin of Plant & Food Research shows hives being ...
