Nerdy Jobs: Beekeeping

Grade level
Time
50 minutes
Start the lessonPrint the worksheetTeacher guide
Time
1 hour 3 minutes
Materials needed
A calculator
Start the lessonPrint the worksheetTeacher guide
Time
1 hour
Materials needed
A calculator
Start the lessonPrint the worksheetTeacher guide
A honey bee drinking nectar from a flower in a garden in Washington, D.C.
Sources
  1. Alexandra-Maria Klein, Bernard Vaissière, James Cane, Ingolf Steffan-Dewenter, Saul Cunningham, Claire Kremen and Teja Tscharntke, led from the University of Göttingen in Germany, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 2007
  2. Ashley Mortensen, Daniel Schmehl and Jamie Ellis, University of Florida Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS), “European Honey Bee, Apis mellifera Linnaeus and subspecies,” EDIS fact sheet EENY568
  3. The Mid-Atlantic Apiculture Research and Extension Consortium (MAAREC), a group of university beekeeping extension programs hosted by the University of Delaware, “The Colony and Its Organization”
  4. Shelby Kittle, Louise Lynch-O’Brien, Autumn Smart and Judy Wu-Smart, University of Nebraska–Lincoln Department of Entomology, “Beekeepers’ Guide to Comb Honey Production,” Nebraska Extension NebGuide G2362, March 2025
  5. Susan Nicolson, Hannelie Human and Christian Pirk, University of Pretoria in South Africa, Scientific Reports, 2022
  6. Kenya Fernandes, Dee Carter and four co-authors, University of Sydney in Australia, Frontiers in Nutrition, 2022
  7. Adam Siegel, Kim Fondrk, Gro Amdam and Robert Page, Arizona State University, Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 2013
  8. The European Commission’s food fraud team and its Joint Research Centre, EU coordinated action “From the hives”, results published 2023
  9. The 6-to-8-pound range for honey per pound of wax: Kevin Palmer and Paula Rogers Huff, “Hand-Rolled Beeswax Candle,” University of Wisconsin-Extension, 2012
  10. Vision and Change core concepts and competencies, as summarized in Brownell and others, CBE Life Sciences Education, 2014
  11. Bee Country pages: home, About Us, contact, why a guarantee
  12. Beekeeper training from Cornell CALS, Beekeeping Courses & Certifications
  13. Word origins from Dictionary.com: apiary, apiarist, -ary, nucleus, library, binary, melliferous, mellifluous
  14. Spanish and French words from Wiktionary: abeja, abeille, apicula