Bee Hotel Model
For our MYP2 Science unit on plant reproduction, we learnt about the importance of pollinators such as bees. Each student in our class made a bee hotel model, as part of a class experiment, aimed at investigating which shape of bee hotels are preferred by bees. Bee hotels are man-made artificial habitats created using wood, recycled material, twigs, ropes, etc. replicating the natural habitat, to the maximum extent. We decided to explore shapes such as hexagonal, triangular, and cylindrical bee hotel models.
While researching, we got to learn about bees and their habitats, how they are endangered by human activities, and the impact of their endangerment. We learnt about their importance and their contribution to our society. Hence, we decided to help bees through our unit, and make the bee hotels. Many bee hotels were damaged during the experiment because of rain and wind. Many bee hotels needed to be repaired or needed to be assembled again. Not only did we learn more, but our experiment also provided us with some vital information for further research!
We generated hypotheses regarding which shape of the model will attract the most bees, and collected data as a class over a period of three weeks.
Since we had limited availability of materials, we used newspaper, plastic, straws, etc. We followed tutorials online to be able to construct the bee hotel.