SciencePlants: the quiet engines30 min★★ difficulty

Flowers, bees and the pollination deal

A flower is an advert, a landing pad and a reward station in one. This lesson is about the deal between plants and pollinators — and what happens to our food if it breaks.

Lesson overview

What you'll learn in this lesson

Understand the interdependence of organisms in an ecosystem, including food webs and insect pollinated crops

Key learning points

• Bright petals are not for us
• Wind pollination is the other strategy
• One third of your plate
• Helping the deal along

This lesson at a glance

30 minutes
20 parts to scroll through
4 quick checks
Marked quiz at the end
Gentle pace: short sittings with pauses

Words to know

interdependenceorganismsecosysteminsectpollinated

Scroll down — the lesson carries on below

Part 1 of 20 · Discover5%

Watch & discover

Part 1 of 20

Watch first

Flowers, bees and the pollination deal

An English teaching video on this topic from Archie Science Show. Watch it, then scroll down for the lesson.

In a nutshell

Understand the interdependence of organisms in an ecosystem, including food webs and insect pollinated crops

What you already know

Part 2 of 20

Before we start

What you already know

You know plants make their own food and that insects visit flowers.

Key words

Part 3 of 20

Key words

Words you'll need today

pollination: The transfer of pollen from the male part of a flower to the female part.
pollinator: An animal that carries pollen between flowers — bees, butterflies, moths, beetles, birds.
fertilisation: When the pollen grain's nucleus joins the ovule, starting a seed.

Learning cycle

Part 4 of 20

Learning cycle 1 of 2

Part 1 — How the deal works

A short piece of teaching, then a check to make sure it has landed.

Explore the idea

Part 5 of 20

Learn

Bright petals are not for us

Colour, scent and nectar guides (lines pointing to the centre, sometimes only visible in ultraviolet) all exist to attract an insect and aim it at the pollen. The nectar is payment: a sugary drink that costs the plant energy but buys a delivery service it cannot provide itself.

Explore the idea

Part 6 of 20

Learn

Wind pollination is the other strategy

Grasses, oaks and birches skip the insect deal and throw pollen into the air. Their flowers are small, green and unscented, with huge feathery stigmas to catch passing grains — and they make the pollen that sets off hay fever. Insect flowers make heavy, sticky pollen; wind flowers make light, dusty clouds of it.

Quick check

Part 7 of 20

Quick check

Nectar is best described as...

Quick check

Part 8 of 20

Quick check

Wind-pollinated flowers usually have...

Reset break

Part 9 of 20

Pause

That's sitting 1 of 2 done

Stretch, get a drink, look out of the window. There is no timer and nothing is counting down — your place is saved, so you can come back in five minutes or tomorrow.

Stop here for now

Learning cycle

Part 10 of 20

Learning cycle 2 of 2

Part 2 — Why we need it

A short piece of teaching, then a check to make sure it has landed.

Explore the idea

Part 11 of 20

Learn

One third of your plate

Roughly a third of the food we eat — apples, strawberries, beans, oilseed rape, almonds — depends on insect pollination. In some parts of China, where pollinators have been lost, people pollinate apple trees by hand with brushes. That is what the bees do for free.

Explore the idea

Part 12 of 20

Learn

Helping the deal along

Pollinators are declining under habitat loss, pesticides and disease. The fixes are surprisingly small: a patch of wildflowers, a lawn mown less often, a bee hotel, no spray on flowering plants. A garden can be a service station on a pollinator's motorway.

Quick check

Part 13 of 20

Quick check

About how much of our food depends on insect pollination?

Quick check

Part 14 of 20

Quick check

Pollination happens before...

Investigate evidence

Part 15 of 20

Evidence 1 of 1

primary

A beekeeper's record of apple orchard yields

British Beekeepers Association guidance, Present day

Orchard with two beehives at the field edge: 38 tonnes of apples per hectare. Similar orchard with no hives nearby: 21 tonnes per hectare. Fruit from the hived orchard was also more uniform in shape.

Farmers pay beekeepers to place hives in orchards because insect pollination directly changes how much fruit sets and how well it forms.

Think like a historian

The two orchards were alike in soil, weather and trees. What does the yield difference suggest about pollinators, and why might the fruit shape differ too?

Source: Beekeeping and farming guidance published for growers.

View the archive record ↗

Common mix-ups

Part 16 of 20

Common mix-ups

Things people often get wrong

Thinking bees are the only pollinators — moths, flies, beetles and even bats do the job.
Thinking all flowers are insect-pollinated — many trees and all grasses use wind.
Confusing pollination (pollen transfer) with fertilisation (the nuclei joining).

Challenge round

Part 17 of 20

Game · Sort it

Which of these are true?

Drag each card into the right column. Tap a card first if dragging is fiddly.

True

Not true

Challenge round

Part 18 of 20

Game · Fill the gaps

Finish the sentences

Choose the word that belongs in each gap.

Colour, scent and nectar guides (lines pointing to the centre, sometimes only visible in ultraviolet) all exist to attract an ____ and aim it at the pollen.

Mastery quiz

Part 19 of 20

Marked quiz

End of lesson quiz: Flowers, bees and the pollination deal

3 questions, marked with the reasoning shown. No timer.

1. A pollinator is...
2. Hay fever is caused mainly by...
3. One way a gardener can help pollinators is...

Lesson round-up

Part 20 of 20

Lesson round-up

Ready when you are

Quiz score

Not sat

Games

Not played

Points this lesson

Best run

0 in a row

Luna: 0 out of 4 on the practice checks. Only if you feel up to it — one more?

Ask Luna

Do the work

Your written work for this lesson

This is the part you'd do in your book at school. Pick the pieces below, write here or on paper, and photograph anything you draw or work out.

Case study

Why the school greenhouse failed

A science club grew tomato plants in the school greenhouse. In June the plants grew well: leaves were dark green and the fruit set quickly. In July the club went away for two weeks and left the greenhouse door shut. When they came back, the leaves were curled and pale and most of the fruit had dropped.

The club had a data logger inside. It showed the temperature reached 46 °C on several afternoons and the soil moisture fell close to zero. The club knew photosynthesis needs light, water and carbon dioxide, and that enzymes in a plant work best in a narrow range of temperature. Above that range the enzymes stop working properly.

The club repeated the summer with the door propped open and a water bottle drip on each pot. Temperature peaked at 31 °C and the plants survived.

Written for Good Learning Co.

Reading questions

Name the variable the club changed the second time, and one variable they kept the same.
Explain, using the words photosynthesis and enzymes, why the plants were damaged in July.
Write a conclusion for the club's report, saying how far the evidence supports it.

Source for this lesson

Use this for the source work task below.

A beekeeper's record of apple orchard yields

primary

British Beekeepers Association guidance, Present day

Orchard with two beehives at the field edge: 38 tonnes of apples per hectare. Similar orchard with no hives nearby: 21 tonnes per hectare. Fruit from the hived orchard was also more uniform in shape.

Farmers pay beekeepers to place hives in orchards because insect pollination directly changes how much fruit sets and how well it forms.

Source: Beekeeping and farming guidance published for growers.

View the original record ↗

Method and results
Writing
Write the aim, what you changed, what you measured and what you kept the same, then record your results in a table.
1 page + results table
Conclusion
Writing
Explain what your results show and why, using the scientific words from the lesson. Say how you know you can trust them.
6–8 sentences
Labelled diagram
Diagram
Draw the apparatus or the process in pencil, label it fully, and photograph it.
1 labelled diagram
Reading and notes
Reading
Read the lesson text again and write the key ideas in your own words.
Half a page of notes

Write your answer, notes or working here

Saved as you type.

Photos of paper work, diagrams or working outHow many minutes did the written work take?

Part 1 of 20 · Watch & discover

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