BeeBots are the newest robotic additions to Fuqua School’s STEAM Lab and are designed to teach students simple programming and coding skills. Their display led to an interest in studying the hardworking insects. Bees not only make honey, they have a major role in pollinating our fruits and vegetables. Students learned that our food supply would be greatly affected if we do not protect bees from environmental hazards.

During this project-based learning lesson, kindergarten and first-grade students created and pollinated beehives, second and third-grade created honeycombs and beehive prints, fourth and fifth-grade calculated the location of flower fields, sixth and seventh-graders designed model hives, and eighth-graders researched biomimicry, bee farming and the global impact of the recent decline in bee populations in “The Silence of the Bees” documentary.