Pollinator counts – insects and flowers

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. Through their actions, they help the plant to reproduce.

Around a third of the plants used by humans require animal pollination to reproduce. Bees are well known as pollinators, but many other insects are also involved, particularly flies, wasps and butterflies.

This article provides pedagogical advice and a selection of resources regarding flowers, bees and pollination basics.

In this activity, students directly observe pollinators on flowering plants and record their observational data on an activity sheet.

By the end of this activity, students should be able to:

• collect and record data about the kinds of pollinators they observe visiting a flower

• collect and record data about the numbers of pollinators they observe visiting a flower

• use an identification sheet to name some common insects

• discuss what they’ve observed and make inferences based on their observations.

Download the activity file (Word) and the identification guide What Is This Bug? (PDF) – see links below.