Proboscis Discovery

A bee’s tongue, called a proboscis is long and pointy, so is yours if you stick it out as far as you can. Their tongue is soft like yours too. Bees need long tongues so that they can reach into flowers to where the nectar is.

Their tongue works like a straw. The bee unrolls it's tongue and dips it into a flower. Then sucks up the nectar like you would drink from a straw.

Bees will also use their tongues like a cat to lick their fur to keep themselves clean. They lick and clean each other and their mother the queen. Their tongues are also used like brooms to lick the inside of their hive to keep it clean.

Click on this link for more bee information.

Here we are using straws to experiment what it would be like be a bee using a proboscis. 

We had a competition to see which group could suck up the most water in 2 minutes.

It was a lot of fun!