Pollinators & Bees Trivia

Bees don't just make honey. They, along with butterflies, bats, and other pollinators, quietly keep a huge share of the food we eat in production. Test your knowledge of the insects and animals doing the pollinating.

The Hive Mind

A honeybee colony runs like a small, highly organized society: one queen laying eggs, drones whose only job is mating, and thousands of worker bees doing everything else, from foraging to building comb to guarding the hive. Bees even communicate food locations to each other through the famous 'waggle dance.'

Not Just Bees

Bees get most of the credit, but pollinators come in many forms:

• Butterflies and moths
• Bats, especially in desert and tropical regions
• Beetles and certain birds like hummingbirds

Why It Matters

A huge share of fruits, vegetables, and nuts depend on animal pollination to produce food at all. That's part of why events like Colony Collapse Disorder, which caused mysterious mass die-offs of worker bees in the mid-2000s, worried scientists and farmers alike.