Grade 3 | Lesson 5

Science

Lesson Overview

3rd Grade Science

• Ants
• Bees

3rd Grade Science

Ants
With their scissor-like jaws, ants spend hours cutting off pieces of leaf to carry back to their nests. They don't eat these leaves, so why do they carry pieces of leaf many times their own weight far away to their nests?

It's because they eat only one kind of food - a special fungus that they grow on the leaves. They are the only creatures who can make this special fungus grow properly. You already know that a fungus is a decomposer. It grows on dead leaves and other dead matter. Did you know that some funguses are good to eat? If you have ever eaten a mushroom from the grocery, you have eaten a piece of fungus. Did you like the taste? Beware of eating any of the mushrooms you see growing in the woods, because many are poisonous to humans!

The Atta ants take their leaves to a cave they have dug deep underground. Some of their caves are as deep as twenty feet! There in their nests they have their fungus farms. On each piece of leaf in their nest they carefully place a tiny bit of the fungus, which starts to grow on the leaf. In a few days, the leaf will be covered with white fungus. After a while the fungus makes little knobs of delicious food that the ants eat.

To grow their crop, the Atta ants must work hard to keep the conditions just right for their special fungus. The air must not be too dry or too damp. If it is too dry, the ants close the opening to the nest. If the air is too damp, they open up holes to let the air circulate. They must also keep the crop perfectly clean by taking away any foreign fungus that might start infecting the food. Hundreds of Atta ants spend all of their time just cleaning the fungus farm, like farmers removing weeds, so only the right kind of crop will grow there.

The Atta ants are just one of the fascinating members of the ant family. Others, like the carpenter ants and the honeydew ants, are just as interesting.

Research It!
Here is a great website with much more information on ants!

Bees
Bees are also social insects that live in colonies, but they fly instead of marching in a line like ants. The food for some bees is honey. Have you ever eaten honey? Do you know where it comes from? We humans get it from bees' nests! Where do the bees get the honey? They make it from the sweet nectar that they find in hundreds and hundreds of flowers.

How do the bees tell each other where the flowers are to be found? Like ants, they communicate with each other by giving off a chemical scent. But honeybees also have another way of giving each other information. If a bee finds some flowers that are a very good source of nectar, she returns to the hive and performs what is called a "waggle dance." This dance, which provides directions to other bees about how to find flowers, is actually an imitation of how the bee first flew to the flowers. As she turns from side to side, flapping her wings and buzzing, her "waggle dance" is understood by the other workers in the hive, and they fly off toward the flowers. Their path is so straight that a straight line is known as a beeline. Have you heard anyone say, "I made a beeline for it" -- meaning they went absolutely straight for it?

Research It!
So much about bees here!

The lines in this drawing show you the path of this honeybee's "waggle dance."

Research It!
How are bees important to gardeners and farmers? Are bee populations in the United States where they should be?