Did you know that bees use static electricity to aid in pollination? Their tiny hairs become charged as they fly, allowing them to collect and transfer pollen between flowers—and even detect the electric fields of flowers. In this month’s STEM in a Bag kit, you’ll design a hand pollinator and explore how humans can replicate this process by imagining, building, and testing your own creation using the Engineering Design Process.
Animals help plants reproduce by spreading their pollen and moving their seeds around. Pollinators are animals of all types that visit flowers and take away their pollen. Bees, butterflies, moths, wasps, flies, bats, and birds are just a few different types of pollinators. Many of these animals are threatened or endangered partly because of loss of habitat and pesticide use. Sometimes, when natural pollinators are hard to come by, gardeners will pollinate plants by hand (although bees can do it much more easily than we can).
Design, create, and test a hand pollinator to transfer “pollen” from one “flower” to another.
You are a gardener in a greenhouse and you need to build a device that you can use to pollinate your flowers. You know that some of the insects outside are good at pollination, so you’ve decided to look at them to get ideas.
Based on your sketches, build a device that will pick up and carry the pollen from one of your paper plate flowers to the other.
Maraleen Manos-Jones, known as the “Butterfly Woman,” is a master gardener and environmental activist working in pollinator conservation. Since 1972, she has been raising, tagging, and releasing butterflies. Maraleen regularly travels between Mexico and the United States to observe, protect, and spread awareness about migrating monarch butterflies. She works with women in the mountains of Mexico to sell pine needle crafts as part of a Mexican non-profit reforestation project. Through this project she has helped facilitate the planting of over six million trees in and around the monarch sanctuaries. She is the recipient of the 2022 Pollinator Advocate Award and author of the book The Spirit of Butterflies: Myth, Magic, & Art. Maraleen is a former teacher who has dedicated her life to educating people about the positive actions they can take to help conserve pollinators.
Read about it:
Insect Pollinators by Jennifer Boothroyd
What Lily Gets from Bee and Other Pollination Facts by Ellen Lawrence
Los animales ayudan a las plantas a reproducirse esparciendo su polen y moviendo sus semillas. Los polinizadores son animales que visitan las flores y toman de ellas el polen. Las abejas, las mariposas, las polillas, las avispas, los murciélagos y los pájaros son sólo algunos tipos diferentes de polinizadores. Muchos de estos animales están amenazados o en peligro de extinción en parte debido a la pérdida de hábitat y al uso de pesticidas. A veces, cuando es difícil encontrar polinizadores naturales, los jardineros polinizan las plantas a mano (aunque las abejas pueden hacerlo mucho más fácilmente que nosotros).
La metaDiseñe, cree y pruebe un polinizador manual para transferir “polen” de una “flor” a otra.
El problemaEres jardinero en un invernadero y necesitas construir un dispositivo que puedas utilizar para polinizar tus flores. Sabes que algunos de los insectos del exterior son buenos polinizando, así que has decidido observarlos para obtener ideas.
Idea genial
Diseñarlo y construirloBasándote en tus bocetos, construye un dispositivo que recogerá y transportará el polen de una de las flores de tu plato de papel a la otra.
Pruébalo Maraleen Manos-Jones, conocida como la “Mujer Mariposa”, es una maestra jardinera y activista ambiental que trabaja en la conservación de los polinizadores. Desde 1972, ha estado criando, etiquetando y liberando mariposas. Maraleen viaja regularmente entre México y Estados Unidos para observar, proteger y crear conciencia sobre las mariposas monarca migratorias. Trabaja con mujeres en las montañas de México para vender artesanías con agujas de pino como parte de un proyecto de reforestación mexicano sin fines de lucro. A través de este proyecto, ha ayudado a facilitar la plantación de más de seis millones de árboles dentro y alrededor de los santuarios de las monarcas. Recibió el premio Pollinator Advocate Award 2022 y autora del libro The Spirit of Butterflies: Myth, Magic, & Art. Maraleen es una ex maestra que ha dedicado su vida a educar a las personas sobre las acciones positivas que pueden tomar para ayudar a conservar los polinizadores.
