March 2016. BBCT013. Copyright 2016 ©. All rights reserved. Printed by Baker Goodchild. The Bumblebee Conservation Trust is a registered charity (England & Wales 1115634 / Scotland SC042830). Company registration number 05618710 (England & Wales) Registered Office: Bumblebee Conservation Trust, Parkway House Business Centre, Eastleigh Works, Campbell Road, Eastleigh, Hampshire SO50 5AD.

Why do bumblebees need flowers?Flowers contain pollen and nectar. Bumblebees need both of these to help them grow and to give them energy. Without flowers bumblebees would starve and die.

Different bumblebees have different lengths of tongue. The Great yellow bumblebee has a very long tongue. This makes them good at drinking from long flowers like red clover (each flower is actually a group of little long flowers!).

Colour in the Great yellow bumblebee and the clover flower.

Over to you!

ages

7-10

Wildflower facts• The British countryside used to be covered in beautiful wildflower meadows.• Sadly, changes to farm land have caused most of our wildflowers to disappear. • This means our bumblebees are starving – they don’t have enough food to eat.• Great yellow bumblebees are now really rare – they need lots of long flowers to

survive.• They can still find these flowers in places like Caithness and Scottish islands.

Help the hungry Great yellow bumblebee to find her way to the red clover flower for something to eat.

Would you like it if you had to search for food to eat?

Great yellow bumblebees need food from June – October.

If one visited your garden would it find flowers to feed from in these months?

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

10 21 7 24 15 5

o o t s t l s

7 6 20 7 17 15 8 20 2 20 24 15 13 21 3 9 20 24 19 6

t U t o s G t

15 8 20 5 16 15 7 24 20 20 12 3 12 20 10 12 20 3 15

l l o u l s

22 20 21 21 4 23 2 5 4 2 21 20 2 20 20 24

Create a wildflower maze in your gardenIn the maze on page 1 the Great yellow bumblebee had to work hard to find the lonely flower. Imagine if the walls of the maze were made of wildflowers! It would be easy, she would have lots of food to eat and it would look much nicer too. So, why not create a wildflower maze in your garden?

Caithness is …

Cryptogram puzzle timeCrack the code to find some important information about rare bumblebees! Each number represents a single letter in the alphabet. Work out what each number stands for and write it in the box below the number. We’ve given you a head start with numbers for six letters.

Step 1: Pick a grassy area in your garden and do nothing! If you let the grass grow instead of cutting it you will get wildflowers growing like daisies, red and white clover, buttercups, dandelions and maybe even some thistles!

Step 2: Decide what shape you want your maze to be and get an adult to cut a path through the wildflowers with shears or a small lawnmower.

Step 3: Take a walk through the wildflower maze and count how many different kinds of bumblebee you can see on the flowers. See if you can work out which flower is their favourite.

To support our conservation work, become a member and receive your membership pack of bumblebee information and our members magazine three times a year. Visit www.bumblebeeconservation.org

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