Bees - French
Background Information About Bees
Expliquer les abeilles aux enfants - A fantastic page in French designed to provide parents and teachers with ideas for teaching young children about bees. However, the page includes explanatory text, informational images, and infographics that would make great texts for students to read and discuss. The page is divided into sections that include images designed to help children learn how to distinguish between bees and other types of insects, a diagram showing the different parts of a bee's body, a diagram that explains the process of pollinization, a picture showing the three different types of bees that live in a typical hive (worker, queen, drone),
Journée mondiale des abeilles : comment font-elles du miel ? - A helpful article in French that is divided into short sections, each titled with questions such as How many bees are there in a hive? What does a beehive look like? What does a beekeeper do? What do bees do inside a hive? What do worker bees do? How can you recognize a bee? Why do bees make honey and how do they do it? How many trips from flower to hive does it take to make a spoonful of honey? What is pollen used for? How can we protect bees?
L'abeille le miel et la ruche 🐝 Documentaire pour bébé et enfant de crèche et maternelle - A 3:22 min. animated "documentary" that begins with the parts of a bee, talks about how bees collect nectar and produce honey, and ends with an explanation of how bees keep warm in the winter
Bee Communication (Bee Dance)
Abeille avenir la danse des abeilles et autres choreographies - A 2:43 min. video that shows a bee dancing in the hive and explains what is happening in French
Apiculture: la danse et le langage chez les abeilles - A very clear, 1:14 min. video that begins with a diagram of the bee dance labeled in French, and then shows a bee dancing inside a hive
La danse des abeilles - A 3:01 min. animated video in French that explains the science behind the bee dance (i.e., its relation to the sun, the earth's magnetic poles, etc.)--especially appropriate for secondary students
La DANSE DES ABEILLES - A 1:32 min. wordless video that shows the bee dance
Les moyens de communication impressionnants des abeilles - A 2:28 min. animated video appropriate for secondary that explains the bee dance
Phineas et ferb song french c'est la remue danse - A 1:14 min. video clip from the cartoon Phineas et Ferb that sings an explanation of the bee dance (note: NOT culturally authentic)
Bee Food
Que mangent les abeilles - Nourriture de l'abeille - An informational article in French from Planeté Animal with sections on the nutritional needs of bees, bee foods, the preferred flowers of bees, and bee facts. The most useful part of the page is the infographic that shows the different things that bees eat with captions that explain each food.
Bee Jobs
Les métiers des abeilles - A 2:17 min. animated video that explains the jobs of different bees within a beehive
Bee Life Cycle
Cycle de développement des abeilles en image - A FANTASTIC 1:04 min. wordless video that shows video of the live life cycle of a bee
Apiculture: Naissance d'une reine abeille - Birth of a bee queen - A 2:28 min. wordless video
Bee Mysteries
Blue / Green Honey
Alsace: Un apiculteur met le miel bleu dans les mains de la justice - A news story from 20 minutes about beekeepers that want to sue an M&M factory because of the bees that collected residue from the coloring vats and took it back to their hives (audio also available)
Des abeilles produisent du miel bleu et vert en Alsace. Comment est-ce possible ? - A short article about bees that resorted to taking the residue of M&M coating back to their hives because they didn't have enough nectar
Du miel de couleur verte récolté par des apiculteurs isérois - A great article that talks about bees in a small town in France that seem to have foraged at a local fruit juice factory, resulting in green honey that tasted "minty fresh"
Le mystère du miel bleu élucidé ! - A 1:10 min. news report on why some bees were producing blue honey in France
Miel bleu - A 4:39 min. wordless video about how a bee who is allergic to pollen until she leads her hive to nectar, but the nectar turns out to be hallucinogenic
Miel Bleu / Blue Honey from Constance JOLIFF on Vimeo.
Bee Parts
Bee Stings
Pourquoi Les Abeilles Ne Peuvent Piquer Qu'une Seule Fois ? - A YouTube short with subtitles that explains why bees can only sting once (a bit graphic in that it shows the bee's abdomen being ripped out as it tries to fly away after stinging a person
Comptines About Bees
Comptine Les abeilles - A printable chant about how bees make honey in the hive
Daily Life of Bees
Comment les abeilles se tiennent-elles chaud en hiver ? - An article from L’éditiondusoir that explains how bees keep warm in the winter and the optimal temperature they need for survival in three, short paragraphs in French
Honey Production
Comment les abeilles fabriquent-elles du miel ? - An article from 20 minutes that summarizes the stages of bee production in short, one-sentence paragraphs in French
Comment les abeilles fabriquent-elles du miel ? - An article with one-sentence explanations of each of the stages of bee production (with each stage bolded), a scientific drawing of a bee with all of the parts labeled in French, a brief paragraph about the "super vision" of bees, and a very simple list of steps for honey collection in French.
De la récolte au conditionnement, la fabrication du miel - A short text that briefly describes the various stages of honey collection in French, including collection, uncapping, extraction, filtration, maturation, and conditioning. The text does not have very many images, but does have a few key concepts bolded
Toutes les étapes de la fabrication du miel - An article in French that outlines the stages of honey production. The article has a large image with a simple caption in French for each stage, followed by more detailed informational text.
Honey Quality
Comment reconnaitre un bon miel et faire le meilleur choix ? - A 3 min. podcast in French about how to recognize high quality honey
Miel de qualité cherche consommateur averti - A short article that explains that some honey producers are protesting "fake honey"
Importance of Bees
Pourquoi les abeilles sont-elles indispensables ? - 1 jour, 1 question - A 1:42 min. animated video explanation in French
Pedagogical Materials in French (culturally authentic)
Livret pédagogique - A really fantastic booklet of activities and worksheets for children about bees that includes a reproducible diagram of a bee for children to label, an informational page about the different types of bees in a hive, a timeline of a typical bee's life, a one-page sheet showing the different jobs of a bee, a page about bee foraging, two pages about bee's favorite flowers, a page about the honey collection process, several pages about threats to bees and tips for helping to save the bees, and a quiz
Librairie apicole – Enfants, jeunesse - A list of children's books about bees
Songs
"La danse de l'abeille" by DOUDOUL - A 2:50 min. video with a guy dressed as a bee singing about how he flies to the right and left to collect nectar, pollinate flowers, and make honey
LA DANSE DES ABEILLES - Les Enfantastiques - A 3:18 min. video in French in which children sing about how bees dance through the flowers and work hard
La Danse des abeilles avec les paroles - LAZO KIDS-Comptines et chansons pour les enfants - A 2:27 min. karaoke video with all three verses of the song
Technology & Bees
B-keep : Une nouvelle Technologie pour sauver les Abeilles ? - A short article that describes a technology that monitors beehive temperature and humidity
Les nouvelles technologies au service de l'apiculture - This article in French devotes separate paragraphs to different technologies that are helping save bees, including the connected scale, a bee counter, thermal cameras, and WeatherHoney.
La technologie au chevet des abeilles - An article in French from Les Echos that describes how different technologies are being used to monitor bees and improve their survival, including the installation of RFID chips on bees' backs, color cameras that film the take-off board of beehives, and cell phone alerts
Threats to Bees
Le déclin des abeilles expliqué en 3 minutes - A high quality, 3:49 min. video from Le Monde that explains why bee populations are declining
Tips for Helping the Bees
Que dois-je planter pour aider les abeilles ? - A well-organized article that outlines criteria for figuring out which flowers are best to plant to help bees, along with lists of their favorite flowers in French.
Videos
DÉCOUVERTE DES ABEILLES AU CŒUR DE LA RUCHE AVEC DES ENFANTS - An 8:13 min. video in which two little girls take a field trip to visit a beekeeper
Titou l'Explorateur - Des vidéos pour les enfants curieux - #6 : Titou découvre le Miel - A 13:26 min. video that shows a small child learning all about honey from a beekeeper (including a visit to a hive in a protective suit and a visit to the machines where the honey is prepared for sale) [Contributed by Lauren Bezzant]
Pedagogically Useful Materials (but not culturally authentic)
Georges le Petit Singe 🐵 Comment les abeilles fabriquent-elle le miel? 🐵Animation Pour Enfants - A 4:56 min. video in which Curious George learns about how bees make honey during a visit to a beekeeper
Maya L'abeille - La fête des naissances - A 12:08 min. video in French from the series
Maya l'abeille 🐝 La naissance de Maya Épisode 1 🍯 Dessin Animé Complet En Français - A 24:10 min. cartoon from Club Des Animes that shows the life cycle of a bee