Pollination & Pollinator Decline

Activities to try

1. 1

   Farm-and-pollinator landscape model: break and repair the dependency

   Why it works: Pollinator decline reduces the variety in our diet and the yields of insect-pollinated crops rather than removing all calories, because insect-pollinated crops produce less (some far less) while wind-pollinated staples continue; this is a broken interdependence that can be mitigated, though recovery is gradual rather than instant.

   1. Tend a mixed landscape containing an apple orchard, oilseed rape, strawberry beds and a wheat field, alongside a pollinator (bee) population.
   2. Apply a stressor — spray pesticide or clear hedgerows — and observe how the pollinator numbers fall and, crop by crop, the insect-pollinated plots set less fruit or seed so their harvests fall (sharply for apples; less for strawberries and oilseed rape, which can partly self-pollinate and benefit from, rather than wholly depend on, insects), while the wind-pollinated wheat keeps yielding.
   3. Inspect a harvest/market-shelf readout and describe what changes: the shelf holds far fewer apples and strawberries and less rapeseed oil, but still holds bread.
   4. State in writing whether pollinator loss threatens calories, variety, or both, using the wheat contrast as evidence.
   5. Intervene by sowing wildflower margins, restoring hedgerows and cutting spraying, then observe over successive seasons whether pollinators and harvests recover, and explain which mitigation helped and why.
2. 2

   Interview a beekeeper, farmer or pollination ecologist

   Why it works: The decline-causes-consequences-solutions strand is a socio-scientific judgement: evidence and trade-offs, not just a single 'right' fix.

   1. Interview an in-role beekeeper, farmer or pollination ecologist about why pollinators — wild bees and other insects as well as managed honeybee colonies — are declining or under pressure, and what it means for the harvest.
   2. Probe a concrete real case — for example almond orchards' heavy reliance on managed honeybees, or oilseed rape — to ground the dependency in a specific farming system.
   3. Ask which mitigations actually work and press the persona to weigh trade-offs (e.g. cost of leaving field margins uncultivated vs. benefit to yields).
   4. Summarise the persona's reasoning and decide which proposed solution the pupil would back, justifying the choice.
3. 3

   What's on your plate: reveal insect- vs wind-pollinated foods

   Why it works: Much of the variety on a plate depends on specific pollinators, while staples like bread do not — making the dependency concrete before the modelling work.

   1. Examine a plate or market scene and, for each food, reveal whether it needs or benefits from insect pollination, is wind-pollinated, or does not depend on pollination for the part we eat (e.g. potatoes, carrots, lettuce).
   2. For an insect-pollinated food, identify a pollinator responsible (e.g. wild bees, honeybees, hoverflies, butterflies).
   3. Drill down into one example to see a flower being pollinated, then state in a sentence what the pollinator did.