Big Horn R.

Red Rock R.Salm

on R

.

Yellow

stone

R.

Little Misso

uri R.

Frenchman R

Milk R Milk R

Missouri R.

Musselshell R.

Yellowstone R.

Missouri R.

Musselshell R.

Powder R.

Yellowstone R.

Big Horn

R.

Tongue

R.

Powder

R.

Milk R

Marias R

Flathead R.

Missouri

R.

Clark Fork

Big Hole R.

Madison R.

Kootenai R.

Selway R.

Salmon R.

Little

Miss

ouri R

.

FlatheadLake

L. PendOreille

Yellowstone L.

CanyonFerry L.

DworshakRes.

L. Elwell

Fort Peck L.

FresnoRes.

HungryHorse Res.

L. Koocanusa

L. McDonald

CascadeRes.

Nelson Res.

Helena

Bozeman

Butte

Missoula

Polson

Box Elder

Billings

Great Falls

Lame Deer

Browning Harlem

Poplar

This material is based on work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant EPS-1101342. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

MSU graduate student Alex McMenamin gently coaxes new Carniolan honey bees into their new home at the MSU Honeybee Research Site and Pollinator Garden. MSU photo by Kelly Gorham.

Lesson PlanCOLONY COLLAPSE: WHAT MAKES BEES SICK?Length: 40 minutes (20 minute video and activity plus 20 minute discussion)Ages: Grades 5-10

In this lesson, students will learn about bee colony collapse disorder (CCD) by watching a recorded talk by MSU graduate student Alex McMenamin and following along with a hands-on colony collapse activity. Students will use critical thinking skills to learn about the causes of colony collapse.

BACKGROUND:Honey bees are the primary pollinator of the United States’ food supply, and many Montana beekeepers transport their bees throughout the U.S. to pollinate crops such as almonds. Honey bees live in large family groups called colonies. When these colonies get sick, they can die, or “collapse.” Unfortunately, nearly 30% of colonies collapse each winter in the U.S.

LEARNING OUTCOMES:• Bees face many of the same stressors that humans do.• Like people, sometimes these stressors become too much

and this is often when there are multiple stressors present.• Different colonies can be faced with the same stressors

but have different health outcomes. One may become sick, one may be perfectly healthy, and another may die. (This simulated in the hands-on activity. Even though each group moves the same blocks, some colonies (towers) collapse before others. Some reasons include:• There is variation in how hard stressors might push

on a colony. Each stressor lies on a spectrum from “not very bad” (like a common cold) to “lethal” (think being hit by a train).

• The colonies have different genetics, which results in different responses to stressors

• Randomness. This might be hard to understand, but for reasons we can’t explain, colonies can react differently to the same stressors, resulting in different health outcomes.

Materials and required technology• Jenga game (one per group of four). Educators may

improvise with other stacking objects; we recommend practicing to determine the right number of objects. Ideally, some towers will collapse and others won’t.

• MS PowerPoint and projector

Activity: Divide the class into groups (ideally 3-4 groups). Each group gets one Jenga tower. This represents your colony.Watch the Teen Science Cafe talk by Alex McMenamin called “What Makes Bees Sick?” (youtu.be/zk-j4oEkNmI) Through-out the talk, Alex will introduce various stressors, which are factors that can make a colony sick. As each new stressor is introduced, students move the designated number of blocks to the top of their tower. More blocks = more stress. For each stressor, students must remove blocks from the same side of the tower. When a tower falls, your colony has col-lapsed. Some colonies may collapse; some may not. Discuss what made each colony collapse.

Suggested alterations: • Older students can consider why some towers fall before

others (despite all towers experiencing virtually the same thing) and what this means biologically.

• Students can learn more about Michelle Flenniken’s EPSCoR-supported research at: montanaioe.org/about/people/affiliated/flenniken-michelle

• Learn more about pollinators at montana.edu/pollinators and http://eu.montana.edu/climb/spotlight-bees.htm

• Learn how researchers prep and identify bees in the lab: montana.edu/news/15615/montana-bees-get-washed-fluffed-and-brushed-for-msu-researchers

ABOUT THE MONTANA INSTITUTE ON ECOSYSTEMSThe Montana Institute on Ecosystems is a community of scientists and partners that studies Montana’s complex

ecosystems, including the impacts of climate change on ecosystems and the ways in which people and nature are interconnected. Formed in 2011 with funding from the National Science Foundation’s EPSCoR program, the IoE has offices at Montana State University and the University of Montana. Partners are located at other Montana University

System campuses and Montana tribal colleges.

The culminating research and outreach product of the EPSCoR / IoE will be the Montana Climate Assessment (MCA), which involves university researchers, decision makers, and other stakeholders with the goal of providing timely and relevant information for the citizens of the State. The inaugural MCA will focus on climate issues that affect

agriculture, forests, and water resources in Montana.

View more education and outreach resources at the Climate in My Backyard site: http://eu.montana.edu/CLIMB CliMB is an educational outreach program serving K-12 teachers and informal educators.

Glossary of TermsAbiotic stressors: Non-living, or inanimate events or objects that cause stress and may lead to sickness, such as pesticides.Arthropods: Small animals lacking an internal skeleton, instead having a hard outer-shell (i.e. an exoskeleton). Examples are insects, crabs, pill bugs, spiders, ticks, mosquitoes etc.Bacteria: Small, single-celled organisms that live in and around us. Most of them you’ll never notice because they keep to themselves, but a minority of them may cause disease. For high school students: Unicellular organisms that lack membrane-bound organelles, and therefore a nucleus. Sometimes referred to as “prokaryotes”, these microscopic organisms greatly outnumber people. In fact, a single tea-spoon of (healthy) soil has more bacteri-al cells than there are people on earth. Biotic Stressors: Generally, living things that infect a living thing (the host, i.e. person, insect, dog, etc.), and cause disease by parasitically using the host’s resources, or otherwise disrupting normal bodily functions. For example, parasites. Colony Collapse Disorder: One of many phenomena associated with collapsed colonies and defined by very specific symptoms:

(a) Presence of Queen and baby bees(b) Absence of dead adults besides

the queen, indicating rapid disappear-ance of adults

(c) Delayed robbing of honey and pollen by neighboring bees

(d) Low levels of field diagnosable disease – these are varroa mites, a fungal pathogen called nosema, and bacterial diseases

Fungi: Can be made up of many close-ly associated cells (like animals and plants) or single celled. Like us, they are considered “eukaryotes”. You would most likely recognize these as mush-rooms or molds on bread or fruit. But actually the majority of the organism in inside whatever the mushroom or mold is growing on in thin hair-like strands. Some can cause disease, most do not.Pesticides: These are chemicals that are designed to kill arthropod and non-arthropod (like slugs) pests to reduce the damage these pests might cause to agricultural or ornamental plants. Often cited as a major cause of colony collapse, but the evidence suggests it is but one of many causes.Protists: These are single celled (eukaryotic) organisms that simply do not fit within animals, plants, or fungi. This group is highly diverse including organisms that even form colonies – which is a group of a single species that chooses to live very close together. You might recognize malaria, which is a disease-causing protist.Viruses: A protein cage containing its genome (our genome is our DNA). These are really interesting because they push the limits of what we define as “living” because viruses cannot reproduce

without ‘hijacking’ the machines that our cells use to reproduce. We are mostly fa-miliar with those that cause disease (like influenza or the rhinovirus, which causes the common cold) but in reality most do not cause disease.

LESSON PLAN AUTHOR Alex McMenamin, is a member of the Flenniken Lab at Montana State University where he studies how bees fight viral infection and how viruses infect bees. He comes from Pennsyl-vania where he studied Immunology and Infectious Disease in college, and completed a master’s studying colony disease dynamics in African bees at Penn State. Outside of the lab he enjoys spending his free-time hiking, biking, running, and reading, among other things. He is a graduate of the Communicating Ecosystem Science program at MSU. Contact Alex at alexander.mcmenamin@ msu.montana.edu